The FedEx Cup Playoffs Head To Wilmington Country Club For The BMW Championship
Round 2!
It's playoff time in Delaware, a sentence I never thought I'd type about professional sports. Wilmington Country Club is the scene for the 2022 BMW Championship, their first time hosting a PGA Tour event.
Will Zalatoris overtook Scottie Scheffler in the FedEx Cup standings with his W at St. Jude, with the two of them far and ahead of the pack. These guys will be duking it out for positioning on the staggered leaderboard at next week's Tour Championship. As a refresher, here is the current FedEx Cup standings
And here is how the starting positioning is determined at East Lake based on the FedEx Cup standings after this week's BMW:
Last year's BMW was an all-timer at Caves Valley, a lovely course in the Baltimore area that I've been lucky enough to play twice this summer (s/o Charlie and Fat B). Patrick Cantlay and Bryson Dechambeau duked it out in a 6 hole playoff where Cantlay was simply unconscious with the flatstick all week. He literally had the greatest putting performance in the history of the strokes gained era, gaining 14.58 strokes on the greens. That included burying a 21 footer on the 72nd hole just to force the playoff, and then making numerous putts to extend and eventually win the playoff.
Clearly that event turned out to be a birdiefest. Last year's leaderboard and recent winners:
2021 Leaderboard
Recent Winners
The Course
This year's BMW is likely to present a little more of a challenge to these guys, but we don't know that for sure. Given that this is a new stop on Tour, there's not a lot that we know about WCC. What we do know is that this is playing as a Par 71 setup measuring 7,534 yards. There are two courses at WCC, and this week we're playing a re-routed version of the South Course designed by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. Typical hole numbers 10-13-14-15-5-6-7-8-9 will be used as the front nine and 1-2-3-4-16-17-11-12-18 as the back nine.
This week is going to be heavy on the length. That 7,534 figure puts this course right around 4th or 5th for longest on Tour (with Torrey Pines South #1 around 7,800). That's going to put your Kevin Kisners and Matt Kuchars (yes, Kuch somehow found his way into the Top 70 even with a MC last week) of the world at a serious disadvantage. Reports are that the fairways are narrow too, so we're probably not going to see scores lower than -20 again this year. With that said, this course has some massive bentgrass greens, which alleviates that pressure a bit. 3-putt avoidance is always important, but there's a bigger emphasis on it this week.
Other than that, your guess is as good as mine as to how this week will play out. The PGA Tour was kind enough to put together this article with tons of history on the club if that's your bag.
By the way, it drives me up the wall that the PGA Tour doesn't keep a webpage with an official scorecard of the course every week. They provide hole-by-holes with pics and yards but never have it summarized in a nice neat scorecard format. It's always a crapshoot as to whether I can find a scorecard that matches up with the yardages of the course, and that's 5x as hard when it's a new and private course being played with the course being re-routed.
Anyway, here's the best way I can summarize the hole-by-hole yardages. By using the 1st round pin location page before they even release the pins (and they don't even have an image for #9). Don't say I don't hustle for the good readers of Barstool Sports dot com.
Best Hole - Par 5 12th, 634 yards
Some deep research (google) revealed to me that there is a signature trio of holes on the South course - the 3rd, 4th, and 5th holes. Unfortunately with the re-routing of the course, these holes will not be played in succession this week. So I decided to dig a bit deeper (to the next result on google) where I learned that the traditional 3rd hole stands above the rest as the best hole on this course. That's gonna be the 12th hole for the BMW.
Anyway, it's a monster par 5 measuring 634 along the south edge of the property. That's the kind of number that's laughable to us mere mortals, but for these guys… not so much. It's a dogleg left up a hill where you can't quite see the fairway over the horizon from the tee, and then you've got a big pond to consider if you've blasted it far enough to consider getting home in two.
Should be big fireworks once way or another.
The Weather
Warm and muggy. We're in that portion of the year in the Mid-Atlantic where it's just humid and hot and gross and sticky all day and then a thunderstorm shows up around 5 pm every day. Could be the case over the weekend.
The Coverage
ESPN+ with the wall to wall, NBC with the prime coverage all playoffs long.
