Five days after winning the PGA Championship at Aronimink and collecting the largest single cheque in his career, Aaron Rai is on the tee sheet at the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. The field is open; the leader board is fresh. [1] [2]

Sunday's $3.69 million prize — top of a record $20.5 million purse — pushed Rai's career earnings past sixteen million on a single weekend and made him the first Englishman to lift the Wanamaker Trophy in 107 years. [1] [2] The paper's Thursday brief called the purse the CBS recovery test's number. The broadcast question has receded; what remains is the player.

Colonial is the smallest course on the calendar — a Hogan-era Donald Ross-style design, narrow corridors, bermuda greens, the Texas wind. Rai's game suits it. He led the field in driving accuracy on the PGA Tour in 2024, and his Sunday 65 at Aronimink was built on fairways found rather than length added. The Schwab field includes Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, and Ludvig Åberg; Jon Rahm, the Aronimink runner-up, is at LIV Korea. The two-week PGA-to-Schwab cadence has a history of producing flat performances from major winners. Whether Rai's week-two number — the leaderboard position, not the cheque — adds to the major or sits alone is what the Sunday card will read. The tee time is 1:24 p.m. Eastern. [1]

-- CHARLES ASHFORD, London