The FedEx Cup Playoffs roll on this week in Illinois at Olympia Fields’ North Course for the BMW Championship.
After lifting another piece of hardware in Memphis, Lucas Glover owns the No. 4 spot in the points standings, trailing only Rory McIlroy (No. 3), Scottie Scheffler (No. 2) and Jon Rahm (No. 1).
Although Patrick Cantlay is technically the defending champion of this event, Rahm is the last player to win at OFCC for the BMW, taking down LIV Golf’s Dustin Johnson in a playoff back in 2020.
On the odds sheet, there’s clear separation between the top four players — McIlroy (+650), Scheffler (+700), Rahm (+900) and Cantlay (+1000) —and the rest of the field, but that doesn’t mean someone can’t shock the world.
Here are five sleeper picks for the BMW Championship.
Cameron Young is the perfect course fit for Olympia Fields.
We’re down to 50.
The FedEx Cup Playoffs roll on this week at Olympia Fields outside of Chicago for the BMW Championship. While Patrick Cantlay is the BMW defending champion — he won at Wilmington Country Club — Jon Rahm is the last player to win this event at OFCC, defeating Dustin Johnson in a playoff in 2020.
After Lucas Glover’s win at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, he moves into the No. 4 spot in the points standings, only behind Rory McIlroy (No. 3), Scottie Scheffler (No. 2) and Rahm (No. 1).
Twenty players will be sent packing Sunday evening, with the top 30 advancing to next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta.
Golf course
Olympia Fields Country Club (North Course) | Par 70 | 7,366 yards
A general view of the sixth green as Rory McIlroy putts during the BMW Championship on the North Course at Olympia Fields Country Club on August 29, 2020, in Olympia Fields, Illinois. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
The top-50 players of this PGA Tour season have advanced to this week’s 2023 BMW Championship, the second leg of the season-ending FedEx Cup Playoffs.
Hosting is the North Course at Olympia Fields Country Club in Illinois, which plays to 7,366 yards as a par 70.
Defending champion Patrick Cantlay returns and will play alongside Max Homa (10:54 a.m.) in a morning marquee pairing, with world Nos. 1 and 3 Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm (1:38 p.m.) as the afternoon featured group.
From tee times to TV and streaming info, here’s everything you need to know for the first round of the 2023 BMW Championship. All times Eastern.
[pickup_prop id=”34391″]
Thursday tee times
Time
Players
9:26 a.m.
J.T. Poston, Brendon Todd
9:37 a.m.
Adam Svensson, Matt Fitzpatrick
9:48 a.m.
Adam Hadwin, Ben An
9:59 a.m.
Sahith Theegala, Justin Rose
10:10 a.m.
Jordan Spieth, Sungjae Im
10:21 a.m.
Emiliano Grillo, Sepp Straka
10:32 a.m.
Xander Schauffele, Adam Schenk
10:43 a.m.
Russell Henley, Nick Taylor
10:54 a.m.
Patrick Cantlay, Max Homa
11:10 a.m.
Rory McIlroy, Lucas Glover
11:21 a.m.
Brian Harman, Tommy Fleetwood
11:32 a.m.
Hideki Matsuyama, Tom Hoge
11:43 a.m.
Cam Davis, Cameron Young
11:54 a.m.
Andrew Putnam, Eric Cole
12:05 p.m.
Seamus Power, Lee Hodges
12:16 p.m.
Kurt Kitayama, Denny McCarthy
12:27 p.m.
Chris Kirk, Sam Burns
12:43 p.m.
Corey Conners, Tyrrell Hatton
12:54 p.m.
Jason Day, Collin Morikawa
1:05 p.m.
Si Woo Kim, Tom Kim
1:16 p.m.
Tony Finau, Taylor Moore
1:27 p.m.
Viktor Hovland, Wyndham Clark
1:38 p.m.
Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler
1:49 p.m.
Keegan Bradley, Rickie Fowler
2:00 p.m.
Harris English, Patrick Rodgers
How to watch
You can watch Golf Channel for free on fuboTV. ESPN+ is the exclusive home for PGA Tour Live streaming. All times Eastern.
