The PGA TOUR goes back to the mountains.
Asheville, for the first time since 1942.

Walnut Cove sits in a valley more than 2,000 feet up, bordered by the Pisgah National Forest on one side and the Blue Ridge Parkway on the other, a short drive south of downtown Asheville. Jack Nicklaus built it in 2005 as the only course in The Cliffs family of clubs that sits in the North Carolina mountains rather than upstate South Carolina, and his own line on it is that parts of the course feel like playing through a national forest. The front nine runs across what used to be farmland. The back nine climbs into the woods, with mountain laurel and cold streams crossing the holes.

For this week it's set up as a par 71 at 7,249 yards, stretched from the 7,167 the members play. Everything here is cool-season grass — bentgrass fairways, bent and poa greens, bluegrass rough — which is rare on the TOUR schedule and makes the ball sit up and fly a little differently than the Bermuda most of the field has been on all summer. Add the thin mountain air and the elevation changes, and club selection is going to be the story all week. The club came through the 2024 flooding from Helene in good shape, which is a big part of why the TOUR and Biltmore Estate chose it: a four-year deal to bring golf, and visitors, back to a region still rebuilding.

• The last time the PGA TOUR played Asheville, Ben Hogan won. He took the Land of the Sky Open three years running, 1940 through 1942, and the 1940 win came in the middle of a heater: Pinehurst, Greensboro and Asheville in about ten days, right as his career finally took off. After 1942 the tournament faded away, and the TOUR didn't come back for 84 years.
• The trophy was made from the storm. Its base is cut from a black walnut tree that Helene knocked down on the Biltmore Estate, and it was designed by a great-great-granddaughter of George Vanderbilt. Which is a nice way of saying the name on the tournament isn't just a sponsor.
• About that name: Biltmore House is the largest privately owned home in America — 250 rooms, opened by Vanderbilt on Christmas Eve 1895, and still owned by his descendants. If you go to the tournament, the estate is a short drive from the course.
• This week is card week. The FedExCup Fall decides who keeps a full TOUR card for 2027: finish the fall inside the top 100 and you're safe. Billy Horschel arrives at exactly No. 100 and Lucas Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open champion, at No. 101. Both are playing for their jobs.
• It's also a Presidents Cup warm-up. Medinah is next week, and seven players from both teams are here first: Jacob Bridgeman and rookie Jackson Koivun for the U.S., and Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Corey Conners, Nico Echavarria, Ryo Hisatsune and Nick Taylor for the Internationals. Justin Thomas was the headliner until he withdrew on Sunday. North Carolina's own J.T. Poston, a Western Carolina alum, is in the field too.

Europe beat the United States 15–13 at Bernardus Golf in the Netherlands on Sunday, the third time in the last four editions Europe has won or kept the Solheim Cup. It was 8–8 going into the singles after Jennifer Kupcho holed two long putts late Saturday to square it, and then Europe won the Sunday session 7–5 in the rain. Charley Hull got the first point, Nelly Korda answered with a 4-and-2 win over Mimi Rhodes, and Alison Lee pulled off the biggest singles comeback in Solheim Cup history, four down with seven to play against Esther Henseleit and winning 1 up. It wasn't enough. Lottie Woad's 2-and-1 win over Auston Kim got Europe to 14½, and Carlota Ciganda closed the door on Kupcho 4 and 2, three years after her point retained the Cup in Spain.

It was a send-off for European captain Anna Nordqvist, who announced her retirement two weeks ago, and a long flight home for Fort Worth's Angela Stanford. The Americans still haven't won on European soil since Stanford's own team did it in 2015.

No LPGA event this week after the Solheim Cup. The tour is back September 25–27 with the Walmart NW Arkansas Championship at Pinnacle Country Club in Rogers, Arkansas: a $3 million purse, a 144-player field, and the event's 20th anniversary. That same weekend the men play the Presidents Cup at Medinah outside Chicago, September 24–27. We'll have both covered here next week.

All times Central. This one airs on Golf Channel and streams on PGA TOUR LIVE on ESPN+, and the exact broadcast windows for Asheville hadn't been posted when we wrote this — check your listings Thursday, or just swing by the clubhouse and we'll have it on the lounge screen. Coverage also runs on SiriusXM.