There is always a different edge when a defending champion walks back into a tournament, and Grant Forrest arrives at Trump International Golf Links with that exact burden. He is back to defend the Nexo Championship title he won last year, but this is not a story of smooth momentum or easy confidence. It is a story of a 33-year-old trying to make sense of a season that has offered only one top 10 finish in 15 tournament outings.
That is the awkward truth at the heart of Nexo Championship 2026. Forrest is the reigning champion, yes, and he is also the player who knows how quickly this game can turn. He said as much himself, noting that besides last year’s victory it “wasn’t the best of seasons”, while also stressing that it is “really tough to win out here”. That is not false modesty. It is the reality of golf, where one brilliant week can make the rest of the year look far worse than it might feel in the moment.
Forrest’s own words tell you the mood. He admitted he would have liked to have “kicked on a bit more”, but also pointed out that there is still plenty of golf left this season. He has had a nice break too, with five weeks since the Scottish Open, and that matters. A defending champion does not need perfect form to be dangerous. He needs timing, belief and one week where the swing feels honest again. Forrest has already proven he can do that here.
The field may not be waiting for him
The challenge is that the rest of the field will not care about the romance of a defending champion. Patrick Reed is the headline name because he is the highest ranked player in the field, and he brings the kind of CV that instantly sharpens attention. The 2018 Masters winner is not short of big-stage experience, and he is not pretending the table is settled either. As he put it, players are always looking at rankings and standings, but there are still 13 events left in the season.
That is where the tension sits. The Nexo Championship is a £2.2m event, the field includes 15 Scots, and the tournament tees off on Thursday with just enough intrigue to feel properly alive. Forrest has the title, Reed has the ranking shine, and the home interest is obvious. But this is not simply a ceremonial title defence. Forrest is trying to turn last year’s breakthrough into something more durable, and at 241st in the world rankings and 94th in the Race to Dubai standings, he knows he still has work to do.
That is what makes this one worth watching. A defending champion can either arrive as a favourite or as a warning sign, and Forrest is somewhere in between. The win at Trump International Golf Links last year remains the defining achievement of his DP World Tour career, his second success on the circuit, but it also raises a sharper question now: was that the start of something, or the best one-off week of his season? Nexo Championship 2026 will not answer everything, but it should tell us plenty.
