The BMW Championship features 49 of the top 50 players in the FedExCup standings (No. 5 Sepp Straka withdrew Monday).
Rory McIlroy will be making his 2025 playoff debut after skipping last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship. Meanwhile, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler nearly won the playoff opener in Memphis, Tennessee, before tying for third.
Here’s at look at the betting favorites to win at Caves Valley Golf Club outside of Baltimore, Maryland, with a pick from betting expert Brad Thomas.
Rory McIlroy, to top-10 (-165)
This week’s BMW is played at Caves Valley, a course that Patrick Cantlay dominated en route to victory in 2021. He didn’t do it blazing from tee to green, but with a scorching hot putter. With a sample size of one, it’s almost impossible to take the metrics from his performance and use them as gospel.
The Tom Fazio-designed course has undergone a few changes in the last few years. The fairways are narrower, the greens have been changed and the course has been lengthened. However, even though the fairways have been narrowed, they are still very wide. This is a course that will be dominated by length.
There aren’t many players better suited for a driver-heavy course than Rory McIlroy. To sweeten the deal, after pulling the strokes-gained data from Tom Fazio-designed PGA Tour courses, McIlroy gains the most strokes on average, among this week’s field. The closest correlated Fazio course is Quail Hollow, where McIlroy has won four times.
I think Scottie Scheffler wins here by a margin, but taking McIlroy to finish inside the top 10 in a 50-man field at a favorable course is something I must do.
BMW Championship odds (as of Wednesday, courtesy DraftKings Sportsbook)
- Scottie Scheffler: +225
- Rory McIlroy: +750
- Xander Schauffele: +1800
- Tommy Fleetwood: +2000
- Ludvig Åberg: +2200
- Patrick Cantlay: +2500
- Justin Thomas: +2500
- J.J. Spaun: +2800
- Cameron Young: +2800
- Russell Henley: +3500
- Matt Fitzpatrick: +3500
- Collin Morikawa: +3500
- Chris Gotterup: +3500
- Ben Griffin: +3500
- Viktor Hovland: +3500
- Sam Burns: +3500
- Justin Rose: +4000
- Hideki Matsuyama: +4000
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