Rob Bolton is watching the lineup tools as the 2026 Charles Schwab Challenge begins Thursday at Colonial Country Club, where SportsLine’s model and the PGA TOUR’s new Expert Picks features will shape how fans pick and bet this week.
The PGA Tour says Expert Picks has evolved: every week experts will offer both betting and fantasy analysis, and the PGA TOUR Fantasy Game will add in-tournament rostering features in 2026. That format fields four starters — including a captain — and two bench players; bench players can be rotated after each round and each golfer can be used only three times per each of the three segments.
The Experts league is open to the public, the PGA TOUR says: fans sign up or log in, create a team and join the league through the LEAGUES tab. Golfbet’s Fantasy Insider Rob Bolton is named in the rollout alongside Will Gray, Senior Manager, TOUR & Golfbet Editorial & Distribution, and Chris Breece, Senior Content Manager, Golfbet. The Tour’s Expert Picks package also includes a gambling-problem hotline number — 1-800-522-4700 — in its coverage.
That procedural weight lands at Colonial on a week when the field has been reshuffled. SportsLine reports the 2026 Charles Schwab Challenge begins Thursday with first tee times at 8 a.m. ET and the final grouping off at 2:30 p.m. ET. SportsLine notes Wyndham Clark, who won the CJ Cup Byron Nelson the previous week, withdrew from the Charles Schwab Challenge; Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth also withdrew.
SportsLine’s model names Ludvig Aberg the favorite at +800, lists Russell Henley at +1800 and Justin Thomas and defending champion Ben Griffin both at +2200. The model projects Griffin to fall outside the top 10 and singles out Akshay Bhatia as a longshot at +3300. SportsLine says its model simulates every PGA Tour tournament 10,000 times and has a history of strong results, including nailing 17 majors entering the weekend and the 2026 Masters among five straight Masters the model got right.
The context matters: the Charles Schwab Challenge is the second Texas tournament in as many weeks, and the Tour’s Expert Picks feature explicitly links fantasy rostering to betting analysis, creating a single hub for both types of decision-making. Those changes are immediate because the Fantasy Game’s in-tournament rostering lets managers swap bench players after each round, changing how value is extracted across a four-round event.
The tension is obvious. Ben Griffin arrives as defending champion at +2200 but SportsLine’s simulations project him outside the top 10; Wyndham Clark won the previous week yet withdrew, and three high-profile names pulled out before the first tee. That gap between headline odds and model projection — and between recent form and availability — forces a sharper, round-by-round approach to fantasy and bets than in past seasons.
For fans and bettors the practical next step is simple: join the PGA TOUR Experts league or follow the Expert Picks and SportsLine projections before finalizing four-starter lineups and choosing a captain. Whether searches for players like rickie fowler or interest in longshots such as Akshay Bhatia drive attention, the tools on offer — public Experts picks, in-tournament rostering and a model that runs 10,000 simulations — will decide which strategies matter this week at Colonial.
