Five Things to Know before the BMW Championship

WILMINGTON, Del. – The top performers on the PGA TOUR this season will tee it up in the BMW Championship at Wilmington Country Club beginning Thursday, the middle of a three-week stretch that will determine the FedExCup champion.

Will Zalatoris has taken the lead in the chase for the Cup with his breakthrough win in the Playoffs opening FedEx St. Jude Championship, just 124 points ahead of four-time winner this season Scottie Scheffler. The Masters champion is still in great shape to become the FedExCup champ just two years after he was the PGA TOUR’s Rookie of the Year despite missing the cut last week.

Lucas Glover, Wyndham Clark, Adam Scott, and Andrew Putnam played their way inside the top 70 of the FedExCup standings last week to keep their seasons alive but all four remain outside the current top 30 who will make it to East Lake for the TOUR Championship. This week represents the last chance to not only make it to Atlanta, but to get your seeding and starting strokes advantage.

From the bubble boys to the Presidents Cup permutations, here’s Five Things to Know before the BMW Championship gets underway.

1. ZALATORIS AND SCHEFFLER SETTING THE PACE

The value of quadruple points for Playoffs was showcased with Will Zalatoris taking over the top spot from Scottie Scheffler in the FedExCup standings after his win in Memphis last week.

The combination of Scheffler missing the cut at TPC Southwind and the body of work that had Zalatoris enter the Playoffs in 12th position despite not winning allowed the latter to sneak 124 points ahead of his rival with two weeks to go.

Previously Scheffler had moved to No. 1 in the FedExCup with his victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard in early March, the second of his four-win season, and he had stayed there until now.

“There's a lot of golf left. Obviously, I'm in a nice spot, but we've got a lot of golf ahead of us,” Zalatoris said of his new lofty status on the standings.

“I would love to obviously hold my position going into next week and hold a two-shot lead, but we've got the best players in the world here. Just because I won last week doesn't mean it makes this any easier, so I've got to go back out there and do it again.”

Both players are already locks for the TOUR Championship but the two former Texas junior champions will jostle for position heading to East Lake. The leader after the BMW Championship will start the TOUR Championship at 10-under with second place 8-under, third 7-under, fourth 6-under, and fifth at 5-under meaning there is plenty at stake in Wilmington. Starting strokes continue to apply based on seedings with 6-10 at 4-under, 11-15 at 3-under, 16-20 at 2-under, 21-25 at 1-under and 26-30 at even par.

Theoretically there are 13 players in the field who can overtake Zalatoris for top spot this week, but he will head to Atlanta as one of the top three seeds.

Cameron Smith will be an interested onlooker from home after being forced to withdraw with a hip injury, leaving his East Lake seed to the mercy of others. Sitting in third after wins at the Sentry Tournament of Champions (where he shot the lowest score in relation to par in TOUR history), THE PLAYERS and The Open at St. Andrews Smith will be hoping for minimal damage to his seeding.

Sam Burns is 1,251 points back of Zalatoris after his own three-win campaign while Tony Finau jumped from seventh to fifth last week after his rich vein of recent form while Sepp Straka, who lost to Zalatoris in a playoff last week, rocketed from 36th to eighth in the standings.

2. TOP 30 OR BUST

Before you can win the $18 million FedExCup you have to make it to East Lake. Only the top 30 in the standings will continue on past the BMW Championship, and with no cut at Wilmington Country Club this is easier said than done if you start on the outside looking in.

The current bubble boy sitting in 30th place is J.J. Spaun. Spaun is lamenting a final round collapse in Memphis where a round of 78 took him from the 54-hole lead to T42. Despite the missed chance to lock in a spot at East Lake Spaun remains close enough if good enough.

With the current points system in effect just two players played their way into the top 30 from outside the mark at the BMW Championship in 2021 and 2020 with three players making the jump in 2019.

The five most at-risk players of falling out are 26th seed Davis Riley, 27th seed Sahith Theegala, 28th seed Kevin Kisner, 29th seed Corey Conners and of course Spaun at No. 30.

The closest players to bursting into the bubble are 31st seed Aaron Wise, 32nd seed Maverick McNealy, 33rd seed K.H. Lee, 34th seed Lucas Glover and 35th seed Denny McCarthy. Wise sits just 2.289 points behind Spaun so the phrase ‘Every Shot Matters’ has never been more apt for these players around the bubble. Just 96.893 points separate 25th seed Joohyung ‘Tom’ Kim and Wise.

Glover (34), Wyndham Clark (70), Adam Scott (45), and Andrew Putnam (47) played their way inside the top 70 of the FedExCup standings last week and they now look to emulate Erik Van Rooyen’s efforts from a year ago as the only player to burst the bubble two weeks running to make it to East Lake.

