Jordan Spieth, left, and Scottie Scheffler earlier this year.
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The tournament your grandma knew as the Colonial is now the Charles Schwab Challenge, and that’s not all that has changed since the birth of the event, in 1946, at Colonial Country Club, in Fort Worth.
The course is longer. Drives fly farther. And there are many more ways for fans to get involved.
Among them: Chirp Golf. An affiliate of GOLF.com, Chirp is a free-to-play mobile game that features weekly contests including a $5,000 Jackpot Pick ‘Em and other live shot-by-shot precaution games. One of those games is a Trifecta contest that calls for users to pick three players: a favorite, a contender, and a long shot.
Nearly 1,000 users have already signed up for this week’s Trifecta, a health sample size that gives us a sense of where public opinion is leaning.
In the favorite’s category (players ranked 1-20 in the world), last week’s PGA Championship winner, Justin Thomas, has the strongest backing so far among Chirp users, with 21.48 percent of the vote. Scottie Scheffler (19.57 percent) is the next most popular pick, followed by Jordan Spieth (14.77) and Will Zalatoris (12.75 percent).
Among the contenders (ranked 21-60 in the world), Webb Simpson and Bubba Watson are tied as the top choices (each has 17.45 percent of the backing), followed by Sebastian Munoz (8.84 percent).
And then there are the long shots (ranked 61 and higher). In that category, Harry Higgs leads the way (19.35 percent), with Rory Sabbatini (13.09 percent) and Denny McCarthy just behind.
A golf, food and travel writer, Josh Sens has been a GOLF Magazine contributor since 2004 and now contributes across all of GOLF’s platforms. His work has been anthologized in The Best American Sportswriting. He is also the co-author, with Sammy Hagar, of Are We Having Any Fun Yet: the Cooking and Partying Handbook.