BMW Championship – Betting Preview

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With a field of only 50 golfers, the atmosphere shifts from Memphis, where amongst the best players in the world Lucas Glover amazingly managed to win his second consecutive event, to the Chicago suburb of Olympia Fields for the BMW Championship. The North Course at Olympia Fields Country Club is considered one of the best courses in Illinois and is generally ranked in the top 50 courses in the United States.

Olympia Fields is a classical, tree-lined parkland layout, designed in 1923 by Willie Park Jr. during the “Golden Age” of golf course architecture. Over the years, the course has been lengthened, but nearly all of Park’s design and strategy remain intact. The North Course is routed over naturally rolling terrain and features narrow fairways lined by hundreds of native oak trees along with Butterfield Creek which meanders its way through numerous holes.

Over the past decade, the BMW Championship has mostly been played on easier courses with a winning score of 14-under last year at Wilmington Country Club which was preceded by a 27-under winning score in 2021 at Caves Valley. In fact, seven of the last 11 champions of this event had a winning score of 20-under or better.

Olympia Fields will provide no such continuation of that trend. It will present one of the sternest tests of golf that players have faced over the past five years. When it was last played as a PGA Tour event for this same BMW Championship back in 2020, Jon Rahm sank a 66-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole to win at only -4 as only five players finished under par. Overall, it played 1.82 strokes over par and ranks as the fifth toughest course in that same period.

With thick rough, strategic bunkering, and treacherous greens, players who don’t bring their best will get beat up in all sorts of ways. Similar to a U.S. Open test, it will examine all aspects of the game. Poor shots will face challenging consequences. While it was expected to play firm and fast with rough approaching six inches by the weekend, nine inches of rain in July along with another two-plus inches that is forecast through Tuesday should cause the course to play softer and longer than it already does.

The Field

With the PGA Tour’s new playoff structure, only 50 players are competing in this year’s no-cut, BMW Championship as opposed to the 70 that were in last year’s field. And with FedExCup points more than tripled for these playoff events, the winner will receive 2,000, giving the 50th-ranked player, Patrick Rodgers, ample opportunity to crack the top-30 by the end of the week and move on to East Lake for next week’s Tour Championship. It is also important to note that each player in the field this week has already punched their ticket for every signature event in next year’s season.

Every single eligible top-20 player in the OWGR will be teeing up this week. Jon Rahm remains in the top sport in the FedExCup standings, but world No. 1, Scottie Scheffler is right on his heels only 148 points behind. Coming off his playoff loss to Glover at last week’s St. Jude Championship, Patrick Cantlay will go for the three-peat this week as he has won the last two BMW Championships.

Betting Strategies

First off, small-field, no-cut events are the worst for finding value on the board. From outrights to finish position bets, it takes much of the fun and research out of the process. That being said, with Olympia Fields playing more like a U.S. Open test, there is a very specific route to success this week. And with only 50 players in the field along with limited course history, it is a rather narrow pool of players from which to choose. The four most important metrics in my Core 4 sub-model this week include Total Driving, SG: Approach, Scrambling, and SG: Difficult Scoring Courses.

The most important stat for me this week is Total Driving which balances accuracy and distance off the tee. With the course playing softer and longer due to the recent rainfall, I would favor distance over accuracy. While the North Course most assuredly places a premium of accuracy off the tee thanks to the tight tree-lined corridors, penal fairway bunkers, and thick rough, its length and advantage presented to “total drivers” of the ball is one that allows the longer hitters to find an edge.

The top of the leaderboard from 2020 reads like a “Who’s Who” of elite total drivers with names like Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Joaquin Niemann, Hideki Matsuyama, Tony Finau, Jason Kokrak and Matt Fitzpatrick. That being said, the bouncy fairways are typically firm enough to provide plenty of roll-out which allows shorter hitters to still compete. That may not be the case this week with all of the recent rainfall.

