From tee times to TV and streaming information, here’s the lowdown on the 2021 BMW Championship.
Bryson DeChambeau went from being in total control at the BMW Championship mid-way through the third round to letting another horse in the race when he stumbled through the back nine at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Maryland, on Saturday.
After three rounds, DeChambeau and Cantlay are knotted at the top of the leaderboard, both at 21 under. The next-closest player is Sungjae Im at 18 under.
Abraham Ancer, Sam Burns, Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy are tied for fourth at
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s what you need to know for the final round of the BMW Championship. All times listed are ET.
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DeChambeau picked up where he left off on Saturday at the BMW Championship.
Bryson DeChambeau picked up where he left off on Saturday at the BMW Championship, carding back-to-back eagles on his fourth and fifth holes at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Maryland.
DeChambeau missed a 6-foot birdie putt at No. 18 and settled for 60 on Friday. That gave him a one-stroke lead at the midway point of the second leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. On Saturday, he made a birdie at the third hole and then stepped it up a notch at the par-5 fourth, cranking a 336-yard drive, blasting his second shot from 247 yards to 25 feet and pouring in the eagle putt.
He wasn’t done making double circles on his scorecard. At the par-4 fifth, he flexed his muscles, flying the bunkers fronting the green and driving the front portion of the putting surface at the 322-yard hole. His tee shot covered 307 yards, leaving a 53-foot putt for eagle. DeChambeau struck the right-to-left putt perfectly into the bottom of the cup. He tipped his cap and smiled as his lead grew to three.
World No. 1 Jon Rahm birdied three of his first five holes and lost ground, Rory McIlroy birdied four of his first six holes and lost ground as DeChambeau improved to 21 under overall. Ripley’s Believe it or Not stat: DeChambeau was 3 under for his first 17 holes, 18 under for his last 24. It also marked his fourth eagle so far at the BMW Championship, tying the most by any player this season. (Jordan Spieth was the last to do so last week at the Northern Trust.)
Four eagles now this week for Bryson DeChambeau, tying the most by any player in a single PGA Tour event this season. He's the 6th player to make 4 in a week.
Last player to make 5 in a tournament: Dustin Johnson, 2020 Northern Trust
The big bomber got it going at Caves Valley in Owings Mills, Maryland, but fell short of the magic 59.
OWINGS MILLS, Md. – Bryson DeChambeau let his clubs do the talking.
They were loud, but not loud enough.
DeChambeau created a thrilling afternoon, vying to become the 13th player to shoot a sub-60 round on the PGA Tour. He clobbered soft Caves Valley Golf Club in Friday’s second round of the BMW Championship, during which the PGA Tour implemented preferred lies. The Big Man from Big D made eight birdies and two eagles en route to a 12-under-par 60.
Despite falling short of the magic number, his round still gave him a share of the clubhouse lead at 16 under.
The world No. 6 started his round with two birdies and then made an eagle from 11 feet on the par-5 fourth hole. He added birdies on Nos. 5, 7 and 8 to make the turn in 7-under 29.
He continued his assault on Caves Valley with birdies on the 11th, 12th and 14th holes and then eagled the par-5 16th. He used an iron from 253 yards for his second shot and watched the ball roll back toward the hole to 3 feet.
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DeChambeau, who could have birdied the last two holes to join Jim Furyk as the only players to shoot 58 on the PGA Tour, missed from 15 feet on the 17th.
On the 18th, after a fairway-splitting, 333-yard drive, DeChambeau knocked a short iron from 144 yards to 6 feet but missed that putt on the low side.
DeChambeau, who won the 2020 U.S. Open in the fall and the 2021 Arnold Palmer Invitational in March, is ninth in the FedEx Cup standings but would take over the lead if he were to win the BMW.
Only 30 players will compete in the Tour Championship next week.
After the first round of play there’s a three-way tie atop the leaderboard after world No. 1 Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Sam Burns all fired 8-under 64s on Thursday. Rahm and Burns, a Ryder Cup hopeful, were bogey-free on the day.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s what you need to know for the second round of the BMW Championship. All times listed are ET.
