The Ally Challenge: 2026 Dates, Tickets, Field and Winners

By Lenka Rož Schánová · Operations & Risk, For Traders

The Ally Challenge is a PGA TOUR Champions golf tournament played at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club in Grand Blanc, Michigan, title-sponsored by Ally Financial. It is a 54-hole, no-cut event on the senior tour, and it is not a trading competition, an investing product, or anything you can sign up for through Ally Invest.

Key takeaways

• The Ally Challenge is a PGA TOUR Champions (over-50) tournament held every year at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club in Grand Blanc, Michigan.
• Ally Financial is the title sponsor — the tournament has no connection to any Ally Invest brokerage account, contest or trading programme.
• The 2026 edition runs across a tournament week of pro-ams, a concert night and three competitive rounds, with tickets sold through Ticketmaster and the official site.
• Warwick Hills previously hosted the PGA TOUR's Buick Open, which is why the leaderboard here is historically low-scoring and birdie-heavy.
• Outdrive Hunger, benefiting the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, is the tournament's charitable engine — supported by volunteers and partners including McLaren Health Care.
• If you landed here searching for a trading challenge, that is a completely separate thing: a prop firm evaluation on simulated capital, run by firms such as For Traders.

Watch: related video

What is the Ally Challenge?

The Ally Challenge is a PGA TOUR Champions tournament played at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club in Grand Blanc, Michigan, title-sponsored by Ally Financial. That's the whole entity in one line — a professional golf event, not a contest you enter, not an investment product, and not anything tied to a trading account.

The basics: tour, format and venue

PGA TOUR Champions is the tour for professional golfers age 50 and over — think of it as the major-league proving ground for players who spent decades on the regular PGA TOUR and still compete at a high level. The Ally Challenge 2026 slots into the tour's late-summer stretch, giving Michigan golf fans a marquee week when most of the sport's attention is elsewhere.

Format-wise, the tournament runs 54 holes of stroke play with no cut. That means every player who tees it up in the Ally Challenge field plays all three rounds, Friday through Sunday, regardless of how they score early. There's no Thursday-to-Friday cutline eliminating half the field like you'd see on the regular PGA TOUR — the leaderboard you watch on day one is the same group of names finishing on Sunday. Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club, the host venue in Grand Blanc, Michigan, is a tree-lined parkland course that's hosted professional golf for decades and rewards accurate iron play over raw distance — a good fit for a senior-tour field.

Why it's called the Ally Challenge

The name comes straight from the title sponsor: Ally Financial, the Detroit-born financial services company, backs the event as its Ally Financial golf tournament and the "Challenge" in the name refers to the golf tournament itself — the challenge of Warwick Hills' layout, tournament pressure, and a strong senior-tour field — not an open competition, a fantasy contest, or a trading challenge anyone can register for. If you searched "Ally Challenge" expecting anything related to Ally Invest accounts or a skills-based entry contest, this is the correction: it's a spectator sporting event with tickets, a leaderboard, and a trophy, held annually in Grand Blanc, Michigan.

For the region, it's also become one of the bigger sporting weeks on the Michigan calendar — pro-ams, gallery access to walk the fairways alongside recognizable names, and a hospitality footprint that draws corporate and community crowds well beyond the diehard golf audience.

The Ally Challenge 2026: dates, venue and schedule of events

The Ally Challenge 2026 is played at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club in Grand Blanc, Michigan, across a full tournament week that runs Monday through Sunday, with the final round and trophy presentation closing out play on Sunday afternoon. Everything before that — qualifier, pro-ams, opening ceremony, concert night — builds toward three competitive rounds of PGA TOUR Champions golf, no cut, 54 holes.

The ally challenge schedule of events follows a pattern that's stayed fairly consistent at Warwick Hills year to year, but PGA TOUR Champions dates can shift depending on the broader senior tour calendar, so treat the table below as a planning guide and confirm exact dates against the official tournament site before you book travel or take a day off work.

Tournament week day by day

Monday's qualifier is the quietest day of the week and honestly one of the best-kept secrets for serious golf watchers — small galleries, and you can walk with a group for most of the round. By Friday's Round 1, the property fills in, and Saturday's Round 2 typically draws the loudest galleries as the leaderboard sorts itself out heading into Sunday's final round.

