After a 10-year run at Phoenix Country Club, the PGA Tour Champions is on the move.
One week before the Charles Schwab Cup Championship put a cap on the senior circuit's 2026 season, the tour announced the location of its 2027 tournament: Papago Golf Course.
Phoenix Country Club is due for some work and that will begin in February 2027 in the form of a $15 million Andy Staples renovation, but that will also take the golf course off the table for next year. The two parties exercised an out in the contract on the venue; the Schwab contract as title sponsor continues through 2032.
“The past 10 years have been an extraordinary chapter in Phoenix Country Club’s history, and it has been an honor and privilege to partner with the PGA Tour Champions in hosting
the Charles Schwab Cup Championship,” said Phoenix Country Club Board President Lynn Ziolko.
"It takes a lot, and we ask a lot of the membership," said Tiffany Nelson-Thorne, executive director for the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, of the club. "To take the course away a week, then we're building three weeks on it. That's a lot to ask. ... so to be able to be here, 10 years was amazing, and we made the best of it."
And now in steps perhaps the most iconic muni in the greater Phoenix area, Papago, a venue that also once pinch-hit as host on the LPGA in 2009 when that league was bouncing between courses.
This William Bell-design, which opened in 1963, is looking forward to taking centerstage, allowing the course, and the greater Arizona golf community at large, an opportunity to tell a bigger story.
"I've been at Papago for 12 years now and I have played it a billion times," said Papago general manager and Phoenix native Daryl Crawford. "I'm over the moon. We're super, super, super excited with an incredible opportunity and I think to host great golf, and I think that's what Papago was built on, in terms of championship golf, to be able to get the best of the best playing it, and I think, as important, is having the opportunity to tell a great story about what's happening, what's happened here and what's happening."
And what's happening is a lot. Papago has long been a staple of the Phoenix golf scene. In 2008, it had an $8 million renovation. A few years later, it went through a messy and controversial management issue. The City of Phoenix and Arizona State University reached a deal in 2014 for the Sun Devils men's and women's teams to move to Papago. In 2018, that became a reality with ASU leaving its long-time home at Karsten. In 2022, $4 million went into more work. Then in 2024, the Arizona Golf House was completed, bringing together most of the state's golfing entities under one roof, including the Arizona Golf Foundation, the City of Phoenix, Troon Golf, First Tee and more.
The next iteration of Papago will see it host the Champions tour season finale, the biggest event on the circuit outside the five majors.
"We've been really fortunate. We've hosted in the USGA public links championship in 1971. We hosted a 2009 LPGA event, but this is this is a different level," Crawford said. "The Schwab Cup and the season-ending tournament. ... they go through the whole year to get to this place. The history of all those players, of their lives and then matching up with the history here at Papago, again, super crazy. And exciting for us."
Discussions between Schwab and Papago regarding 2027 started more than a year ago and the 2028 event is already being bandied about, although there is a chance it returns to Phoenix Country Club for one final hoorah after next year.
"We are working on '28 and '29 right now," said Nelson-Thorne. "We're at Papago in '27 and maybe in '28."
Finding a suitable venue in mid-November, when the Phoenix area courses are just coming out of the overseed season and golfers are clamoring to play in nice weather, is trickier than may be perceived.
"There's a lot more that goes into it, even though we have 250 courses here in the state," said Nelson-Thorne. "There's very few that actually fit."
For 2027, Papago fits nicely.
"I think they're obviously going to find it a lot different than Phoenix," said Crawford. "Papago is a big golf course, so finding grass to hit from is going to be fairly easy. There's not going to be trees you're going to have to worry about. But the greens will be the key part, and the green complexes, because I'm sure they're going to set it up pretty good.. The greens are massive, so finding the right location of where the pins are going to be, where you can miss and where you can't."
Any course that hosts a pro tournament thus loses tee times for recreational golfers, something that's more acute at a muni than a country club but Crawford is thinking positive.
"I think that the public is really going to embrace it," he said. "Papago has been a place that the Valley has enjoyed from generation to generation to generation, and many of those folks, you know, used to wait outside the gate at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning to get a tee time. I think they're happy to say, 'hey, they're going to be at my my course.' ... I think we're gonna have a lot of people from our Papago men's club, Papago women's club, they'll want to see how they can be involved and be part of it.
"I have really good feelings about it. And Papago is a super special place."
Todd Kelly is Golfweek's assistant managing editor.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Popular Phoenix municipal golf course next up to host Charles Schwab Cup in 2027
