The PGA Tour takes on the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club this week.
After a runaway finish in Memphis by the World #1, the top 50 players in the FedEx Cup rankings have moved on to the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, Missouri. The Top 30 will then move on to East Lake next week for the Tour Championship. Let’s dive into the numbers for this week’s tournament with Bet The Number, the premier golf analytics platform.
The Course Blueprint 🗺️ We haven’t seen Bellerive since the 2018 PGA Championship, where Brooks Koepka beat Tiger Woods by 2 and finished at -16. Bellerive is a Robert Trent Jones Sr. course playing at 7,448 yards this week. The course was slightly lengthened, and the greens were redone. We’re going to be in for a firmer version of this course than we saw in 2018. Let’s dive into the BTN model this week:
OTT: While the fairways are pretty generous, there’s a lot of sloping that can get you in trouble. Bombers can do well here. We’ve included standard SG:OTT per round vs. field at 25% weighting + an additional 10% weight on Distance from Edge of Fairway
APP: While the bombers might be hitting wedges, there will also be players laying back and having some longer approach shots in. This course had a huge discrepancy in 2018 on Fairway GIR % and Rough GIR %, almost 2 to 1. We’ve included standard SG:APP per round vs. field at 20% weight + another 20% weight on SG:APP per shot vs. baseline from 150-200 yards.
ATG: Nothing extraordinary to call out here. Standard SG: ARG at 10% weight to account for the handful of up and downs on these longer par 4s and missed greens from the difficult rough.
Putting: There was a 10% higher 3-putt percentage here in 2018 than the Tour average. Our putting contribution this week focuses on those key putts you have to make to avoid those 3-putts. We’ve included SG:Putting per shot vs. baseline from 8-15 feet over the last 40 rounds at 10% weight.
This week’s BTN Model favorite is (🥁 drumroll please…) Scottie Scheffler . He won this event last year in Maryland, he won last week… we’re not shocked he’s at the top of the projections again with a perfect 10. Playoffs are always entertaining to watch; let’s hope we get an exciting finish as we did in 2018!
This week’s top 10 in the BTN Model, with Scottie Scheffler as the favorite.
Matchup of the Week (15-9-5) 🤼♂️ Sam Burns (-114) ✅ over Ludvig Aberg (-115) on DraftKings
We did it again. Chalk up another victory and another trip to the payout window last week with J.J. Spaun over Ben Griffin. Now we roll into the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club, a venue we have not seen in this kind of spotlight since the 2018 PGA Championship.
We may not have a ton of recent PGA TOUR data at Bellerive, but we do have the fine folks at BTN pointing us in the right direction. This week, that direction leads us to Sam Burns over Ludvig Åberg in what looks like a pretty even matchup on paper. But as we all know, looks can be deceiving. Just ask anyone who has ever trusted a rental car upgrade.
Burns has been on a heater, finishing inside the top 20 in six straight starts, with four of those landing inside the top 5. He’s been absolutely striping it with his irons lately, and when Burns gets the approach game rolling with that putter waiting in the garage, things can get dangerous fast.
Ludvig has flashed with two straight top 10s, but the season has still been a little inconsistent by his standards. The irons have been more average than elite lately, and he has now lost strokes putting in three straight starts. That feels like the difference-maker for us. If this turns into a putting contest, we’ll take Sam Burns over almost anyone in the world.
It should be tight. It should take all four rounds. But in a no-cut event, we’re happy to trust the hotter putter, the better current form, and the guy we believe can separate late. Give us Burns to keep the heater rolling while we pull up in the Beamer for one more trip to the payout window.
Sam Burns vs. Ludvig Aberg in the BTN Matchup tool
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Best of luck this week!
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