Pro-ams, practice rounds and the concert night

The pro-am days pair PGA TOUR Champions professionals with amateur groups — often sponsor slots or charity-auction spots — and they're worth attending even if you're not playing, since access to the ropes tends to be looser than during the tournament rounds proper. Concert night has become a fixture of Ally Challenge week at Warwick Hills, usually slotted midweek after the pro-am wraps; some general admission tiers include it, others require a separate ticket, so read your ticket description before assuming.

Getting to Warwick Hills

Warwick Hills sits in Grand Blanc, Michigan, just south of Flint — most out-of-town visitors fly into Bishop International Airport (Flint) or drive up I-75 from the Detroit metro area, roughly an hour depending on traffic. On-site parking is limited on peak days (Friday through Sunday), and the tournament typically runs a shuttle system from satellite lots around Grand Blanc, so budget extra time in the morning rather than counting on parking right at the gate. Gates generally open a few hours ahead of the first tee time — early enough to catch practice-green action and grab a spot along the front nine before the crowds settle in. A general admission ticket gets you grounds access across the course, not a fixed seat, so a lot of the experience comes down to how early you show up and which holes you stake out.

Ally Challenge tickets 2026: prices, tiers and concert add-ons

The Ally Challenge 2026 tickets are sold through Ticketmaster and the tournament's official site, with weekly grounds passes, single-day admission, concert tickets and hospitality upgrades all priced and purchased separately. That's the part most preview pages skip — they mention "tickets are available" and leave you to hunt down what tier actually gets you where. Here's the breakdown.

Ticket tiers explained

A grounds pass is the base product: it gets you onto the property and around the course, but it's not a seat and it's not access to any clubhouse or hospitality venue. Everything above that is an add-on layered on top of grounds access, not a replacement for it. Rough tiers you'll typically see for the ally challenge tickets lineup:

Exact prices move year to year and by day of the week — Saturday and Sunday grounds passes generally cost more than a Tuesday practice-round ticket — so treat this table as a map of the tiers, not a locked price sheet, and confirm current numbers on the official site before you commit.

Concert and hospitality add-ons

The Ally Challenge has leaned into concert nights as part of the week, and those concert tickets are sold on top of — not instead of — a grounds pass in most structures, so check whether the tier you're buying already bundles course access for that day. Hospitality is a different animal entirely: think shaded club seating, food and beverage service, and a fixed vantage point, usually near a marquee hole, aimed at people who'd rather post up all day than walk the loop. If you want a guaranteed seat and shorter lines at the bar, hospitality earns its premium. If you want to chase the leaderboard hole by hole, a grounds pass serves you better.

Where to buy and what to avoid

Buy through Ticketmaster or the official Ally Challenge site — those are the only channels that guarantee you're paying face value and getting a ticket that scans at the gate. Resale marketplaces routinely mark up weekend grounds passes and concert tickets well above face value, especially once a marquee pairing or headliner is announced, so a "deal" late in the week is rarely one. On-site, walk-up prices also tend to run higher than advance purchase, the same pattern you'll see across PGA TOUR Champions stops — buying early online is almost always the cheaper path in.

Who's playing: the 2026 field and the John Daly question

The field at the Ally Challenge is drawn from PGA TOUR Champions members — golfers 50 and over who've earned their way onto the senior circuit, many of them former major champions and TOUR winners you already know from decades of watching golf. This isn't a weekend member-guest; it's a full professional field playing for a spot in the Charles Schwab Cup standings, and Warwick Hills has historically pulled in names like Padraig Harrington, Ernie Els, and yes, John Daly.

Headline names on the Champions tour

Padraig Harrington and Ernie Els are two of the anchor names on PGA TOUR Champions right now — both multiple major winners, both still competitive week to week, and both regulars on the Michigan stop when their schedules line up. The PGA TOUR Champions field rotates event to event based on priority status, commitments, and health, so the exact 78-player (or similar) lineup for the Ally Challenge gets finalized closer to tournament week. If you're building a trip around seeing a specific player, that's the detail that matters more than anything else on this page.

Is John Daly playing the Ally Challenge?

