The FedEx Cup playoffs roll on to Delaware this weekend for the BMW Championship at Wilmington Country Club. This is a tough couple of days to handicap because although the BMW Championship has been the penultimate event of the playoffs since 2007, it also rotates golf courses since 2012.
Not only does the BMW Championship rotate this year, but it’s also at the Wilmington CC, which has never hosted a professional golf event. There is still data to pull from this course from the flyovers and scorecards, so let’s see how the weekend might play out.
About Wilmington C.C.
This is not just the debut of the Wilmington C.C.for a pro golf tournament; it’s the first time the entire state of Delaware has hosted a PGA Event. The trademarks of this course are that it is long and that the greens are huge at around 8,100 square feet on average.
The routing for Wilmington C.C. will be a combination of the North and South courses, which should be around a 7,500-yard par-71. Expect a difficult layout as seven players finished better than -20 last year at the BMW Championship at Caves Valley, with Patrick Cantlay (16/1) and Bryson DeChambeau going to a playoff at -27.
What is going to make Wilmington C.C difficult this weekend are the length of the par-3’s and the par 5’s. Three of the par 3’s measure over 200 yards, while two of the three par-5’s are over 630 yards.
The good news about the length of these holes is the size of the greens, so golfers will have the putter out even if it’s from 40 feet. SG: putting, which Lucas Herbert (200/1) is tops in, is an important metric this weekend as, of course, is driving distance, which Cameron Young (25/1) led last week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
BMW Championship Field
The top 70 players in the FedEx Cup standings are in this event, although that has been dwindled to 68 early in the week with Cam Smith withdrawing due to hip soreness and Tommy Fleetwood also bowing out following the death of his mother.
What the reduced field does offer is a no-cut event, meaning players who bowed out early and missed the cut last week, like Scottie Scheffler (14/1), Rory McIlroy (11/1), and Jordan Spieth (40/1), will at least have the opportunity to battle back into contention on Saturday and Sunday.
McIlroy is the favorite, with Jon Rahm (12/1) and Justin Thomas (14/1) close behind. Rahm had a T5 finish last weekend at the FedEx St. Jude Championship even after not playing a tournament for nearly a month at St. Andrews, so he may be even sharper this week.
Tony Finau (16/1) is also a player to watch as he was also T5 last weekend in Memphis after winning the 3M Open and Rocket Mortgage Classic in his two previous starts.
Of course, it will also be interesting to see how relaxed Will Zalatoris (14/1) is after finally getting the monkey that is his first tour win off his back last weekend as the victor of the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
