The PGA Tour returns to Donald Trump’s Trump National Doral this week for the 2026 Cadillac Championship — the first PGA Tour event at the Blue Monster since 2016 and the first time the venue has hosted a Tour event under signature-event rules. The tournament runs April 30 through May 3, with a 72-player field, a $20 million purse, and a notable list of absent stars.
What Happened
After a decade away from Trump National Doral — the Tour pulled out following its 2016 stop and moved its World Golf Championship to Mexico City — the PGA Tour returns to the iconic Blue Monster as a 72-player, $20 million signature event. The Cadillac Championship slots into the schedule one week before the Truist Championship at Quail Hollow and two weeks before the PGA Championship, giving Doral a clearly defined “ramp-up to a major” position on the calendar.
The Blue Monster sits at par 72 and stretches to 7,739 yards — a brutally long, water-laced course that historically rewards long drivers who can keep the ball in the fairway. The defining hole, the par-4 18th nicknamed “El Burro” with water down the entire left side, is one of the toughest finishing holes on the regular Tour rotation.
The Field — And Who’s Missing
Scottie Scheffler enters as the betting favorite at +310, despite having no competitive history at Doral. The course has been off the Tour rotation for so long that almost no one in the field has tournament-level data on it — making this one of the more even-by-default starting points on the schedule.
The notable absences are the headline. Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Ludvig Åberg, and Matt Fitzpatrick are all sitting this one out to focus on next week’s Truist Championship at Quail Hollow and the run-up to the PGA Championship at Aronimink. McIlroy’s absence is particularly noteworthy: he’s a four-time WGC-Cadillac Championship winner at Doral and would have been a co-favorite with Scheffler.
Players in the field who do have meaningful Doral history include Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Sepp Straka, and Hideki Matsuyama — all of whom played the WGC era at Doral. Alex Fitzpatrick (fresh off his first PGA Tour victory alongside brother Matt at the Zurich Classic) makes his Cadillac Championship debut. Collin Morikawa, Russell Henley, Sam Burns, Chris Gotterup, and Viktor Hovland round out the contender set.
Why It Matters
The PGA Tour’s return to Doral is more than a schedule update — it’s a deliberate political and commercial gesture. The Tour left Doral in 2016 amid sponsor concerns over Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and moved the WGC to Mexico City. The return signals that the Tour is willing to commercially separate the venue from its owner, and that signature-event status is now valuable enough to justify difficult venue partnerships.
For players, the return revives a course they’ve missed. Doral has historically separated long, accurate drivers from the rest of the field by virtue of the brute-force par-4 finishing stretch and the layout’s heavy use of water. In the WGC era, the leaderboards tended to favor distance-and-control players: Dustin Johnson, McIlroy, Adam Scott, and Justin Rose all won there.
For amateur viewers, the more interesting story is what’s not in the field. The Cadillac Championship’s calendar position — sandwiched between the Zurich Classic and the Truist Championship, two weeks before the PGA — means the field skews toward players who haven’t yet locked in form for Quail Hollow. That dynamic creates a genuinely open leaderboard, where the headline favorite (Scheffler) is favored less by course history than by sheer ball-striking dominance.
What This Means For You
If you’re watching the Cadillac Championship, here’s how to read it:
- Watch driving distance and accuracy together. Doral’s Blue Monster historically rewards players who hit it 300+ yards and find the fairway, because the rough and water around the greens punish missed approaches. Strokes-gained: tee-to-green will be the leading indicator after Round 1.
- Pay attention to wind on the par-3 9th and the 18th. Both holes are routed against the prevailing wind, and afternoon tee times in Round 1 will play meaningfully harder than morning ones. Expect the early leaderboard to skew morning-wave heavy.
- Don’t read too much into the absences. Players sitting out to prep for Quail Hollow will mostly come back to standard form by next week. The Cadillac Championship leaderboard isn’t a clean preview of the Truist or PGA — it’s a one-off course test of distance and accuracy.
- Use it as a model for your own course strategy. Doral is the rare Tour venue where the answer to “should I play conservative off the tee?” is genuinely “yes” — the rough is severe enough that fairway-finder tee shots beat 300-yard sprays. The same logic applies to your home course on water-heavy or thick-rough days.
For viewers who want to deepen their golf-watching during a major-prep week, our broader rundown of the best golf courses in Florida includes Doral’s place in the broader Florida tournament-golf landscape. And if Scheffler’s pre-PGA form is what you care about, our PGA Championship preview at Aronimink goes deeper on his title defense.
The Course in 2026
Trump National Doral has gone through several rounds of renovation since the Tour last visited. The most significant changes are around the green complexes — bunkering has been reshaped, several greens were re-built to USGA spec, and the rough has been thickened in line with what the Tour requested for signature-event difficulty. The Blue Monster is, by reputation, slightly tougher than the version Tour pros remember from 2016.
The return also brings back one of the more recognizable visual signatures on Tour: the sand-and-water-heavy layout, the iconic finishing hole with water hugging the entire left side, and the warm Miami atmosphere that gave WGC-Cadillac its character. Television production benefits, too — the layout’s open sight lines and tightly packed back-nine make it easier to follow leaders than most modern Tour venues.
Key Takeaways
- The Cadillac Championship runs April 30 – May 3, 2026 at Trump National Doral’s Blue Monster — the PGA Tour’s first event at Doral since 2016.
- It’s a 72-player, $20 million signature event positioned as a ramp-up to the PGA Championship at Aronimink two weeks later.
- Scheffler is the favorite at +310; McIlroy, Schauffele, Åberg, and Matt Fitzpatrick are all skipping the event.
- The Blue Monster plays par 72 at 7,739 yards, with the par-4 18th historically among the hardest finishing holes on Tour.
- Strokes-gained: tee-to-green will be the leading indicator after Round 1; expect morning-wave players to score better than afternoon if winds rise.
- The return is a meaningful commercial moment: the Tour is restoring a venue it left in 2016 over sponsor concerns.
For more on this stretch of the schedule, see our coverage of the Fitzpatrick brothers’ Zurich Classic win and our Riviera Maya Open preview for parallel LPGA storylines this week.
Source: PGA Tour; reporting via CBS Sports, ESPN, Yahoo Sports, and The Washington Post.
