The PGA TOUR has reached the penultimate event of the 2022 season as we head to Wilmington, Delaware, to play the BMW Championship.
The top 70 players left standing in the race for the FedEx Cup will tee it up this week, looking to punch their ticket to East Lake.
This is the first time the BMW Championship will be played at Wilmington Country Club, and the event has had a different host in each of the past six years.
Wilmington Country Club is a par 71 measuring 7,534 yards and features Bentgrass greens. The course was designed by Robert Trent Jones and renovated by Keith Foster in 2008.
The BMW Championship will be a no-cut event, with the top 30 players in the FedEx Cup standings moving on to next week.
For contests on DraftKings, I will be breaking down the key stats (past 24 rounds) and selecting golfers from different price tiers to provide flexibility for a DFS lineup.
And if you missed it, we added two new metrics in our models — Perfect% and SimLeverage. You can find an explainer on those metrics here.
The cliff notes version is that you can use SimLeverage to quickly find leverage plays in tournaments, while Perfect% is excellent for finding the best price-considered plays for cash games.
For large-field tournaments, you can utilize our Lineup Optimizer to effortlessly create up to 150 lineups, or use our Lineup Builder if you like to hand-build your lineups.
This analysis may reference Strokes Gained, a set of proprietary metrics generated by the PGA TOUR using millions of data points to calculate how many shots, on average, it takes a player to get the ball in the hole from every distance and situation.
Strokes Gained is now available in the FantasyLabs PGA Models.
Strokes Gained: Approach
When analyzing a course that’s never been utilized for a professional event, Strokes Gained: Approach is a logical place to start. The greens at Wilmington Country Club are massive; therefore proximity will be much more critical than just hitting the green in regulation.
- High-end target: Rory McIlroy— $10,500 (5th Strokes Gained: Approach)
- Mid-range target: Hideki Matsuyama— $8,400 (12th Strokes Gained: Approach)
- Value target: Brendan Steele— $6,200 (3rd Strokes Gained: Approach)
Strokes Gained: Ball Striking
Strokes Gained: Ball Striking will give us a strong indicator of who’s playing the best from tee to green. At this time of year, the players who are playing the best tend to win.
- High-end target: Rory McIlroy $10,500 (3rd Strokes Gained: Ball Striking)
- Mid-range target: Cameron Young— $8,900 (4th Strokes Gained: Ball Striking)
- Value target: Brendan Steele— $6,200 (2nd Strokes Gained: Ball Striking)
Strokes Gained: Putting (Bentgrass)
We’ve consistently seen the best Bentgrass putters play well on the surface repeatedly. At last year’s BMW Championship, Patrick Cantlay feasted on his favorite green type and won on the back of +14.6 Strokes Gained: Putting.
- High-end target: Rory McIlroy— $10,500 (3rd in Strokes Gained: Putting (Bentgrass)
- Mid-range target: Max Homa— $8,500 (6th in Strokes Gained: Putting (Bentgrass)
- Value target: Christian Bezuidenhout— $6,800 (2nd in Strokes Gained: Putting (Bentgrass)
Par 3: 200+
Three of the four par 3s at Wilmington Country Club are longer than 200 yards. With the par 4s not incredibly long on the course, the par 3s are some of the most difficult holes for the week.
- High-end target: Matt Fitzpatrick— $9,500 (1st Par 3: 200+)
- Mid-range target: Aaron Wise— $8,100 (2nd Par 3: 200+)
- Value target: Mito Pereira— $7,100 (7th Par 3: 200+)
Birdie or Better Gained
With the exception of the 2020 BMW Championship, every rendition of the event since 2015 has had a winning score better than 20-under par. Contending this week will most likely require plenty of birdies.
- High-end target: Rory McIlroy— $10,500 (1st Birdie or Better Gained)
- Mid-range target: Sam Burns— $9,300 (7th Birdie or Better Gained)
- Value target: Taylor Moore— $6,400— (8th Birdie or Better Gained)