The defending champion at TPC Southwind, Will Zalatoris, will not be in the field as he hasn’t played since withdrawing from the Masters due to injury.
There are several other big names not there as well, including Justin Thomas (71) and Adam Scott (72), who missed the top-70 cutoff.
To get you ready for the home stretch of the PGA Tour season, we put together everything you need to know for every stop of the postseason including dates, course, defending champion and what’s on the line for everyone in the field.
The event has raised more than $40 million for the Evans Scholars Foundation since 2007.
On Monday the PGA Tour announced a five-year extension with BMW for the automaker to remain the title sponsor of the second event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, the BMW Championship. The new deal begins in 2023 and runs through 2027 and will also see the tournament return to Chicago in 2023 at Olympia Fields Country Club.
The 2022 BMW Championship will be played at Wilmington Country Club in Wilmington, Delaware, Aug. 15-21.
“We would like to express our sincere thanks to BMW for their continued support of the PGA Tour and the Western Golf Association through 2027,” said PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan in a release. “The BMW Championship played an incredibly impactful role in launching the FedExCup in 2007 and BMW’s commitment to presenting a best-in-class event each year continues to elevate the FedExCup Playoffs. We are also very appreciative of BMW’s dedication to fulfilling the mission of the Evans Scholars Foundation, having impacted thousands of lives over the last 15 years.”
The event has raised more than $40 million on behalf of the Evans Scholars Foundation, which provides full tuition and housing scholarships for young caddies. A record 1,070 caddies are attending 21 major colleges and universities on Evans Scholarships this year alone.
The BMW Championship is the longest-running non-major on the Tour’s schedule and has been named the Tour’s Tournament of the Year four times in 2008, 2012, 2013 and 2014.
The work, scheduled to begin in the fall of 2021, is intended to improve the ground game on 18 the famed Chicago-area golf club’s 36 holes.
The members at Olympia Fields Country Club near Chicago have voted to undertake a comprehensive restoration and upgrade of their South Course.
The South Course comprises half the holes at Olympia Fields. The other 18-hole layout at the club is the North, which has hosted many elite competitions including two U.S. Opens (1928, 2003) and two PGA Championships (1925, 1961). The PGA Tour’s BMW Championship was held on the North in 2020, with Jon Rahm taking the playoff title.
The South Course is ranked No. 159 on Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list for layouts built before 1960 in the United States. The North Course is No. 55 on that list. The South is also ranked No. 10 on Golfweek’s Best Private Courses list for Illinois, with the North No. 4 on that state-by-state list.
Course architect Andy Staples will oversee the project on the South, which includes drainage improvement, bunker renovation, fairway expansion, tree work, naturalized native rough and more short grass around the greens. Teeing grounds also will be configured in the project, which has a budgeted cost of $4 million.
Olympia Field’s South Course near Chicago (Courtesy of Olympia Fields Golf Club)
The work – which should showcase the ground game with firmer conditions than available now – will be completed in two phases, starting in the fall of 2021 and continuing again in the fall of 2022. Staples is basing his restoration efforts on his study of photos and design plans in the club’s archives as well as his study of classical design elsewhere. Staples’ previous restoration work includes Meadowbrook Country Club in Detroit, and he is now at work on Mount Bruno Golf Club in Montreal and Delray Beach Golf Course in Florida.
The South dates to a 1916 route designed by Tom Bendelow that was revised by Willie Park Jr.
Olympia Fields in the 1920s had four 18-hole courses, but some land was sold off in the 1940s. Sixteen holes of the original No. 1 course and two holes of the No. 2 course were combined to complete 18 as what became the South.
Jon Rahm overcame a first-round 75 and a third-round knuckle-head penalty to win the BMW Championship on Sunday.
Dustin Johnson drained a snaking 43-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole on Sunday to force a playoff in the BMW Championship with Jon Rahm.
But on the first playoff hole, Rahm poured in a 66-footer for birdie to win the tournament, his second of the year and fifth PGA Tour win.
