Roz’s Rundown: BMW Championship
The FedExCup Playoffs move to their second leg this week with the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club, where the top 50 players remaining in the standings will compete in a no-cut event.
Bellerive is a really interesting golf course for us because, while we don't have a ton of recent PGA Tour data here, we do have some very meaningful history. The course has hosted multiple major championships, most recently the 2018 PGA Championship, and I think those leaderboards give us a pretty clear idea of the type of golfer we should be targeting this week.
Bellerive Country Club
Bellerive will play as a par 70 at roughly 7,400 yards, and that's a lot of golf course when you only have two par 5s to work with. We should see a healthy number of approach shots coming from the 175-to-225-yard range, which immediately starts pointing me toward a combination of distance off the tee and high-level iron play.
When we look back at the 2018 PGA Championship, Brooks Koepka won with Tiger Woods and Adam Scott directly behind him. Jon Rahm, Stewart Cink, Gary Woodland and Thomas Pieters were also right there near the top of the leaderboard.
That's a pretty obvious profile.
We're talking about guys who, at their best, were routinely among the longer players in the game while also being tremendous overall ball strikers. Koepka, Woodland, Pieters and Rahm could overpower golf courses, while Tiger and Scott were two of the premier ball strikers of their generation.
Even if we go all the way back to the 1992 PGA Championship at Bellerive, Nick Price won and Nick Faldo finished among the runners-up. Different era and a very different version of professional golf, obviously, but once again we're talking about players whose games were built around elite ball striking and iron play.
So I don't think we need to get overly complicated with the profile this week. I want guys who can hit the golf ball a long way and are coming into Bellerive showing good form with their irons.
Outright Targets — Without Scottie Scheffler
Before getting into the individual golfers, I want to make one thing clear about how I'm approaching the outright market this week: we're going to be looking heavily at the Without Scottie Scheffler market.
When Scottie gets on one of these heaters, I'm just not interested in fighting him every week. That's especially true in a 50-man field where there aren't many players standing between him and another win.
If your book offers a Without Scheffler market, I think it's absolutely worth using. I'll happily take slightly worse odds on the golfers I already like if it means I don't have to deal with Scottie going on one of those runs where nobody else in the field really has a chance.
All six of our main outright targets this week are going to be viewed through that market.
Sam Burns — ~13/1 Without Scheffler
We're going right back to Sam Burns.
Burns may not immediately come to mind when we're talking about the absolute longest players on Tour, but when you dig into the underlying numbers, the speed is absolutely there. He's around 13th in driving distance this season and sits in a similar range when we look at ball speed and clubhead speed.
More importantly, the irons are moving in exactly the direction I want to see.
Across his last three starts, Burns has gained approximately 1.09, 1.32 and 1.3 strokes on approach. That's three consecutive events where the approach game has continued trending in the right direction.
We already know the off-the-tee game should translate well to Bellerive. If the irons continue doing what they've been doing recently, I think this is an excellent setup for Burns.
He's coming in around 13/1 in the Without Scheffler market on FanDuel, and that's where I'm interested.
Chris Gotterup
I know we've tried Chris Gotterup a couple of times already this season, but I'm willing to go back again.
He peaked around the John Deere and then started trending in the wrong direction over his next couple of events, eventually missing the cut at the Rocket Classic. But I thought there were some encouraging signs at the St. Jude last week, particularly with the ball striking.
The short game was the problem. He lost strokes putting and around the green, but the irons bounced back nicely.
More importantly, I think he's going to find Bellerive significantly more comfortable off the tee.
From a physical standpoint, Gotterup has a very similar type of power profile to what we saw work so well for Brooks Koepka here in 2018. Obviously, I'm not comparing their accomplishments, but in terms of how they generate their advantage and the type of golf course that should suit them, I can see some similarities.
We've already seen Gotterup's ceiling this year. If last week's improvement in the ball striking is the beginning of another run, this is exactly the type of golf course where I want to take another shot.
Jake Knapp — ~60/1 Without Scheffler
We're going back to Jake Knapp this week as well.