We recommend interesting sports viewing and streaming opportunities. If you sign up to a service by clicking one of the links, we may earn a referral fee.
The top 30 players in the FedEx Cup standings will move on and compete in next week’s Tour Championship, the FedEx Cup Playoffs finale.
Because of the smaller field, there will be no 36-hole cut at the BMW. All the big names are in attendance, including last week’s winner Tony Finau, world No. 1 Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy, Phil Mickelson, Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s what you need to know for the first round of the BMW Championship. All times listed are ET.
We recommend interesting sports viewing and streaming opportunities. If you sign up to a service by clicking one of the links, we may earn a referral fee.
Cam Smith’s mullet hairdo wasn’t the only thing on fire on Saturday. So was his game.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Cam Smith’s mullet hairdo wasn’t the only thing on fire on Saturday. So was his game.
On a calm, overcast day, Smith put on a ball striking clinic and took advantage of receptive greens during the third round of the Northern Trust, carding 11 birdies and had a 12-foot birdie putt at 18 to shoot golf’s magical number. Sadly, the Aussie native knew he’d misread his putt to become the 12th man to break 60 on the PGA Tour as the birdie effort started left and never turned back to the right.
“Looking back at it, I don’t know how I read it to go that way but it is what it is,” Smith said.
Smith, who celebrated his 28th birthday on Wednesday, was left to think about what could’ve been but also appreciated that he’d set the course record at Liberty National Golf Club and also shot the lowest score of his life.
“I shot 62 at my home club in Brisbane,” he said. “But 62 out there is not 62 out here.”
Smith, a three-time Tour winner including at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans in April, began with birdies on five of his first six holes and chipped in at the ninth from 30 feet right of the green with his lob wedge to tour the first nine in 6-under 30.
“If you’d have seen me hit the ball yesterday you wouldn’t have thought that I had a chance (of going low),” said Smith, who made only nine birdies combined in the first two rounds.
He opened the second nine with a birdie at 10 and another at 13. Smith started thinking about 59 after taking dead aim from 147 yards – “a perfect number,” he said – with a wedge and dropping it to kick-in distance. If there was one putt he’ll lose sleep over, he said it would be his uphill 10-foot birdie putt at 15 that he tugged left.
“If I was picky, I’d say I left a few out there, but that would be rude,” he said.
One hole later, he drove the green with a 3-wood at the 290-yard par-4 16th, but burned the left edge on his 16-foot eagle putt. He tapped in for birdie to go to 10-under for the day. Still, after he missed the eagle, he told his caddie he didn’t think he had a chance.
“Last two holes here are pretty brutal, especially 18,” he explained.
But he had been playing all day with a different swing thought that he tried out that morning on the range – “try to cover the ball.” Inconsistency off the tee had been plaguing him of late, but he stepped up and hit two beauties at the final two holes to give him a chance at golf’s magical number.
“I just get a little bit behind it and I felt like today my body was just moving a little bit different and I was able to cover the ball,” he said.
His 306-yard poke at 17 set up a nifty wedge to 4 feet and he made the putt to give himself a chance at a piece of history at the last. He crushed his drive 342 yards to the left-center of the fairway and planted a wedge to 12 feet.
As he made his way to the green, the fans saluted him with a mixture of throaty cheers and wolf whistles. One fan yelled, “You’re a rabid dog, Cam!”
“The New York crowd is pretty brutal at some points, and they were right behind me, so that was pretty cool,” Smith said later.
He tamped down spike marks, went through his Aim Point routine, but as soon as he struck his putt for 59, he lifted his head and knew he’d misread it. He tapped in for 60 and a 54-hole total of 16-under 197, made a weak wave to the crowd and enjoyed the applause as he walked off the green with a two-stroke lead at the time.
“It’s a bit of a weird one,” Smith said of coming so close to membership in one of golf’s most exclusive clubs only to fall short. “But I think I’m happy.”
He’ll have an extra day to savor the memories as the final round of the Northern Trust has been postponed until Monday due to Tropical Storm Henri. Smith said he’s never experienced a day off in the middle of a tournament, and he’d likely spend the day laying around, going to the gym and trying to stay loose. But he confirmed there’s no chance he’ll be getting a haircut.
