After a long five years it was finally Tony Finau’s week once again. He captured his second victory at Liberty National on Monday as he chased down Jon Rahm on the back nine and beat Cameron Smith in a playoff. Now, the TOUR heads down I-95 to Baltimore for the second leg of the playoffs.
Most of the top-70 players in the world will gather at Caves Valley Golf Club for the BMW Championship. Patrick Reed will miss the week after he came down with bilateral pneumonia. Right now, he is the only player scheduled to miss, though there are a couple of injuries to watch with Louis Oosthuizen and Collin Morikawa. Louis Oosthuizen has withdrawn the past two weeks citing a neck injury at the Wyndham, while Collin Morikawa acknowledged a back injury that came about at the Olympics.
It will be important to keep an eye on that news as this is a no-cut event, where everyone will have six players to play all four rounds, and you don’t want to get stuck drawing dead from the start.
This will be the first stop on TOUR at Caves Valley, so my focus will be on the course itself and some of the trends from a stat and player target perspective. Let’s get right into it.
Course Preview
Caves Valley Golf Club – Owings Mills, MD
7,542 Par 72
- Four par 5s (589/590/568/596)
- Four par 3s (224/223/221/192)
- Ten par 4s (365/356/430/474/466/464/356/468/495/465)
- Course is bentgrass on tees, fairways and greens
- Greens average 5,200 square feet, which is below average on TOUR
- Rough is fescue, ryegrass, bluegrass mix that has been grown up to three inches in length
- Seven water hazards are in play on five holes
- They added new back tees to lengthen the course for this event, adding 25 yards to many holes
The first thing that stands out on the surface about this course is the unique combination of hole length. The par 3s are pretty lengthy, and so are the par 5s, but there are also three par 4s that measure less than 400 yards. It will be interesting to see how tournament officials set up these shorter holes as I imagine there will be opportunities to make them reachable throughout the week.
All of the reviews show this Tom Fazio design as one that is set to favor the bombers. Ryan Palmer confirmed that thought with the Golf Channel on Tuesday when he commented that it was a big-boy course set to play into the hands of the longer hitters. He also added that the course is soft due to recent rains from the same hurricane that effected last week’s tournament, and that is likely to have it play even longer.
There will be some give and take to the bomber narrative as this track is carved out of an area with a lot of elevation changes. Two good examples are par 3s at 3 and 12 which are listed over 220 yards on the scorecard this week, but they both have steep elevation changes from tee to green and will play multiple clubs shorter than their number. Other holes will play steeply uphill and longer than the number on the card.
The key as always on TOUR is to take advantage of the par 5s. There is plenty of length in these holes, but the longer hitters will have little problem reaching them in two as long as they keep the ball in the short grass off the tee. I will be putting my target on the top Total Driving players on TOUR this week that have the balance of both length and accuracy, as being long but crooked will bring that three-inch rough and deep bunkers into play.
Navigating the 10 par 4s each day is likely to ultimately decide the week. There are angles that certain players can take to really take advantage of this course and make for great scoring opportunities around these holes. The players that have to take more conservative routes will find the six par 4s over 450 yards to play long. Max Homa noted that with Golf Channel Tuesday as he said he expected a lot of mid to long irons around this track. He compared it to another Fazio course at Quail Hollow, which plays long in it’s own right.
I do expect that the soft conditions will make the course play long, and overall my preference will be for the distance and accuracy combination I mentioned earlier. However, soft greens will also make low scoring accessible for players with long irons on approach as they will be able to stop the ball quicker. This is a good week to give a bump to the younger players who won’t have their standard disadvantage to the veterans that have played most TOUR tracks every season. This is also a short turnaround from the Northern Trust, and oddly it may favor some of the players that missed the cut last week, as they may have a leg up in preparation for the BMW.
