Course Preview and Fits: Travelers Championship

The PGA Tour’s Signature Event slate closes out this week with the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Conn., the eighth and final Signature Event of the 2026 season. As with the rest of the elevated stops, it is a limited field of 72 with a $20 million purse and 700 FedEx Cup points on the line, though unlike Memorial and the U.S. Open the week before, this one is a no-cut event. Keegan Bradley defends on home-region soil after taking his second Travelers title last year. This year, with 23 of the top 25 in the world in attendance, it will require his A game to hold the trophy on Sunday afternoon once again.

The Course:

TPC River Highlands is one of the shortest courses the Tour visits all year, a par 70 measuring just 6,800 yards, and it is the rare venue where that is the headline rather than a footnote. The layout is a Pete Dye design from the early 1980s reworked substantially by Bobby Weed at the end of that decade, with a bunker overhaul in 2016 being the most recent significant change. It runs bentgrass from tee to green with a bluegrass and fescue rough, set across 148 acres of rolling ground above the Connecticut River and framed by mature maples, oaks, and sycamores. The closing stretch, the par-4 15th through the par-3 16th and on in, wraps around water in a natural amphitheater and is among the best finishes in golf.

TPC River Highlands offers plenty of birdie opportunities. Jim Furyk’s 58 here in 2016 is the lowest round in PGA Tour history, and Cameron Young added a 59 in 2024, the first Tour event ever to see multiple sub-60 rounds. The greens are on the smaller side, and the course gives up birdies in bunches, with the par 5s and the short par 4s there for the taking.