“It’s like my good luck charm,” he said. “I can’t cut it off at the minute. Maybe a couple bad months of golf, it will come off, but until then, it’s staying.”
McIlroy attributed his insurmountable distance from the leaders to two things: slow starts and poor par 5s.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. — If Rory McIlroy was playing craps in Atlantic City, he would be on a hot streak this week. Unfortunately, he’s playing golf a few hours north at Liberty National, where frequent 6s aren’t such a pleasing sight.
In Saturday’s third round at the Northern Trust, McIlroy signed for a 66 and a total of 6-under par that left him six strokes behind the overnight leader Jon Rahm. There was also a 6 he carded at the par-5 eighth hole to go along with one at the par-5 sixth on Thursday. Sandwiched between them was a triple-bogey 6 at the par-3 11th on Friday. It’s a brave mathematician who would remind McIlroy that 6 is the smallest perfect number.
“Just a few too many mistakes,” McIlroy said of his performance during this first of three FedEx Cup playoff events. “That was really the difference. I’ve putted well the last couple days and I made enough birdies. I think I’ve made 16 birdies for the week.”
McIlroy ranks among the best in the field in Strokes Gained Putting through three rounds, but his full swing isn’t proving quite as reliable, though he has logged positive gained strokes off the tee in every round, none better than on Saturday. “I don’t feel like I drove the ball that badly,” he said. “I hit a couple destructive approach shots yesterday which cost me a little bit.”
More than a little bit, actually. The world No. 15 spotted the field almost five shots with his irons on Friday, a day on which he hit only eight greens and was forced to rely on his scrambling (eight of 10) to card a 70 that helped him make the cut on the number. His reward was one of the earliest starting times on the weekend, with the prospect of a 48-hour wait to get back out as Tropical Storm Henri pushed Sunday’s final round to Monday.
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McIlroy attributed his insurmountable distance from the leaders to two things: slow starts and poor par 5s. In his first two rounds, the four-time major winner was over par on his opening nine holes before clawing his way back. On Saturday he turned in 2 under and would have been even better if not for that 6 on the eighth.
“Got off to a better start today obviously and still didn’t play par 5s well. I played the par 5s at even par for the week,” he said. “Play those a bit better and the score all of a sudden goes from, whatever I’m at, 6 under, to double digits, at least, and you’re in the golf tournament.” (His par-3 scoring for the week is +4, almost all due to that ugly triple on Friday.)
The man McIlroy was looking up at on the leaderboard when he finished, Rahm, played the par 5s at 5 under through two days. Cam Smith, who charged into the lead later in the day, is 7 under on those holes, while even the player at the bottom of the leaderboard, Brian Harman, has outperformed McIlroy in par-5 scoring. Through nine trips around the long holes, McIlroy’s ledger shows two birdies, two bogeys, five pars.
And it could have been even worse. At the sixth hole during the third round, McIlroy found the water with his approach from 206 yards but saved par. “Actually I’m going to lay up on par 5s,” he said after his round. “I think I do better when I lay up on par 5s. Every time I try and go for one, I make at best, a par.”
Rory McIlroy prepares to play his tee shot on the 16th hole during the second round of the Northern Trust, the first event of the FedExCup Playoffs, at Liberty National Golf Club on August 20, 2021 in Jersey City, New Jersey. (Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
That’s something of an exaggeration. This season, McIlroy has birdied 52.8% of his par 5s, seventh best on the PGA Tour. However, his par-5 scoring average ranks T-38th, suggesting a smattering of bogeys too.
“I did this in 2014 a lot. I put it in position on the fairway and I’d be thinking 3, and I’d make 5 or 6,” he said. “I feel like I’m sort of doing that again. So it’s almost like just don’t be too greedy, play for your 4.”
Laying up on the longest holes seems a curious consideration for a player who ranks second in driving distance on Tour. The only player longer than McIlroy—Bryson DeChambeau—is famously aggressive. No one goes for the green more, yet he and McIlroy have almost identical success rates, making birdie or better around 60% of the time. DeChambeau is 125-under par in 176 attempts, McIlroy 94-under for 154 tries.
