Champions Tour: Three Way Battle for Schwab Cup

It’s hard to believe that after a season on the Champions Tour, only 66 points separate the top three leaders in the Charles Schwab Cup.

RANK	PLAYER NAME	POINTS	POINTS BEHIND
1	Colin Montgomerie	3,078
2	Jeff Maggert	3,039	39
3	Bernhard Langer	3,012	66

On top is Colin Montgomerie, who won eight Order of Merit titles in Europe, seven of them in a row.

Next is Champions Tour newcomer Jeff Maggert, who has already had more Champions Tour victories in 18 months than he had in his entire PGA Tour career.

Last, but not to be forgotten by any means, is one of the tough guys but nicest people in professional golf, Bernhard Langer.

Langer has won the Schwab Cup twice already, the same number of times he’s overcome the yips.

It’s going to be a dogfight to the end.

Of all the season-ending tournaments, the Charles Schwab Cup is the easiest to understand. This year only three guys can win it. They win it by having the most Schwab points.

For each regular Champions Tour event every $1,000 = 1 point. And points are only awarded for the top ten finishes each week.

At the finale, the Charles Schwab Cup Championship, points are doubled. The top place is worth 880 points.

No one else on the Champions Tour has enough points to overtake the top three with a victory.

The payout is listed below, so you can do your own math as the tournament progresses. It’s three guys for the top year-end bonus. But there’s also $2.5 million in the tournament purse, aside from the Schwab Cup $1 million annuity.

	Schwab Cup Payout
1	$440,000	16	$50,500
2	$254,000	17	$50,500
3	$213,000	18	$39,375
4	$158,000	19	$39,375
5	$158,000	20	$39,375
6	$117,000	21	$39,375
7	$99,000	22	$33,000
8	$99,000	23	$33,000
9	$79,000	24	$30,000
10	$79,000	25	$29,000
11	$70,000	26	$27,000
12	$61,500	27	$26,000
13	$61,500	28	$25,000
14	$50,500	29	$24,500
15	$50,500	30	$0

Montgomerie played so well in 2014 that he qualified for two regular tour majors. He played in seven major championships this year. The schedule was blistering.

At the end of it he teed it up in his 600^th tournament at the 2014 Turkish Airlines Open. There, he cited Bernhard Langer as his toughest lifelong golf competitor.

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“You were never going to rely on Bernhard Langer to beat himself,” he said that week. “You always had to go and beat Bernhard Langer – he was never going to give you anything.”

Montgomerie added that Langer and Faldo were always the toughest he had to play.

“Most of the other guys on The European Tour you felt could give you something; they could give you a bogey or give you a double at the right time,” Montgomerie said. “Langer and [Sir Nick] Faldo, mostly Langer, did not – they did not give you anything. So you had to go and beat them and they were the toughest competitors, the ones that you had to beat.”

“He’s one of the finest gentlemen on the golf course,” Langer said about Montgomerie during the Senior Open Championship. “He’s very consistent player, one of the greatest drivers of the golf ball, and so whenever there’s narrow fairways, he’s in contention.”

Langer said the two had been friends for many years and shared numerous fond Ryder Cup memories from the teams they were on together as well as the times they tried to beat each other.

“The guys out here on the Champions Tour are the same guys that I was trying to beat 20 years ago, and they’re great players,” Jeff Maggert said about his status as a relatively new Champions Tour competitor. All of the game that these guys have is, I would say, almost just as good as it was 20 years ago.”