PGA DFS Preview: 2021 BMW Championship

Hi RotoBallers! I'm Andy Lack and I'm very excited to be with you as a new member of the RB PGA team! In our ongoing attempt to expand and improve our PGA coverage, I will be dropping a 'Tournament Preview' every Monday morning.

I hope this preview will give you a head start on your BMW Championship research and I'd also like to encourage you to check out my Inside Golf Podcast to hear more of my thoughts on Liberty National and this week's tournament. If you aren't already utilizing RotoBaller's amazing weekly PGA content, fix that right now by joining us this week and throughout the rest of the PGA Tour season.

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RotoBaller Weekly PGA Article Schedule

Monday

You can find out all you need to know about this week's layout with Josh Bennett's Course Breakdown (Premium) and learn which golfers have thrived at this course in the past with Joe Nicely's Horse For The Course.

Tuesday

We kick your DFS research into high gear with articles from Spencer Aguiar! Spencer will highlight his favorite DraftKings Plays of the week - an article that also includes his popular PGA DFS Rankings Wizard Model - and offer great tips with his Head-To-Head Betting Preview, while Joe Nicely drops some salary savers in his DraftKings Value Plays (Premium) article. We also have you FanDuel fans covered with free PGA DFS picks for every tournament.

Wednesday

Things start getting intense on Wednesday and we've got you covered! You can check out RotoBaller Staff One And Done selections and get inside the mind of our team with our PGA DFS Expert Roundtable (Premium). We also have two of the most popular articles in the PGA DFS industry with Spencer Aguiar's Vegas Report (Premium) and Joe Nicely's DraftKings Core Four (Premium). You can also check out Josh Bennett's DFS Cheat Sheet (Premium) for a quick cram session!

Tournament Overview

2021 BMW Championship

Recent Winners

• 2020: Jon Rahm (-4) at Olympia Fields
• 2019: Justin Thomas (-25) at Medinah
• 2018: Keegan Bradley (-20) at Aronomink
• 2017: Marc Leishman (-23) at Conway Farms
• 2016: Dustin Johnson (-23) at Crooked Stick

Event Details

• Purse: $9,500,000 ($1,710,000 to winner)
• FedEx Cup Points: 2,000 (Winner)
• Field: 70 players

The PGA Tour travels to Owings Mills, Maryland this week for the BMW Championship. This is the second leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, as the field is comprised of the top 70 players in the FedEx Cup standings after the completion of last week's Northern Trust. 2,000 FedEx Cup points are rewarded once again to the winner, and only the top-30 in the standings by week's end will advance to the season finale at East Lake. Positioning is extremely important this week, as the Tour Championship features a staggered scoring format, where the players are rewarding a starting score based on their FedEx cup rank.

From a fantasy standpoint, we return to a no cut event! All 70 players are guaranteed four rounds of action at Caves Valley. The point that I often bring up with no cut events is that when the best players in the world are guaranteed four rounds, the cream usually rises to the top over a larger assured sample size. Similar to all FedEx Cup playoff events, the BMW Championship has been historically won by one of the elites, although Keegan Bradley did claim victory here in 2018 at a winning price of 140/1. With that being said, eight of the last eleven winners have come at pre-tournament odds of 45/1 or below. Let's get into the course breakdown, key statistics, and three players that are worthy of further attention.

Course Breakdown

Caves Valley- Owings Mills, Maryland 

Sitting just outside of Baltimore, Caves Valley is a majestic and modern layout designed by the great Tom Fazio in 1991. The courses plays as a Par 72, measuring 7,542 yards, with Bent-grass fairways and greens. Caves Valley has never hosted a PGA Tour event before, but it has been home to the 2002 U.S. Senior Open, the 2017 Senior Players Championship, as well as multiple amateur and college events. While there is no real hard data to draw from this week, we can still develop an understanding of the course based on the website's hole descriptions and what we already know about Tom Fazio as a designer.