We've tried him recently and got burned by the missed cut, but there's one pretty important difference this week: there is no cut. We don't have to worry about one bad round sending him home early, and I think getting four guaranteed rounds at Bellerive makes Knapp a particularly interesting option at this number.
When you look at his recent form, the ball striking has actually been extremely consistent. Over his last five starts, he's averaging at least a stroke gained through his ball striking, and that's exactly the type of profile we're trying to target here.
Knapp has plenty of length, we know what he can do off the tee, and the recent ball-striking numbers tell us the rest of the game is in a good enough place to give him a chance on a course that should suit his strengths.
At around 60/1 Without Scheffler, I think there's enough upside to go right back to him—especially knowing we get all four rounds this time.
Viktor Hovland
Viktor Hovland is probably one of the easiest players to make a case for based purely on the profile we're targeting.
He's a perennial ball striker, and while the off-the-tee numbers weren't particularly good last week, I'm willing to look past that heading into a golf course that I think should be considerably more comfortable for him.
What really catches my attention is the iron play.
Hovland has now gained strokes on approach in nine consecutive events, including nearly a full stroke against the field last week. That's an incredibly consistent stretch of iron play.
We know the issue with Hovland. It's around the greens. That's not exactly breaking news.
But he gained strokes putting last week, and we're now into the playoffs. If the putter can cooperate and the irons continue doing what they've been doing, I think there's a chance we finally see a little breakthrough.
Adam Scott
We're sticking with another guy who showed some life last week in Adam Scott.
We already mentioned Scott as someone who played extremely well at Bellerive in the 2018 PGA Championship, but this isn't simply a course-history play. He's now put together two straight events where I thought the game looked pretty good.
Last week was really about one bad round. He opened beautifully, struggled in Round 2 and then played some pretty solid golf over the weekend.
The funniest part about Scott right now is looking at the approach chart. It's basically a mountain range: up, down, up, down, up, down.
Maybe this is our up week.
Scott has also historically been someone capable of getting hot during the playoffs, and I think his overall game is pretty close right now. We're going to continue trying to ride that trend.
Gary Woodland — Bomb of the Week
There are some absolutely massive numbers available at the bottom of this 50-man field. Sahith Theegala is around 250/1 and Sepp Straka is around 240/1, but neither is playing well enough right now for me to get particularly excited.
Instead, we're going with Gary Woodland as the Bomb of the Week.
Woodland played very well at Bellerive in the 2018 PGA Championship, and he's put together a really encouraging bounce-back season.
The overall result last week wasn't great, and he ultimately lost strokes against the field, but we did see one really good round where he gained roughly 3.55 strokes against the field in Round 1.
And we know what Woodland does best. He drives the golf ball exceptionally well.
I think he's going to find Bellerive considerably easier to navigate off the tee, which should put him in better positions and hopefully allow the approach game to improve.
We've already seen that his game can work at this golf course. At the kind of number we're getting this week, Gary Woodland is our sixth and final outright target and the Bomb of the Week.
Placement Markets & Parlay Pieces
The 50-man, no-cut format changes things quite a bit for our placement bets this week. We don't have Top 40s, Top 30s or make-the-cut markets to work with, so we're going to have to live primarily in the Top 20, Top 10 and occasionally Top 5 markets.
Scottie Scheffler & Ludvig Åberg
Final Thoughts
I think Bellerive gives us a relatively straightforward profile to attack this week. It's a long par 70, we're going to see plenty of longer approach shots, and the limited history we have here points us toward golfers who combine power with high-level ball striking.
That's what I'm going to stick with.
For the outright card, we're attacking the Without Scottie Scheffler market with Sam Burns, Chris Gotterup, Jake Knapp, Viktor Hovland, Adam Scott and Gary Woodland, with Woodland serving as our Bomb of the Week.
For the placement markets, Scottie Scheffler, Hideki Matsuyama, Tommy Fleetwood, Si Woo Kim and Ludvig Åberg give us plenty of different ways to attack the Top 20, Top 10 and Top 5 markets and build out some parlays.
Only 50 golfers remain, there's no cut, and by Sunday night we'll be down to the final 30 heading to East Lake.