The bottom line is that with a driving accuracy rate of 48%, everyone will be missing fairways. Whenever that is the case, typically distance takes priority over accuracy since longer players will be able to take shorter clubs out of the rough when approaching these smaller greens. In 2020, 75.3% of all tee shots were hit with driver.

Approach performance will always be high on the list and this week is no different. One of Willie Park Jr’s signature features was his tabletop greens. “The greens here, for example, are for the most part raised up on plateaus and drop off sharply at the edges. That’s the way Park designed them, and that’s the way they play today.” said Mungeam.

Not only do they have sharp run-off areas but they are one of the toughest greens to hit as evidenced by a GIR rate of only 58%. In 2020, players that found the rough off the tee had little chance of hacking it onto the green with only a 40% GIR rate. The deep fairway bunkers were only slightly easier with a 46% clip. Tiger Woods found five fairway bunkers in 2020 and didn’t find the green on any of his approach shots. At an average square footage of 5,238 yards, they rank as the 13th smallest on Tour. They are also known for their sharp undulations and tough pin placements. Players will need to be highly accurate on approach in order to find the correct quadrant so they are not left above the hole or putting across ridges.

With such a low GIR%, short-game skills are an important tool in the bag this week. Players with elite scrambling skills and creativity on these treacherous green complexes should be able to gain some separation on the field. Scrambling from the rough as well as from short grass areas below these tabletop greens were much tougher than average back in 2020.

Finally, I’ll be looking for players who have performed well in recent years on other difficult-scoring courses. This includes most of the courses that hosted major tournaments since 2020 as well as others that played very difficult with similar characteristics such as length, longer rough and stronger fields like we will see this week. Some examples would include Bay Hill, Riviera, Muirfield Village and Quail Hollow.

Most Important Stats For Success at Olympia Fields Country Club

*In order of importance

  • Total Driving
  • SG: Approach
  • Scrambling (Tough Greens)
  • Proximity: 125-175
  • SG: Par 4
  • Bogey Avoidance
  • Good Drive % (Long Rough)
  • SG: Difficult Scoring Courses
  • SG: Putting
  • Driving Distance

Weather Forecast – Olympia Fields, Illinois

BMW Championship – Final Model

In each preview article and on Discord, I present my final model, which gives a detailed player ranking of the most important stats and splits for the week. My modeling is built around the PGA’s Strokes Gained data, which is divided into SG: Off the Tee (OTT), SG: Approach (APP), SG: Around the Green (ARG), and SG: Putting (P). Learn more about Strokes Gained and why it can be so useful in analyzing the past and predicting future performance. Many of the individual splits will be posted on my Twitter feed, with the final model exclusively published here for subscribers.

Outright Betting Selections

*Lines accurate at the time of publication.

Patrick Cantlay +1100

Coming off a 6-under 64 in Sunday’s final round of the FedEx St. Jude, Cantlay is peaking at the right time once again. Even though he lost in a playoff to Lucas Glover, he gained strokes in each category for the week and has the perfect all-around game for the difficult test presented by Olympia Fields. Having won the last two BMW Championships, and finishing second overall in my model, he offers some of the best outright value on the betting board.

(2.18u) BetRivers

Viktor Hovland +1800

Hovland’s combination of distance and accuracy off the tee along with his elite iron play should put him in prime position for a high-end finish at Olympia Fields this week. He continues to play well on difficult scoring courses with nine straight top-20 finishes on such layouts that also have strong fields. His improvement around the greens is real as evidenced by the fact that he has gained strokes in that area in five of his last six events. He’s had great success at similar courses including a victory at the Memorial and finishing 2nd at the PGA Championship.

(1.33u) PointsBet

Finishing Position Picks

Top 10

Top 20 – all BetRivers

  • Max Homa -120 (1.2u)
  • Hideki Matsuyama -106 (1.1u)
  • Rickie Fowler +110 (1u)

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Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images