Sloppy bogeys and not the plentiful birdies seems to be what McIlroy is focused on, and that’s an issue statistics suggest might be better addressed with short-game work than a new strategy for long holes: He doesn’t rank inside the top 100 in scrambling from any distance inside 30 yards.
“The thing is, as well, with how some of the green complexes are on par 5s, especially, because it’s a par-5 green, you miss it on the wrong side and it’s just really tough,” McIlroy added, as he prepared to head back to his Manhattan hotel to wait out the storm.
He will have one more day at Liberty National to test his laying up theory, and almost two full days to muse on it before he does.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Golf is a fickle game – one day you’re Collin Morikawa, on top of the FedEx Cup point standings, or Dustin Johnson, the defending tournament champion, or Kevin Kisner, the winner of last week’s tournament and more than a million …
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Golf is a fickle game – one day you’re Collin Morikawa, on top of the FedEx Cup point standings, or Dustin Johnson, the defending tournament champion, or Kevin Kisner, the winner of last week’s tournament and more than a million dollars.
On Friday, all three had missed the cut at the Northern Trust. In all, 75 of the 123 players at Liberty National Golf Club made the weekend with scores of 1-under 141 or better.
But the trio of Morikawa, Johnson and Kisner can take solace that while they will have the weekend off, at least they live to play another week in the playoffs as they are safely inside the top 70 who will advance to next week’s BMW Championship. In other words, we’re saying they still have a chance at the pot of gold at the end of the FedEx Cup rainbow in Atlanta.
The tournament within a tournament at the Northern Trust is the battle to finish within the top 70 in the FedEx Cup point standings.
JERSEY CITY, N.J. – Keith Mitchell picked a good Friday to make 10 birdies.
The University of Georgia product shot up the leaderboard with six birdies in a row en route to shooting 7-under 64 at Liberty National Golf Club and shares third place at the midway point of the Northern Trust.
Last month, Mitchell strung together seven birdies in a row to begin his third round at the 3M Open. What else does Mitchell have in store for the FedEx Cup?
“Try to get to eight (in a row),” he said. “When you get on those rolls, the putts are falling, you’re hitting them close, and then you try to just keep the pedal down. And it’s a little easier when you feel confident in every part of your game, and today was another time where I felt great.”
That has Mitchell projected to improve to No. 37 in the FedEx Cup, an improvement of 64 spots in the standings, which would be the largest potential move this week.
“I have to finish somewhere in the top 10, maybe even top five, and to be able to do it here is great,” Mitchell said. “But if it wasn’t for those at 3M, I’d probably have to finish even better. You know, we’re never going to discredit a birdie, and this week I’m going to need a lot more just to keep going to next week.”
The tournament within a tournament at the Northern Trust is the battle to finish within the top 70 in the FedEx Cup point standings to advance to the BMW Championship at Caves Valley next week.
With points quadrupled, Mitchell shows the volatility that can exist. He’s one of six players projected to move into the top 70 along with Harold Varner III (No. 44), Alex Noren (No. 52), Tom Hoge (No. 62), Erik van Rooyen (No. 65) and Seamus Power (No. 69).
Those projected to fall out: Talor Gooch, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tyrrell Hatton, Martin Laird, Troy Merritt and J.T. Poston.
Former World No. 1 Jason Day missed the cut and will be absent from the BMW Championship, where he is a past champion, for the first time since 2012.
Among those who will have to sweat out the weekend are Phil Mickelson, who missed the cut and is projected at No. 68 and Matthew Wolff, who is projected as the ‘bubble boy’ at No. 70.
Varner, for one, is living and dying with every shot.
“I think about it every hole,” he said. “I know if I birdie this hole, I’m going to move up. It’s pretty simple. In the context of actually thinking where I’m at on the list, I can’t add that up that fast, thankfully. But yeah, if you play well, you’re going to have a good chance to be at East Lake. Yeah, I’m always thinking about it.”
It’s exhausting just to follow Bryson DeChambeau’s endless tribulations, so one can only guess at how enervating it must be to live them.