Obligatory Tiger Woods Highlights
Tiger has won the Western Open/BMW Championship on 5 occasions, two of them as FedEx Cup playoff events. So yeah, there's some highlights, like him hoisting this iron out from trouble to 10 feet for birdie back in 2010. Or him catching one clean off a nasty downhill lie 4 holes later.
Magician.
The Trophy(s)
So uhhhh…. there's two trophies? One is from the Western Golf Association, who has run the Western Open since 1899. That's the trophy on the right that's been around for years and years and years. At one point a long long time ago the Western Open was considered by some to be a major championship. Or at least the 5th major before THE PLAYERS took that unofficial title.
On the left is the BMW Championship trophy, which is clearly a sponsor driven trophy that got thrown into the mix when this became a FedEx Cup playoff event back in 2007. I'm not sure what to think about this. 2 trophies > 1 right? Kinda a flex but I think that Western Open trophy is good enough for the both of them. The Western Open was/is the 3rd longest running PGA Tour event after the Open and the US Open. When you've got a trophy with the likes of Hagen and Hogan and Sarazen and Snead and Palmer and Nicklaus and Watson and Woods on it…. you've got quite a historic piece of hardware on it. I respect BMW wanting to get their logo on a trophy given all the money they're pouring into this thing, and I also respect the WGA for not budging on putting it on theirs. Great balance of keeping things prestigious and finding room to respect the sponsors. For that reason, this ensemble gets a 8/10.
The Board
Rory McIlroy is your clear cut favorite at +1000 at the Barstool Sportsbook. Then we've got ourselves a pretty wild betting board behind him. I can't remember a tournament where so many guys were tightly packed in the teens there. Just a terrific group of sticks that remind you just how good the young talent on this Tour is.
I'm gonna go a tier just below those guys and roll with Cameron Young at +2500. Like his Wake Forest teammate Will Zalatoris last week, he's a guy who's been sniffing around a W all season long against some pretty big time fields. Guy's got 7 top 3 finishes including 2nd place finishes at Riviera and St. Andrews. Both are courses with some LARGE greens like Wilmington.
Most importantly, Cam Young can bomb it. He's 2nd on Tour in Strokes Gained: Off The Tee with .982 strokes gained per round. That's miles ahead of Keith Mitchell in 3rd. So much so that the gap between Young and Mitchell is larger than the gap between Mitchell (.766) and 15th in that stat (Justin Thomas at .566). That's such a tremendous advantage that Cam has on the pack on a course that appears to favor the long ball. Cam gains strokes against the field in every category too, so he has no weaknesses either. If he rolls it well, he's gonna have a shot at this thing.
Other Plays
Jon Rahm To Win +1200/Top 10 +125 - There's a little bit of steam on Rahm as he's moved from +1400 to +1200 since that @BetTheGreens graphic was made. Rahm is the guy ahead of Young in SG:Off The Tee at a preposterous 1.106 gained per round. Plus he bounced back from a rash of uncharacteristically average finishes with a quiet T-5 last week. Rahm is starting to round back into form and this course is a great spot for him to contend (as if golf courses exist that aren't).
Also…. in addition to taking Rahm outright, you could throw Scottie in the mix and take either of them to win at +800. Probably a wise play (go to the "Barstool Exclusives" page to find this one)
Tony Finau Top 5 +350/Top American +900 - Another bomber. Followed up his back-to-back wins with a T-5 last week at a course that probably didn't fit his strengths. This one does. There's no evidence to suggest he's cooled off. Lot to like about Tony here.
Brendan Steele Top 30 +150/R1 over Kuchar -112 (tie no bet) - Was surprised to see him so high up (6th) on the SG:OTT list. If we're gonna lean into a longball strategy, midas whale lean hard.
Sepp Straka Top 10 +1000 - Odds feel a bit too long for a guy who has already won on Tour this season and just made it into a playoff against a strong field. So what if he missed 6 straight cuts before that playoff loss. This is a what have you done for me lately world and as far as I'm concerned Straka is scorching hot.
Will Zalatoris over Scottie Scheffler +130 - I agree that Scheffler should be the favorite in this tournament matchup but not to the tune of -167. Take the guy coming off the win (who can bomb it pretty well himself).
Finish in a Playoff +400 - I'm addicted to playoffs. Ipso facto I'm going to root for playoffs.
That's what I got. Enjoy the BMW Championship.