PGA DFS Core Plays: BMW Championship
Top-ranked DFS player, Notorious, breaks down his favorite PGA DFS picks at various price ranges on DraftKings and FanDuel for the BMW Championship. Which golfers should you be building your lineups around? Find out below!
We have the penultimate playoff event this week at the BMW Championship. The top 50 in the FedExCup Standings will tee it up in St. Louis, and the top 30 in the standings (after this event) will tee it up next week at the TOUR Championship in East Lake. While there’s a lot of money on the line over the next two weeks, these 50 golfers have already secured a full PGA TOUR card for next year and their spot in every Signature Event.
Unlike most PGA TOUR events, the BMW Championship likes to rotate among different courses. This year’s event will be held at Bellerive Country Club. This is the first time the course has hosted a PGA TOUR event since the PGA Championship in 2018. Brooks Koepka held off Tiger Woods and a few others in that event and won with a score of 16-under par. The course is a tad longer now, but there haven’t been any renovations, so it’s essentially the same course we saw in 2018.
Editor’s Note: For more tournament notes, recent form, and course notes for the BMW Championship, check out this week’s PGA DFS First Look.
Let’s talk about the specifics of Bellerive Country Club. The course is a par 70 that measures 7,448 yards. The leaderboard here in 2018 was littered with long drivers of the ball, which is to be expected on a course of this length. However, I will note that some of the length is hiding in two long par 3s and two likely unreachable par 5s. If you look at the approach shot distributions at this event in 2018, 40% of approach shots came from 125-175 yards, which is well above TOUR average.
While I am weighing Driving Distance in my model this week, I will not avoid the shorter hitters if they still project well. The fairways here are narrow and tree-lined, and the rough is expected to be thick. In 2018, the Greens in Regulation rate from the fairway was 26% higher than it was from the rough. So while I expect distance to play a factor this week, being able to hit the fairway should also be a major advantage. I’m not shying away from golfers who gain strokes off the tee with accuracy.
The greens at Bellerive are massive (7,500 square feet), which is why they were fairly easy to hit in regulation in 2018. They feature bentgrass and are very contoured, so hitting the right portion of the green is going to be important. Scrambling wasn’t overly difficult at this event in 2018, but a tidy short game is always a positive on a course that is expected to be challenging. If I had to completely ignore one of the Strokes Gained metrics this week, it would be putting.
As is always the case when he’s in the field, Scottie Scheffler is the biggest decision point in DFS. Given his discounted price point and the fact that my model loved the super cheap options last week, I was essentially all in on Scheffler (which turned out to be a great decision). This week, I’m taking the exact opposite approach. While we still don’t have to worry about getting our punts through the cut, I don’t love the builds that start with Scheffler. I’m taking my chances with a full fade and will roll out balanced lineups in single-entry, 3-max, and 5-max tournaments.
Top PGA DFS Picks on DraftKings & FanDuel for the BMW Championship
Core Plays
Si Woo Kim
DraftKings: $9,100 / pOWN%: 12%
FanDuel: $10,300 / pOWN%: 12%
Course History L5 Years: MC
Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee: 13
Strokes Gained: Approach: 12
Strokes Gained: Around-the-Green: 14
Strokes Gained: Putting: 34
Weighted Proximity: 1
Expected Hole Performance: 8
Kim is coming off his third top-7 finish in his last 4 events. He doesn’t have a win this season, but he’s consistently been in contention. Even though this course is extremely long for a par 70, some of that length is hidden in two long par 3s and two likely unreachable par 5s. In 2018, the Greens in Regulation rate from the fairway was 26% higher than it was from the rough, so I expect Total Driving to rule the day. Kim is one of the best in the field when it comes to that. He’s also an elite iron player and an excellent scrambler. He missed the cut here in 2018, but he’s a completely different golfer at this stage of his career.
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