For those keeping count—admittedly a task less onerous than charting his 44 strokes on the final nine holes at the U.S. Open—Friday marked the sixth consecutive round after which Bryson DeChambeau has declined to speak with waiting media. His silent snit dates to the WGC FedEx St. Jude Invitational two weeks ago, when DeChambeau breezily told reporters that he didn’t need the COVID-19 vaccine because he’s healthy and wouldn’t take a shot from someone more needy, ignorance that suggested he reads the news with considerably less intensity than he does his yardage book.
Faced with backlash to his vaccine comments, the world No. 6 has opted for silence, unwilling even to enumerate his Friday 65 at the Northern Trust at Liberty National. That’s his prerogative, of course. There’s enough going on in the world that only the most attentive sports fan will miss the regular fix of pseudo-scientific bunkum.
DeChambeau’s wariness of the press—and this being golf media, it’s not exactly Woodward and Bernstein he’s dodging—implies one of two things. Either he believes the media treats him unfairly or he doesn’t trust himself to navigate a simple interview session without stepping on another landmine. Whichever it is, stiff-arming reporters has been the only consistent feature of his tumultuous summer.
DeChambeau had fans ejected from the Memorial Tournament for the apparently grievous offense of calling him “Brooksie,” which served only to inspire copycat hecklers who trail him still. That back-nine implosion at the U.S. Open sent him from the lead to a T-26 finish, yet he tersely insisted it was due to nothing more than “bad luck.” At the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit, his caddie quit just before the opening round, causing DeChambeau to refuse media requests for the rest of the week, despite being both the defending champion and sponsored by Rocket Mortgage.
Bryson DeChambeau walks off the ninth green after finishing his second round of Rocket Mortgage Classic at the Detroit Golf Club in Detroit, Friday, July 2, 2021. (Detroit Free Press)
That was just his June.
At the Open Championship, DeChambeau angrily denied that he fails to yell a warning when his tee shots rain down on unaware spectators in the gallery, despite ample evidence that he routinely does just that. After a mediocre opening round at Royal St. George’s, he said his driver “sucks,” a petulant whine that led his equipment sponsor, Cobra Puma, to publicly liken him to an 8-year-old child. He then had to withdraw from the U.S. Olympic team after testing positive for COVID-19.
That was his July. August brought the vaccine babble and yet more pouting with the press, and the month still has 11 days to run. All of this set against a soundtrack of his ongoing social media scrap with Brooks Koepka.
It’s exhausting just to follow DeChambeau’s endless tribulations, so one can only guess at how enervating it must be to live them. Unless, that is, he is so destitute of self-awareness and managerial guidance that he can entirely attribute negative coverage to a biased media without ever indicting his own conduct.
Perhaps DeChambeau sought advice from an experienced hand in such matters last weekend, when he was a guest of former president Donald Trump at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club. He did not have his agent, Brett Falkoff, on hand Friday at Liberty National to offer mature counsel. Around the time DeChambeau signed his card, Falkoff was scheduled to tee off in the second round of the Anderson Memorial, an amateur team event held at Winged Foot, where his boss won the U.S. Open last year. Falkoff is partnering with Andrew Giuliani, the sluggard scion of a disgraced former New York City mayor, whose own ersatz campaign for governor of New York has failed to win the support of a single Republican leader in the state. (The pair opened with 73 to tie for 52nd among 58 teams, far off qualifying for the match-play portion of the event, so Falkoff might be present Saturday to guide his charge.)
These FedEx Cup playoffs are an ideal opportunity for DeChambeau to hit a reset button on his season, to state his case for player of the year honors, a conversation he dropped out of when the most significant trophy he held moved to Jon Rahm’s mantelpiece as he failed to notch a single top 25 finish in the majors. At 7th in the FedEx Cup standings, he is effectively guaranteed a real shot at reaping the $15 million bounty at the finale in two weeks.
If he does win at East Lake, to whom will DeChambeau recite his customary lengthy list of sponsors deserving thanks? Will he consent then to meet the press since there might be product that needs pimping? For now, though, he appears to regard members of the media as the wretched refuse of Liberty National’s teeming shore, to borrow Emma Lazarus’ words inscribed beneath that other stiff-armed and mute American icon looming over Liberty National this week.