Tom Fazio is one of the most famous modern golf course architects, and he's done a lot of great work on a number of PGA Tour courses. Fazio designed Congaree, the host of June's Palmetto Championship, Shadow Creek, the host of last October's CJ Cup, and he has also done re-design work on Quail Hollow, Conway Farms, Firestone, and Kasumigaseki, the host course of the Olympics. Fazio is known for his deep bunkers and large undulating greens. His courses are often in impeccable condition, and Caves Valley is no different. If there is one consistent through-line that we can draw between all of Fazio's designs and re-designs, it's that they certainly favor long and accurate drivers of the golf ball. Rory McIlroy's success Quail Hollow, Firestone, and even Kasumigaseki, is no coincidence. The reason for this is that Fazio courses, and certainly Caves Valley, often feature intricate and menacing fairway bunkers and curving long par fours. Yet if one possesses the length off the tee to cut some the corners and carry the fairways bunkers, it's a lot easier to play offense from there on out.

For that reason, I have chosen to place a much greater weight on off the tee metrics than I normally do. I was looking back at my Quail Hollow model, and I noticed that I was extremely heavy on driving statistics at that course as well. The Wells Fargo Championship was one of my most profitable weeks of the season, and I see no reason to deviate from that strategy at Caves Valley. I landed on a weighted combination of strokes gained off the tee, fairways gained, and driving distance. Length off the tee is not something that I normally factor in my process. I would rather look at proximity distances or how players perform on longer courses. With that being said, based on all of the hole descriptions, images and reviews of the course, I really do believe that this course can be overpowered. That is not to say that shorter hitters can't compete here, but they will need to hit a lot of fairways. Getting caught up in the fairway bunkers is not a recipe for success at Caves Valley. Take a player like Abraham Ancer for example. Ancer is by no means long off the tee, but he is a fantastic driver of the golf ball who consistently gains strokes to the field off the tee. Ancer finished second at Quail Hollow this year, so shorter, accurate players do possess a roadmap as well.

In conclusion, while I am heavier on driving this week than I usually am, there are a few other important metrics to consider. I've already alluded to the undulating nature of these greens, and it will be paramount this week to be accurate on approach. While the putting surfaces at Caves Valley are rather large, putting from the wrong quadrant could still lead to a bogey. For that reason, three putt avoidance will definitely need to be considered. While I do not normally gravitate towards short game statistics on a course with large greens that should still yield low scores, deep bunkers are a Fazio staple, so I certainly see some merit in looking at sand save percentage. Finally, I definitely see value in examining how players have performed on other Fazio courses such as Firestone, Conway Farms, Shadow Creek, Kasumigaseki, and Quail Hollow. The top players in average strokes gained per round on a weighted average of those courses were Jason Day, Justin Thomas, Hideki Matsuyama, Rory McIlroy, Aaron Wise, Sergio Garcia, Paul Casey, and Viktor Hovland. Caves Valley is it's own unique entity, yet the similarities between it and other Fazio designs were hard for me to ignore. Let's dig into the metrics!

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Key Statistics 

Outside of the obvious four major statistical categories (strokes gained off the tee, strokes gained approach, strokes gained around the green, and strokes gained putting), here are a few ancillary statistics that should prove pivotal, as well as the top-5 players in the field in these metrics over their last 24 rounds.

1. Driving Distance  
   1. Bryson DeChambeau
   2. Cameron Champ
   3. Rory McIlroy
   4. Jhonattan Vegas
   5. Jason Kokrak
2. Sand Saves 
   1. Russell Henley
   2. Kevin Na
   3. Marc Leishman
   4. Cameron Smith
   5. Maverick McNealy
3. Fairways Gained
   1. Corey Conners
   2. Kevin Streelman
   3. Collin Morikawa
   4. K.H. Lee
   5. Russell Henley
4. Proximity from 200 yards plus
   1. Viktor Hovland
   2. Jason Kokrak
   3. Marc Leishman
   4. Paul Casey
   5. Bryson DeChambeau
5. Three Putt Avoidance 
   1. Xander Schauffele
   2. Branden Grace
   3. Dustin Johnson
   4. Jon Rahm
   5. Harold Varner III

While those five statistics are a great place to start, I am also looking at proximity from 175-200 yards, strokes gained par fives, par four scoring (450-500 yards), and course history on Firestone, Conway Farms, Shadow Creek, Kasumigaseki, and Quail Hollow.

