Coming off a thrilling Will Zalatoris win in the first round of the FedExCup playoffs, the PGA Tour heads to the state of Delaware for the time ever. Set among the picturesque rolling hills of the Delaware Valley, the South Course at Wilmington Country Club will host the BMW Championship and the top 70 players in the FedExCup standings.
This tournament is a no-cut event that represents the semifinal round of the FedExCup playoffs. Players will be competing for $15 million in prize money along with one of the 30 final spots for next week’s Tour Championship.
Similar to last week, this event will be packed with the best players on Tour. With Zalatoris taking over the top spot on the points list, notables like Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, and Jordan Spieth will look to rebound off their missed cut at the St. Jude Championship. Cam Smith (withdraw) and Tommy Fleetwood (rest) are the only players in the top 70 who will not be in the field this week.
Most of the upper-tier players are safely in the Tour Championship and, along with competing to win this week, will also be playing for the ultra-important positioning for next week’s staggered start that favors the players that are highest in the standings. Players further down the points list like Marc Leishman, Harold Varner III, Tyrrell Hatton, and Chris Kirk will need a high finish in order to advance.
Course History
In 1901, the members of the newly formed Wilmington Country Club purchased 335 acres of land from the famous duPont family. Later that same year the first version of the South Course opened for play. In the late 1950s, the club bought a new piece of land and called on one of the era’s best golf architects, Robert Trent Jones, to build a new course. Completed in 1959, Jones designed a brute of a course that will play this week as a par-71 and stretch out to 7,534 yards.
The course was renovated by Keith Foster in 2008 and again last year by Andrew Green. Last year’s renovation included a complete re-bunkering, the addition of eight new bunkers around 300 yards from the tee to better challenge players, building seven new championship tees, and changing the intermediate rough to tall Fescue. The bunker rebuild came as a result of a tornado that tore through the course back in 2020, which also destroyed more than 300 trees.
While never having hosted a professional event, Wilmington Country Club has hosted six USGA events in the past, including the 2013 Palmer Cup between the United States and Europe. Justin Thomas is the only player in the field who participated in that event.
The Course
Wilmington Country Club is a tree-lined open parkland layout that averages a massively long 106.1 yards per par. It ranks as the 8th longest course played on Tour over the past few years. From an agronomy standpoint, fairways and greens are bentgrass while the rough is a combination of fescue in the intermediate area and thick, lush, 4-inch bluegrass in the main area.
While Delaware is not known for its scenery, the course is situated amidst the rolling hills of the Wilmington countryside. There are continual elevation changes including numerous downhill tee shots and uphill approaches leading to the greens. As designer Robert Trent Jones is famous for, the course is characterized by heavily bunkered fairways and greens. When viewing the bunkers from the course flyover (below), they are massive, and the ones bordering the greens are built into the uphill slopes of the elevated green complexes. This will lead to some challenging lies. Water is in play on four holes and mostly presents a danger on approaches to the green.
f684b2f3d4218ee06dad551b3bb2074bThe greens are immense and measure on average 8,100 square feet which is the third largest set of greens played on Tour in the past four years. Not only are they elevated and sloping from back to front, but there are numerous holes with severe false fronts and tight-lied chipping areas in front of the greens.
The routing of the course for this week will combine different holes on both the front and back nine. Many of the holes seem to blend together with very little differentiation or ingenuity. The 16th hole may end up being the most exciting possibility. It is a 393-yard par-4 that, according to course pro Michael Shank, will be shortened into a driveable par-4 for a couple of the rounds.
There is an interesting mix of both long and short holes. Eight par-4s are under 450 yards. Much of the course’s length comes on five holes. Two of the three par-5s are over 630 yards. Reaching the green in two shots is not a realistic option for most players on either of them. Three of the par-4s are very long at 490-plus yards. And then three of the four par-3s are over 230 yards, including some challenging approaches over water.
Six of the last seven BMW Championships have 23-under par. With the combination of the heavy bunkering, course length, thick rough, and challenging greens, I expect this course to play somewhat tougher and predict a winning score in the 15-18 under range.
Strokes Gained Analysis
Off the Tee
Players will face numerous challenges off the tee at Wilmington Country Club. While we don’t have exact measurements, fairways are quite narrow, with a few holes being heavily tree-lined. The landing areas and dogleg turns are also littered with bunkers on every hole. With the rough at four inches and growing, accuracy off the tee will matter. With certain holes playing long, driving distance is also key this week. It’s important to keep in mind that bluegrass rough (even at four inches) is much easier to control on approach shots to the green than the Bermuda rough we have seen the past couple of weeks. Similar to the U.S. Open at Winged Foot a couple of years ago, longer hitters should have an advantage in employing the “bomb and gauge” strategy. Total Driving which equally combines accuracy and distance will be the stat I weigh most heavily when analyzing off the tee performance this week.
Approach
With nine “long” holes on the course, there will be plenty of approach shots this week from over 200 yards. There should also, however, be plenty of shorter irons and wedges as well (from 75-125 yards) thanks to the shorter par-4 holes. Overall, I believe those are the main two ranges to focus on for this week. On approaches, players will be hitting to immense greens that are some of the largest ever played on Tour. Many of them slope from back to front and contain numerous other undulations and ridges. Golfers will be challenged to keep their ball below the hole and onto the proper quadrants of each green with the expected difficult pin positions.
Around the Green and Putting
Huge greenside bunkers, thick rough, and elevated greens with frontal shaved run-off areas will be the biggest challengers for golfers around the green this week. With the greens being so huge, I expect a high Greens in Regulation rate and a lesser weight given to scrambling and around the green play.
With such large and fast bentgrass greens (12.5 on the Stimp meter) three-putt avoidance and lag-putting ability will be vital for overall success. This will definitely not be a putting contest like we saw at last year’s BMW event at Caves Valley. Players who have had past success on large and fast putting surfaces will be one of my main focus points for player selection this week.
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