John Daly has been a fan-favorite fixture at Warwick Hills for years — he's got history in Michigan and the crowds turn out for him every time he tees it up. But "has played before" isn't the same as "confirmed for 2026." Daly's participation any given year depends on his schedule and, candidly, his health, which has been an open topic in golf media for a while now. If seeing John Daly in person is the whole reason you're buying a ticket, check the official commitment list on the tournament's website before you pull the trigger — don't assume based on past years.

How to follow the Ally Challenge leaderboard

The Ally Challenge runs 54 holes with no cut — every player who starts Thursday finishes Saturday... wait, actually the event plays Thursday through Sunday depending on the year's format, but the key point stands: there's no 36-hole cut like you'd see on the regular PGA TOUR. Everybody who tees off completes all three rounds, which means even a player having a rough opening day is still out there grinding on moving day. That format tends to compress the field, and it's a big reason Sunday afternoon at Warwick Hills often produces the lowest rounds of the week — players know exactly where they stand on the Ally Challenge leaderboard and there's nothing left to play conservative for.

For live scoring, the tournament's official site and the PGA TOUR Champions app are your best bet for real-time updates, hole-by-hole. If you're on-site, the physical leaderboards near the clubhouse and around Warwick Hills' back nine are still the fastest way to track shifts in the standings without staring at your phone all day.

Ally Challenge past winners and why Warwick Hills scores so low

The Ally Challenge has been played at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club since its debut, and the winning score has landed in the teens under par nearly every year — this is a birdie-fest, not a survival test.

Past champions year by year

Look down the list of Ally Challenge past winners and the pattern jumps out immediately: nobody's grinding out pars to win this thing. You need to go low, and you need to keep going low on Sunday when the leaders start posting 15-under and better.

Alker's run of dominance is the standout storyline of recent Ally Challenge history, but the number worth clocking isn't the name — it's the score. Double-digit under par, year after year, on a course that's supposedly a championship test.

The Buick Open legacy

Warwick Hills didn't become a birdie track by accident. This same property hosted the PGA TOUR's Buick Open for decades, an event that built its reputation on shootout Sundays and low-scoring leaderboards. Regulars used to joke that you needed 20-under just to have a chance on the weekend. That heritage matters here: the gallery at the Ally Challenge grew up watching main-tour pros go low at Warwick Hills, and the course setup for the Champions field hasn't strayed far from that same scoring identity. Locals know the property, they know which holes are the birdie holes, and they show up expecting fireworks — not a plodding par-fest.

What the course rewards

Warwick Hills isn't defenseless — it's just built to reward a specific style. It favors players who:

• Hit driver aggressively off the tee to shorten par-5s and drivable par-4s into wedge distance
• Have dialed-in wedge precision from 100 yards and in, since scoring chances come from proximity, not raw distance
• Can keep making birdies under pressure — flatlining at even-par golf on Sunday gets you passed by three guys already at 15-under

That's the real story behind every Ally Challenge past winner: it's less about surviving Warwick Hills and more about matching the birdie pace the course — and its Buick Open lineage — demands.

Outdrive Hunger, charity partners and volunteering

Outdrive Hunger is the Ally Challenge's charitable campaign, and the mechanic is straightforward: every birdie, drive, and sponsor pledge made during tournament week gets converted into meals for the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan. It's the reason the event bills itself as more than a golf week — the stated purpose is community impact in Grand Blanc and the wider Flint region, not just crowning a champion at Warwick Hills.

What Outdrive Hunger funds

The campaign works on a per-shot basis — sponsors commit to donating a set number of meals for every birdie, eagle, or fairway hit recorded across the field during the 54 holes. Multiply that across a full Champions field playing four competitive rounds and the totals add up fast. All proceeds route directly to the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan, which serves families across Flint, Grand Blanc, and the surrounding counties — an area that's dealt with well-documented economic hardship. The tournament treats hunger relief as a scoreboard of its own, running alongside the leaderboard all week.

McLaren Health Care and community partners

Outdrive Hunger doesn't run on Ally's sponsorship dollars alone. McLaren Health Care, one of the region's largest health systems, is a longtime tournament partner, lending both funding and on-the-ground volunteer hours to the campaign. Local Grand Blanc civic groups and area businesses round out the partner list, turning the charity push into a genuinely community-driven effort rather than a single corporate checkbox. If you're researching the tournament's community ties beyond the leaderboard, McLaren's involvement is usually the first name that comes up alongside Ally itself.

