2024 BMW Championship Course Preview and Early Bet

The Regular season is over and the FedEx Cup playoffs are here. The BMW Championship is the third leg of the three-event playoff stretch for the PGA TOUR which will feature the top 50 players in the FedEx Cup standings battling it out for a huge prize purse at Castle Pines Golf Club in Denver, COL. 

To recap, the FedEx Cup's three-event stretch works like this.

• (Last week) FedEx St. Jude: 70-man field (only the top 50 in points move to the next event)
   
• (This week) BMW Championship: 50-man field (top 50 in points after FedEx St. Jude)
   
• (Next week) Tour Championship: 30-man field with staggered handicap start (top 30 in points after BMW Championship)

Last week saw several top names get eliminated from the playoff race. Jordan Spieth, Tom Kim, and Min Woo Lee all failed to finish inside the top 50. 

Even with a setback last week that included going Patrick Cantlay over eventual winner Hideki Matsuyama, the betting column is up over 35 units since the Travelers, which will be updated on Wednesday as usual. 

Also, with football on the horizon, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our FREE NFL Bet Tracker (now that the NFL season is just around the corner). We’ve started posting plays in it already and I just posted some Malik Nabers futures in it today which I think offer some great value via the FantasyLife+ projections. 

Today I’ll go over the course and also spotlight one player for betting. Then, on Wednesday, I’ll go over the rest of the bets. 

Let’s dive in and get our BMW Championship week started!

BMW Championship 2024 Course Preview 

• Castle Pines Golf Club – Denver, COL
• Par: 72, 8,130 yards
• Greens: Bent/Poa
• Fairways: Bent/Poa
• Rough: Bluegrass
• Design: Jack Nicklaus (1981); Redesigned in 2016
• Defending Champion: Viktor Hovland (Olympia Fields)

This week’s venue will be sure to turn some heads. At 8,130 yards Castle Pines Golf Club is the longest venue to ever host a PGA TOUR event. While Castle Pines is new to the modern players in this field, the venue has been seen on the PGA before, as the past host of the International – a yearly event that used to be played using the Stableford Scoring system. The course has 400 feet of elevation change through the 18-hole layout and also sits at 6,400 feet of elevation. The thin air means we’ll see plenty of 400-yard drives this week and wedges hit 150+ yards.

Back in the early 2000s, the venue measured quite a bit shorter, and players would generally put up extremely low scores. However, since we last saw it on the PGA, Castle Pines has undergone extensive renovations. Ten of the holes have been redesigned, 77 bunkers have been added, and in total the course is 600 yards longer.

Given the advancements in equipment since then and the strength of the modern player, it’s still likely the venue will cede plenty of eagles and birdies but it should, at the very least, present some challenges for the players, especially with the severe elevation changes and altitude.

However, if you account for an 8-10% elevation advantage the course quickly becomes more manageable (to around 7,300-7,400 yards), so I would be a little shocked if we don't see the winning score approach at least 15 under for the week.

We should also note that while the BMW Championship is played on a rotating set of courses it always seems to lean towards being a low-scoring event with three of the past six winners coming in at 20-under par or better.

Castle Pines is also a true Jack Nicklaus design, who, as a designer, liked to mimic Augusta National in some of his works and place an emphasis on shot-making and approach play. There does seem to be ample room off the tee on many of the holes at Castle Pines, but the greens are relatively smaller in comparison so accurate iron play will undoubtedly be needed.

While the common thesis in looking at the yardage this week will be to favor the bombers that may not necessarily be the best strategy. Accuracy with mid-to-long irons will be crucial although higher ball flights will still be advantageous in that regard as well.

Tahoe Mountain, host of the Barracuda Championship, is a decent chunk shorter than Castle Pines but the results there do show us that maintaining accuracy with your irons in elevation (where the yardages can be hard to estimate) is likely just as if not more important than distance off the tee.

Here are some other venues that sit at elevation on both the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour:

• Crans Montana Course (Omega Masters)
• Tahoe Mountain Golf Club (Barracuda Championship) 
• TPC Colorado (The Ascendant)
• Summit Club (2022 CJ Cup)

In terms of setup, at least two of the par 5s should produce some decent eagle chances this week, while the other two will set up at over 650 yards most likely (but may still be great birdie holes).

