BMW Championship betting guide: 4 picks our expert loves this week

Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting. You can follow on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the BMW Championship, which gets underway Thursday in Castle Rock, Colo. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see data from Chirp Golf, a mobile app that features both Free-To-Play and Daily Fantasy golf contests where you can win cash and prizes with each round and tournament.

My goodness. If you are following along with our weekly picks here in this column, I want to say congratulations and apologize at the same time. We landed correctly on Hideki Matsuyama last week in Memphis but holy cow, I think that back nine on Sunday took years off my life. Up by five shots with seven holes to play, Matsuyama nearly let it all slip away but fortunately righted the ship just in time and we cashed the ticket. Now let’s see if we can make it two in a row as Round 2 of the playoffs is upon us.

The BMW Championship will take place at Castle Pines Golf Club in Castle Rock, Colorado. We haven’t seen this course on the PGA Tour since 2006 when it hosted the final edition of The International, a Tour event that began in 1986 and was the first tournament to use the modified Stableford scoring system. Located less than 30 miles outside of Denver, the golf course sits at roughly 6,300 feet above sea level. It will be the longest course to ever host a PGA Tour event at over 8,100 yards. It is a par-72 Jack Nicklaus design.

Developer Jack Vickers hired Nicklaus to design an “Augusta National in the mountains” and there are certainly some similarities. The fairways are wider than Tour average and the primarily bentgrass greens are faster than Tour average. Also, like Augusta, Castle Pines features a great deal of elevation change throughout the routing. Dissimilar from Augusta National, however, are the greens. Castle Pines’ are a bit smaller than average and the rough is very thick.

While over 8,000 yards seems like a nearly impossible test, let’s consider the adjustment for the altitude, which translates into this course playing closer to 7,300-7,400 yards at sea level — a fairly standard length on Tour for a par 72. With players needing to get comfortable with that adjustment and the elevation change, I feel that Total Driving and Strokes Gained: Off the Tee will be important. Many approach shots will be struck from 200+ yards this week, and many of those shots will miss the green in regulation, so I looked at Scrambling and also Bogey Avoidance — again, accounting for some “getting used to” playing at elevation. I also looked at Birdies or Better, thinking that there will be some low scores this week. As is often the case in the Rocky Mountains this time of year, afternoon thundershowers are in the forecast. This could soften up the golf course a bit and there is not much wind expected. I am also seeing one very well-respected oddsmaker in Las Vegas, put up an Under/Over winning score proposition of 22.5 under par, so that tells me I’m not the only one thinking there may be some low scoring this week in the high country.

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As for correlated courses, it’s hard to pinpoint anything really, with Castle Pines being a unique venue. I looked at Augusta National, as noted previously. I considered Bay Hill, where you have a great deal of lengthy approach shots and Total Driving is a priority. I looked back at Club de Golf Chapultepec where they played the WGC-Mexico from 2017 through 2020, a course that sits at 7,600 feet in elevation. And I also considered other Nicklaus designs like Muirfield Village (Memorial Tournament) and Valhalla, the site of this year’s PGA Championship.

So, the deck has been reshuffled after the conclusion of last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship and we are now down to the top 50 players in FedExCup points. Once again, there is no 36 hole cut this week. At the end of this BMW Championship, only the top 30 in points will advance to next week’s season finale, the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. Here are my choices for this week.

Rory McIlroy (16-1)

McIlroy was second to last at TPC Southwind last week and I believe that has created a bit of value in his number. If there are only 50 players in this field and let’s say 30 of them have a realistic chance of winning, shouldn’t McIlroy be lower than 16-1? It has been a bit of an emotional roller coaster for McIlroy ever since the U.S. Open but he does have two top-five finishes since then. He’s finished top 10 at the Memorial five times. In his three trips to Chapultepec for the WGC-Mexico, McIlroy finished 7-2-5. He was 12th at Valhalla earlier this season and of course, won there in 2014. He also has six top-10 finishes at Bay Hill, including a win and a runner-up. Back in 2014, when the BMW Championship was held at Cherry Hills in Colorado (at 5,300 feet above sea level), McIlroy finished eighth. More on that in a moment.

I have a feeling driving the golf ball will be a big deal at this golf course and there aren’t many better in the world, if any, than Rory McIlroy. It was a big deal to drop from third to fifth in the standings last week. I believe he’s a good fit at this course to bounce back this week.

Ludvig Aberg (25-1)

It is possible we are catching a bit of a value drift on Aberg too, with his disappointing 40th-place finish last week in Memphis. His last three starts have resulted in cut-18-40. But prior to that it was 5-12-27-4, and that fifth-place finish was at another Nicklaus design at the Memorial. Right behind McIlroy, Aberg is third on Tour in Total Driving. Over the last 24 rounds, Aberg is 13th in this field for SG: Approach, 18th for Birdies or Better Gained, and 14th in Hole Proximity from 200-yards plus. Similar to McIlroy, I like going with one of the best drivers of the golf ball in the world at a price that seems maybe a tick too high.

Billy Horschel (51-1)

This seems to be an outlier price that I found. I am seeing mostly 40-1 or less. Maybe wait to see if you can get better than what is widely available as we get closer to post time, but I do believe 40-1 is fair. Horschel has finished top 15 at the Memorial six times, including a win in 2022. In the same year, he was runner-up at Bay Hill. Back in May, Horschel finished eighth at Valhalla at the PGA Championship. As of late, his last three starts go 2-7-10. He’s very accurate off the tee and he ranks top 10 in this field over the last 24 rounds for both Hole Proximity from 200+ yards and in Scrambling. I mentioned earlier the 2014 BMW Championship at Cherry Hills, only 17 miles from Castle Pines, Horschel was your champion that year and went on to eventually win the FedEx Cup.  

Justin Thomas (52-1)

I’ve actually seen this number creep a little higher but Thomas is another guy I have identified as someone who seems to do well on Nicklaus designs and also at elevation. In the four editions of the WGC-Mexico at Chapultepec, Thomas finished 5-2-9-6. He has two top-10 finishes at the Memorial and in 2020 when they played the Workday Charity Open at Muirfield Village, Thomas lost in a playoff. He’s never missed a cut at Bay Hill and finished eighth this season at Valhalla. Thomas was also runner-up at Sherwood Country Club, another Nicklaus design in Thousand Oaks, California, when it held the 2020 Zozo Championship. Over the last 24 rounds, Thomas is 15th in this field for SG: Approach and is eighth in Hole Proximity from 200+ yards.

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