Surging Matti Schmid, Ben Griffin keep strong battle going into final round at Colonial

FORT WORTH, Texas — Something must change at the Charles Schwab Challenge. What is happening cannot continue.

Ben Griffin or Matti Schmid needs to make a few more putts. But is that even realistic? Schmid ranks first in Strokes Gained: Putting through 54 holes. He’s made more than 346 feet of putts so far on the crisping, subtly contoured greens of Colonial Country Club. Griffin ranks fifth. He’s taken only 78 putts in all. What he little he lacks in that category he has made up in SG: Tee to Green, ranking second in the field. In truth, neither player has shown a concerning frailty yet at this 79-year-old tournament on the Trinity River.

But someone has to win Sunday.

The contenders assembled on the leaderboard during a gusty, humid day typical of late May in North Texas. At 13-under par, Griffin and Schmid matched scores for the third round in a row (66-63-68, respectively) as the wind and sun hastened the pace of the greens. Rickie Fowler made only one bogey in his 3-under 67 and rose to third. Robert MacIntyre shared fourth with Akshay Bhatia and Nick Hardy after he shot one of three 6-under 64s, the other belonging to Lucas Glover and Scottie Scheffler.

Scheffler, incidentally, started his round in a tie for 49th. He soared to a tie for seventh at 7 under with Andrew Novak and Kurt Kitayama. Those three players are six shots behind the lead, but, as Griffin said after his round, no lead is technically safe at a place like Colonial. Two Schwab champions — Nick Price in 1994 and Sam Burns in 2022 — were behind by seven on Sunday. (Price shot 64. Burns shot 65.)

A surging player can separate themselves from the pack at pecan-lined Colonial, an old-soul routing that barely exceeds 7,100 yards and often crowns a patient, resolute shotmaker with absolute dominion over his golf ball. Ben Hogan won there five times. Corey Pavin earned a couple of tartan jackets at the Schwab. So did Price, Lee Trevino, Kenny Perry and Zach Johnson.

Those players were not the longest drivers of their generations. But they knew how to find the sweet spot in a crosswind or flight a mid-iron under a breeze.

On Sunday, someone will do that better than everyone else.

“You have to be in the right positions,” Griffin said. “You hit a lot of irons off tees. You can take advantage of driver on certain holes.”

The 29-year-old in aviator sunglasses has held three other leads on the PGA TOUR. He tied for third the first time, at the 2022 Butterfield Bermuda Championship. He tied for second in the 2023 Sanderson Farms Championship. Just last month, he and Novak carried their lead all the way to victory at the Zurich Classic of North Orleans, which means that Griffin is indeed a TOUR winner.

But he’s never won by himself.

His form has been strong in 2025. He has five top-10 finishes in 17 starts, and six in the top 25. He tied for eighth last week at the PGA Championship.

Griffin committed to a demanding physical-fitness routine that has increased speed and flexibility. He puts a lot of faith in his driver play. (He said he hits driver eight or nine times a round at Colonial, a course where most players hit only five.)

“I just feel like it's a golf course I'm really comfortable with the shop shaping that I can do with the driver, especially on the stretch,” Griffin said.

Schmid, meanwhile, has been long enough (ninth in driving distance at 304.4 yards) and scrappy enough (11th in scrambling) to complement his exquisite putting. The 27-year-old German, who played collegiate golf at Louisville, is looking for his first TOUR victory in 79 starts.

“I needed to scramble a little bit today,” Schmid said. “Didn't hit too many fairways.” (He found five of 14.)

He did wield a hot putter. He birdied the first three holes. There were a couple of late bogeys, but a birdie 16 put him right there back with Griffin.

“I mean, it was tough,” he said. “I feel like a lot of tee shots were with hard left-to-right wind. I hit in a fade, so it's kind of tricky to hit these fairways because they're so firm, but hung on there pretty good.”

Someone — perhaps Schmid, Griffin, Fowler or even Scheffler — is going to win this Schwab. Nothing that happened Saturday even matters anymore.