Longer par 4s that will require short to mid-irons encompass most of the setup. In terms of comparable courses, Nicklaus’ legacy design at Muirfield does have some similarities with the emphasis on smaller greens and tougher approach shots. There is more room off the tee at Castle Pines which should allow more of a bomb and gouge approach. Other courses worth noting are Torrey Pines, Augusta National, and Firestone Country Club.

So how should we approach Castle Pines for betting?

Ideally, from a stat perspective, we’re looking for players who have a little distance off the tee, but also are elite ball strikers with great accuracy on approaches. We’d want our golfer to have the following: 

• Elite approaches and great short to mid-iron proximity; (150 to 200 yards)
• Players who create birdie chances (birdie opportunities) at an elite rate and have shown the ability to compete around similar “longer” par 72s (with mid to easier scoring)
• Consistency off the tee with added length as a bonus

Combining and weighing most of these stats into a model that targeted the last 24 rounds this week gave me the following players as my top 10:

1. Scottie Scheffler
2. Rory McIlroy
3. Xander Schauffele
4. Tony Finau
5. Ludvig Aberg
6. Joohyung Kim
7. Collin Morikawa
8. Shane Lowry
9. Corey Conners
10. Aaron Rai

Accuracy with longer to mid irons this week will be uber important with the smaller sizes of the greens and all the water that is in play at this venue. Here are the top 10 players in proximity (approach) stats over the last 24 rounds. 

1. Christiaan Bezuidenhout
2. Tom Hoge
3. Keegan Bradley
4. Corey Conners
5. Austin Eckroat
6. Matthieu Pavon
7. Adam Scott
8. Ludvig Aberg
9. Collin Morikawa
10. Scottie Scheffler

This course features poa/bent greens and plays as a long par 72 at over 8,000 yards. Here are the top players in strokes gained total stats on Par 72 courses that measure over 7,400 yards with bent/poa greens over the last 50 rounds. 

1. Hideki Matsuyama
2. Rory McIlroy
3. Tony Finau
4. Will Zalatoris
5. Justin Thomas
6. Xander Schauffele
7. Scottie Scheffler
8. Sungjae Im
9. Sahith Theegala 
10. Jason Day

Betting Facts and Stats for the 2024 BMW Championship

Below are the previous odds (week of) of the past five winners of the BMW Championship. A couple of notes about these odds below:

• Justin Thomas was coming in off back-to-back T12 finishes
• Jon Rahm finished T6 in the first playoff event the week prior
• Patrick Cantlay finished T11 in the playoff event the week prior
• Cantlay finished T57 in the playoff event the week prior in 2022
• Viktor Hovland finished T13 in the playoff event the week prior

Below are the previous five winners of the BMW Championship and their pre-event odds from the beginning of the week of the event. 

Early Bet for the 2024 BMW Championship

Tony Finau Each Way 1/4 Top 5 (+3000; bet365)

The BMW Championship has typically been a great event for veteran players to make their mark. Last year, 26-year-old Viktor Hovland grabbed his first PGA Playoff win and the biggest win of his career to date. In 2017 and 2018, Marc Leishman and Keegan Bradley grabbed important late-career wins and in 2021 and 2022, Patrick Cantlay used this event as a way to cap off solid seasons on the PGA.

Finau has already experienced some playoff success of his own, with his biggest career win coming back in 2021 at the now-defunct Northern Trust (an event that used to come directly before the BMW, but was renamed the FedEx St. Jude in 2022 and moved to TPC Southwind). He’s had plenty of success at this event as well, placing top 10 at the BMW four times in a row between 2017 and 2020.

History aside, if we were simply going by recent form stats this week, there is a good case to be made that Finau should be lower in odds. He’s 2nd in strokes gained approach stats over the last 24 rounds, 4th in opportunities gained, and should be helped by the setup at Castle Pines, a course whose wider fairways somewhat mimic venues he’s already won at in TPC Twin Cities and Vidanta Vallarta.

The change in putting surface to Poa/Bent should also be helpful as he’s gained strokes putting each of the last four times he’s played on either of those types of grass.

Finau’s played well enough to win all season but just hasn’t been able to have everything come together for a big week. Given his history around this time of the year and the fact his betting number remains almost unchanged over last week, now’s a good time to grab a piece of the 34-year-old who remains somewhat underrated coming off the solid T16 from last week.