Rahm overcame a first-round 75 and a third-round penalty to shoot 66-64 over the weekend. He led by two late Sunday, but Johnson birdied the 15th to make it a one-shot deficit. Johnson’s birdie on 18 forged a tie.
Johnson won last week’s Northern Trust. He’ll start next week’s Tour Championship in the pole position, 10 shots ahead of the field.
On Saturday, after hitting a solid drive on the 421-yard par-4 5th hole, Rahm then found the green with his second from 129 yards and had 44 feet for birdie. Walking to the green, he was jiggling his ball marker – an Arizona State poker chip – in his right pocket.
He bent over and picked up his ball but the ball marker was still in his pocket. Rahm was penalized one stroke under Rule 9.4b/1 for touching his ball while it was in play without putting a marker down first.
Rahm won the Memorial in July after also committing a penalty. He chipped in from behind the 16th green for birdie to take a four-shot lead but as he soled his club right before the chip, the ball moved and didn’t return to its original spot before Rahm hit his shot.
Rahm was penalized two shots for the infraction. He didn’t learn about the situation on the 16th until he had finished his round.
Only five golfers at the BMW finished under par: Rahm (-4), Johnson (-3), Niemann (-2), Hideki Matsuyama (-2) and Tony Finau (-1).
Mungeam was able to use a 1928 U.S. Open program with photos of each hole at Olympia Fields as a guide for his restoration.
Mark Mungeam — the man who oversaw renovations and restorations at Olympia Fields for 25 years — admitted he expected to have mixed feelings while watching the BMW Championship, the second event in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, this weekend from his home outside Worcester, Massachusetts.
The golf course architect, now 59, worked more on Olympia Fields, which sits in the Chicago suburbs, than any other in his illustrious career.
“On one hand, it will be exciting to see how they compete on a course that I spent so much time working on,” he said in advance of the event, “but on the other hand, it will be kind of sad because I’m no longer consulting there.”
After 2018, Olympia Fields hired a different architect.
“It happens,” he said. “Twenty-five years is a really good run for anybody at a course. I’m disappointed about them changing course, but obviously pretty happy that I had so many good years of working with them.”
Mungeam helped Olympia Fields implement two master plans involving tree removal, renovations of tees, fairways and greens, and rebuilding the course’s 80 bunkers prior to the 1997 U.S. Senior Open, again prior to the 2003 U.S. Open and a third time prior to the 2015 U.S. Amateur. Mungeam was on hand in 2015 when Jon Rahm was the favorite, but Bryson DeChambeau won the U.S. Amateur.
“It’s pretty exciting now to see him do so well,” Mungeam said of DeChambeau.
Mungeam was able to use a 1928 U.S. Open program with photos of each hole at Olympia Fields as a guide for his restoration prior to the 2015 U.S. Amateur.
One of the goals of renovations is to prevent golfers from overpowering the course.
“There’s no way you can design a golf course now,” Mungeam said, “that they’re not going to overpower with their length.”
[vertical-gallery id=778063488]
Last weekend, Dustin Johnson shot 30 under par to win the Northern Trust at TPC Boston.
Mungeam added a bunker 310 yards from the tee on the left side of the par-4 18th hole at Olympia Fields in 1999. Back then, it was designed to be an aiming bunker, but in 2015 many golfers drove over it.
That hole has played the toughest this week, according to stats from the PGA Tour. In fact the par 4 played to an average nearly a half-stroke above par on Thursday (4.478), followed by 4.435 on Friday and 4.290 on Saturday.
On Sunday, the pin should be tough for players to get at as it’s sitting just four feet from the front right edge, meaning players won’t be able to let the ball run to the stick.
On the other hand, Mungeam didn’t want to make Olympia Fields too difficult for the members.
Mark Mungeam oversaw renovations and restorations at Olympia Fields for 25 years. (Bill Doyle/file photo)
“They want a golf course that they can play,” Mungeam said, “but can be turned into a championship test when the best players in the world are there. I always felt I accomplished that pretty well.”
Mungeam is still consulting with the city of Boston after renovating the city’s two Donald Ross courses, George Wright GC in Hyde Park and Franklin Park GC in Dorchester, prior to the 2019 Massachusetts Amateur.