Players To Target

High-Price Tier

Bryson DeChambeau    

As soon as I began my research on Caves Valley, I knew I was going to be heavy on Bryson DeChambeau this week. What Bryson did at the Northern Trust has only strengthened my interested in the nine-time PGA Tour winner. Yes, DeChambeau only finished 31st at Liberty National, but he did so while gaining a whopping 5.1 strokes off the tee and 3.2 strokes on approach. The only reason he did not crack the top-30 is because he lost a combined 5.6 strokes around the green and putting. I am perfectly okay with that, as not only will DeChambeau have to lean on his short game less at Caves Valley than he did at Liberty National, but his middle of the road finish might also give us a pricing and ownership discount.

There's actually not a ton of courses on the PGA Tour schedule that I can confidently say this about, but from all of my research, I do believe that Caves Valley can be overpowered. The one common through-line that I have found from all of my Tom Fazio research is that his courses do tend to favor long and accurate drivers of the golf ball. DeChambeau ranks number one in this field in both driving distance and strokes gained off the tee, and he has gained over 1.8 strokes in that category in 12 of his 13 starts this season. His driver remains one of the biggest weapons in golf, and I'm confident it will allow him to pick this course apart. Despite his poor recent performance at the Northern Trust, the former U.S. Open winner is also an excellent putter. DeChambeau has lost over two strokes putting only four times in the last calendar year. In the following start, he has gained an average of 4.1 strokes putting. I am expecting DeChambeau to both dominate Caves Valley off the tee, and experience some positive regression with the flat-stick as well.

Mid-Price Tier

Paul Casey

I'm sticking with the theme of picking a player who struck the ball incredibly well at Liberty National, but did not even sniff the top of the leaderboard. Paul Casey finished a ho-hum T64 last week at the Northern Trust. He gained 3.2 strokes off the tee, 5.7 strokes on approach, and lost a combined 10.1 strokes short game and putting. Paul Casey was one of only four players to finish the tournament inside the top-15 in strokes gained off the tee and strokes gained approach, yet the other three, Jon Rahm, Tony Finau, and Corey Conners, will not be catching anyone by surprise due to the high-end nature of their finish. On the surface, Casey's 64th-place finish was a disappointment, but I was extremely encouraged, as this one of Casey's best ball-striking performances of the season.

Regarding course fit, I love Caves Valley for Paul Casey. Over his last 36 rounds, the 18-time worldwide winner is the number two iron player on the planet, and he ranks number one in this field in weighted proximity from 175 yards plus. While not an imposing presence, Casey is plenty long off the tee, ranking top-15 in this field in driving distance as well. With the confirmation that Caves Valley will be playing as a Par 72 and over 7,500 yards, I am getting the number one mid-to-long iron player in this field, and the number two ranked player in par-five scoring as well. Casey also boasts an impeccable resume on Fazio courses. He recently contended at Kasumigaseki in the Olympics, and he has finished 12th, fourth, and fifth in his last three trips to Quail Hollow.

Value-Price Tier

Sebastian Munoz 

I love Sebastian Munoz in this spot. The former Sanderson Farms Championship winner is coming off a 21st-place finish at the Northern Trust where he gained 4.8 strokes on approach. He gained marginally off the tee and around the green as well, but struggled with the flat-stick. I'm willing to bet that Munoz experiences some positive regression with the putter this week. Both of his best putting performances of the season have come on Bent-grass, including when he gained over 10 strokes putting at Colonial.

The Colombia native should not be short in confidence this week, as Munoz made it all the way to the Tour Championship last year on the back of an 18th-place finish at the Northern Trust and an eighth-place finish at the BMW. For what it's worth, Munoz gained 3.7 strokes on a world class field at East Lake as well. Point being, as these fields continue to shrink, I know in Munoz that I am getting a lower-priced player who is capable of rising to the occasion in the FedEx Cup playoffs. Liberty National was a solid fit for his game, but I would argue that Caves Valley makes even more sense. The University of North Texas product is a relatively well rounded player statistically, but I would still categorize his off the tee prowess as the strongest aspect of his game. Munoz has gained an over a stroke off the tee in eight of his last ten starts. While he is by no means a bomber, Munoz does possess above average distance. He contended for a medal at the Olympics on the Tom Fazio designed Kasumigaseki, and he finished ninth on debut at the Fazio designed Shadow Creek. I expect Munoz to continue to roll at Caves Valley, and find himself in the top-30 of the FedEx Cup standings by week's end.

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