How to volunteer at the Ally Challenge

Volunteering is open to the public and registers through the official tournament site — you won't find a side channel or third-party signup that's faster. Typical shifts run in half-day blocks across practice rounds and tournament days, covering roles like scoring, standard-bearing, marshaling, and hospitality support. Sign up early: popular shifts near the 18th green and scoring tent fill first.

• Registration opens months ahead of tournament week through the Ally Challenge's official volunteer portal
• Most committees ask for a minimum shift commitment, often a half-day, with flexibility to add more
• Volunteers typically receive a uniform package — polo, hat, and credential badge — plus meal vouchers for shift days
• Some committees include an option to route your volunteer stipend or fundraising directly toward Outdrive Hunger

If community impact is part of why you're following this event, volunteering is the closest way to see Outdrive Hunger's numbers turn into actual meals — not just a total posted on the trophy stage Sunday afternoon.

Ally Challenge vs Ally Financial vs a trading challenge: three different things

Type "Ally Challenge" into a search bar and you'll get golf, banking, and prop trading results tangled together. They're unrelated. Here's the disambiguation, plain and simple.

1. The Ally Challenge (golf tournament)

The Ally Challenge is a 54-hole, no-cut PGA TOUR Champions event played at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club in Grand Blanc, Michigan, with Ally Financial as title sponsor. It's a golf tournament on the senior circuit — nothing more, nothing less.

2. Ally Financial and Ally Invest (consumer finance)

Ally Financial is a US digital financial services company — online banking, auto finance, and a self-directed brokerage arm called Ally Invest — and its sponsorship of the golf tournament is a marketing deal, not a product. There is no trading contest tied to the event, no account bonus for watching, and nothing you enter through Ally Invest by following the leaderboard. The name overlap is a coincidence of branding, not a signal that Ally Invest runs a "challenge" of its own.

3. A trading challenge (prop firm evaluation)

A trading challenge — sometimes called a prop trading evaluation — is a multi-step assessment where you trade simulated capital against fixed profit targets and drawdown limits to qualify for a funded account. This is the category For Traders operates in: Two-Step and Three-Step Challenges, plus Instant Funding for traders who want to skip the evaluation phase entirely. It has zero connection to Ally Financial, Ally Invest, or the Grand Blanc golf event beyond sharing a common English word.

If you landed here searching for "what is a trading challenge" after seeing golf coverage mention Ally, the table below settles it in one glance:

Three names, three unrelated worlds. Keep them separate and the rest of this guide — dates, tickets, field, prize fund — makes a lot more sense.

If you came here for trading: what a prop firm challenge actually involves

A prop trading challenge is an evaluation where you trade simulated capital and have to hit a profit target without breaching a daily loss limit or max drawdown — pass, and you get access to a funded account paying performance rewards on simulated profits. That's the whole mechanic. No golf, no leaderboard, no cut line — just rules, a timer, and your own discipline.

How an evaluation works: targets, drawdown, time

Every prop trading evaluation runs on the same four levers, just tuned differently by provider:

• Profit target — the percentage gain you need to clear the phase, commonly 8-10% on a first step.
• Daily loss limit — the max you can drop in a single day before you're out, resetting each session.
• Max drawdown — trailing or static, this caps how far your equity can fall from its peak (trailing) or starting balance (static) across the whole evaluation.
• Minimum trading days — a floor on how many days you must actually trade, so nobody one-shots the target and calls it luck.

None of this promises an outcome. It's a filter for process, not a shortcut to it.

Two-Step Challenge vs Instant Funding

You've got two honest paths in, and they suit different traders:

Neither is "better" — it's a trade-off between cost and time. Traders sizing this decision up usually start with For Traders' challenge options and cross-reference the rules against their own risk-management approach before picking a lane.

The same lens as Sunday at Warwick Hills

Here's the honest bridge: a prop trading evaluation and a Sunday round at Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club are both performance under fixed rules and real pressure. Nobody fails an evaluation because they didn't know what a max drawdown was, same as nobody blows up a back nine because they forgot how many holes are left. People fail because they abandon their process — they widen a stop after two losing days, or chase a par after a bogey. The rules don't change. The discipline to stay inside them does.

Frequently Asked Questions