3. PRESIDENTS CUP BERTHS LOCK IN

The BMW Championship is the final tournament for players to automatically make the U.S. or International Presidents Cup Teams that will play at Charlotte’s Quail Hollow Club on Sept. 22-25.

Only six players will make the U.S. team on points before U.S. Captain Davis Love III will make his six picks the day after the TOUR Championship, Aug. 29.

Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns, Xander Schauffele, Justin Thomas and Tony Finau occupy the top six spots in the standings and would seem to be locked in although Will Zalatoris moved within striking distance with his win at the FedEx St. Jude Championship.

Jordan Spieth has a small mathematical chance of moving into the top six with a win but will likely rely on a pick. The next in the standings are Collin Morikawa, Max Homa, Billy Horschel, and Cameron Young with the nearest players outside the top 12 on points being Tom Hoge, J.T. Poston and Kevin Kisner. Who will get the call?

The International Team will lock in eight automatic qualifiers with four Captain’s Picks coming Aug. 29. The top eight in the current standings are Cameron Smith, Hideki Matsuyama, Sungjae Im, Joaquin Niemann, Joohyung ‘Tom’ Kim, Corey Conners, Adam Scott and Mito Pereira.

That leaves players like two-time AT&T Byron Nelson champ K.H. Lee; former Presidents Cup participants Adam Hadwin, Marc Leishman, Anirban Lahiri and Si Woo Kim; and former TOUR winners Sebastian Munoz, Mackenzie Hughes and Lucas Herbert jockeying for the four picks.

4. CLEAN SLATE COURSE

For the second consecutive year the BMW Championship is set to be played on a course where the field are without any previous competitive rounds at the venue. Last year Caves Valley in Maryland hosted (the BMW Championship will return there in 2025) for the first time while Wilmington Country Club gets its first TOUR event this time around. This is also the first time the PGA TOUR has played an event in the state of Delaware.

The course is set to play at 7,534 yards and as a par-71 with some narrow fairways and lush long rough. Wilmington CC has hosted five modern-day USGA events, including the 1965 and 1978 U.S. Junior Amateur, the 1971 U.S. Amateur, the 1978 U.S. Girls’ Junior and the 2003 U.S. Mid-Amateur.

Current FedExCup champion Patrick Cantlay expects distance could be a huge factor.

“This golf course is definitely just like last year, extremely distance biased. You've got to hit it as far as you can and hit a lot of fairways,” Cantlay believes. “This course is a little narrower than last year, and I think most times you see when guys win, they just got hot with the putter, which I did last year.

“A good recipe is top of the way in driving and top of the way in putting. These greens are in really good shape, and if you get the ball online and read it right, it should go in almost every time.”

Wilmington also played host to the 2013 Palmer Cup where the U.S. team featured a young Justin Thomas however extensive changes have been made to the Robert Trent Jones’ course since then.

“This place, it's bizarre. It has a very huge mixture of holes. I feel like it has your fair share of holes where if you get the right wind conditions, you can drive it in front of the green. You can have 30, 40 yards,” Thomas said. “But that isn't necessarily great. If the pins are in certain places, you can't get it close.

“Then you have a hole that I'm hitting driver, 4- or driver, 5-iron into. So you have a big variety… I'm atrocious at guessing the winning score… but if I had to, I would say like most tournaments it'll be in the 12 to 15 (under) range.”

A further in depth look at the course can be found here with nuggets including an exhibition match featuring Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus!

5. THOMAS SPORTING PALMER VIBES

As mentioned above the only player with some experience at the course is former FedExCup and BMW Championship winner Justin Thomas. He enters 10th in the standings but is riding some very positive vibes from his trip as a college kid almost a decade ago.

Thomas recalled the experience of spending quality time with Arnold Palmer, a legend of the game who surprised the young phenom with information about his former TOUR playing grandfather, Paul.

“We had an unbelievable team. Coach Seawell was our coach, which was really cool. Mr. Palmer, I think that was his last Palmer Cup that he attended and seeing him and greeting him on the first tee was amazing,” Thomas beamed over nine years later.

“I remember talking to him about my grandpa here. I don't know if he was just humoring me or not, but he said he remembered playing my grandpa. I have an unbelievable picture of him and my grandpa when my grandpa was on TOUR playing together and Arnie putting and grandpa in the background with the cigar in his mouth and the bucket hat.”

“It made me feel pretty cool at the time as a college player saying that he remembered playing in TOUR events or had heard of Paul Thomas. Little things like that were pretty inspiring and cool to hear.

“And I think it was at this tournament in 2013, talking to him, where he told me to write my signature to make it legible… I remember my mom and my aunts getting to meet Mr. Palmer and taking a picture with him... it was a very, very fun week… It's little things like that and memories like that that I'll have.”