He has designed 23 new courses, including Cyprian Keyes GC in Boylston, Shaker Hill CC in Harvard, Highfields Golf & CC in Grafton and the nine back at Blissful Meadows GC in Uxbridge, and he’s worked on about 75 renovations and restorations.
Jon Rahm had one of those forgetful moments in Saturday’s third round of the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields.
OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. – Oops.
Jon Rahm had one of those forgetful moments in Saturday’s third round of the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields.
On the fifth hole, Rahm hit a solid drive on the 421-yard par-4 and then found the green with his second from 129 and had 44 feet for birdie. Walking to the green, he was jiggling his ball marker – an Arizona State poker chip – in his right pocket.
And then he bent over and picked up his ball.
But the ball marker was still in his pocket.
“For some reason I just picked up the ball thinking I marked it already,” Rahm said. “I was thinking of somebody else and something else and I just picked up the ball without marking it, simple as that.
Rahm was penalized one stroke under Rule 9.4b/1 for touching his ball while it was in play without putting a marker down first.
“I really can’t give you an explanation,” Rahm said. “It’s one of those things that happen in golf. Never thought it would happen in my professional career, but here we are.”
Despite the miscue, Rahm is still in contention in the second event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs as he went on to card a 4-under-par 66 to move to 2 over through 54 holes. His 66 at the time was tied for the lowest round of the week.
Rahm did convert from 6 feet on the fifth for bogey – a turning point for him, he said – and made birdies on the third, fourth, eighth, 11th and 15th.
“I’m proud of being able to maintain my composure afterwards,” Rahm said. “I think the most important shot of the round was that second putt, the six-footer for bogey on five.
[vertical-gallery id=778063488]
“It’s a really tough golf course out there. It’s really, really demanding. Even if you’re in the fairway you need to hit really, really good shots and I was able to hit more accurate iron shots out there today and have a couple tap-ins like I did on 3 and on 8, which the one on 8 I still don’t know how I hit it that close.
“Hopefully I can carry on with this ball-striking into tomorrow. Hopefully, I’m not too far off where I am right now. I do anticipate somebody playing good today and maybe getting to 3-, 4-under. Five would be a stretch, but I can see 3-, 4-under, and there will still be a lot of shots to make up, but it’s doable.
“I just hope I don’t lose by one. I’m just going to say that. I just hope. And if I do, well, very well my fault. It’s as simple as that.”
Tiger Woods had his best showing of the week Saturday at the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields, but faded on the back nine.
Weekend Tiger came out to play at Olympia Fields, but he didn’t stick around for long.
It doesn’t look like he’ll stick around for the Tour Championship either.
Tiger Woods had his best start of the week at the BMW Championship, finishing the front nine 2 under after back-to-back birdies on Nos. 3 and 4 and no bogeys for the first time this week. But the optimism surrounding his game dissipated at the turn as the 15-time major champion finished the round with a 2-over 72 after a disastrous trip through No. 17.
On the back nine, Woods struggled to find a fairway and spent most of his time after the turn in the rough, but that was just the appetizer ahead of his descent on the par-4 17th, which he birdied on Friday. Woods was forced to take a drop after his tee shot landed in a small creek surrounded by tall grass to the right of the fairway. His ensuing shots landed him in the far left rough, right greenside rough and then finally on the green where he two-putted for the 10th time on the day. He finished the hole with a triple-bogey 7. He finished with one final par at 18.
After rounds of 73 and 75, respectively, it was obvious Woods’ competitive juices were flowing Saturday morning on the par-5 first. He found the fairway bunker on his first shot and the greenside bunker with his third, but conjured up some heroics to chip the ball over the bunker and leave himself a 5-footer for par.
Woods carded his first bogey of the day on 10 after finding the rough on his first shot and the front, greenside bunker with his second. He missed a 13-foot, 6-inch downhill putt for par resulting in his first bogey of the week on the par-4 hole.
There is no cut at the BMW Championship so Woods will play Sunday at Olympia Fields in what will most likely be his last showing of the 2019-20 season.
