2026 Simmons Bank Championship preview: PGA Tour Champions playoffs in Arkansas

PGA Tour champions continues their Charles Schwab Cup playoffs this week with the second of three legs in Little Rock, Arkansas with the Simmons Bank Championship. We are here with a preview. I'm Ryan Baloughi with Golf News Net. We're looking at the Simmons Bank Championship played at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Little Rock, Arkansas. It's the second year for this event being the second leg of the Charles Schwab Cup playoffs. They have three legs. The first leg was the Stiefel Charity Classic played out in St. Louis last week. That was reserved for the top 72 players in the point standings at the end of the regular season, which concluded with the Sash Championship in North Carolina. Well, this week, we've reduced the field of qualified players by 18, going from 72 to the top 54 players in the standings at the end of last week's event. In the Charles Schwab Cup playoffs, all of the dollars that are earned through the events are doubled. So every dollar earned equals two points versus in the regular season, it's a one-to-one exchange. So the winner this week is going to get about 700,000 Charles Schwab Cup points. And that means it's a big opportunity to move up in the standings. So 54 players qualify based on their standing at the end of the Stiefel Charity Classic. We're only going to have 51 in the field, however. Some are not playing. For example, Matt Gogol is serving a gambling suspension. Bernhard Langer is not playing. He's 44th in the standings. But we will have the top 36 players at the end of this 54-hole tournament moving on to the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, which is the season-ending tournament on the 50-plus circuit. This is a really interesting year on the PGA Tour champions because they've had basically three players dominate the entire season between Stewart Sink, Steve Alker, and Zach Johnson. They account for the vast majority of the wins on the season. However, that means those three players have to play in each of the playoff events to vie for the Charles Schwab Cup title. At the end of next event, which is the 72-hole Charles Schwab Cup championship in Arizona, they're going to crown the winner of the season-long points race and they're going to get the lion's share of a 2.1 million dollar bonus pool it's all paid out in annuities but hey it's money for these guys to conclude the season so big event this week kind of sets the groundwork for the top 36 who qualify for the season ending tournament and all of those players who get into the season ending tour championship are guaranteed full status into every event on the PGA Tour champion schedule next year Thank you.