Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com
PGA Tour fans and bettors will be given a treat at this week’s BMW Championship: Tiger Woods playing for a second week in a row for the first time in a year. Because of his health issues and the fact Tiger simply doesn’t financially need to play often on Tour, he hasn’t gone in back-to-back weeks since last August’s Northern Trust and then the BMW Championship.
There’s a bit of an asterisk there, though, as Tiger withdrew after Round 1 of the 2019 The Northern Trust. He teed it up last week in that event at TPC Boston and finished T58 in the first of the three FedExCup playoff events on Tour.
The Top 125 in FedExCup points qualified for The Northern Trust and only the Top 70 advanced to the BMW Championship. The Top 30 after this week move on to the 2019-20 season-finale Tour Championship where everyone would have a mathematical chance of winning the $15 million FedExCup prize.
Woods sits 57th in points and thus has work to do this week – he’s +4000 to win. Tiger has won the BMW Championship twice, in the first staging in 2007, which was the first year of the FedExCup playoffs, and again two years later. Both those wins were at Cog Hill near Chicago, and this week’s tournament is also in a suburb of the Windy City at Olympia Fields Country Club’s North Course. It’s the first time it will serve as host and plays to par 70 at 7,366 yards.
The only other player to win this event twice was Dustin Johnson in 2010 (Cog Hill) and 2016 (Crooked Stick). DJ on Sunday won The Northern Trust at 30-under 254, with the total just one shot off the all-time PGA Tour record. Johnson was only the third player ever to reach 30 under in any event, his 11-shot win was the largest on the Tour since 2006 and it got him back to No. 1 in the world as well as No. 1 in points. He’s a +800 favorite this week.
Justin Thomas, who had been No. 1 in the world and points, was T49 at The Northern Trust. He is the defending BMW Championship winner, shooting 25-under 263 last year at Medinah, also in the Chicago area, to beat out Patrick Cantlay by three shots. Thomas is +1200 this week along with Bryson DeChambeau (who won the 2015 U.S. Amateur at Olympia Fields). Spain’s Jon Rahm is the +1000 second-favorite. Those three are all comfortably inside the Top 30 in points.
Several big-name players failed to advance to this tournament and thus the Tour Championship, including Phil Mickelson and Brooks Koepka.
