Golf expert Ben Coley bagged a 28/1 winner in the first of three FedEx Cup Playoff events. He's now turned his attentions to the BMW Championship.
- Over the past month, Ben's previews have picked out winners at 28/1, 25/1 and 28/1 to take his annual profit beyond +150 points. Get his full tipping record here.
Golf betting tips: BMW Championship
4pts e.w. Scottie Scheffler at 18/1 (Sky Bet 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
1.5pts e.w. Joaquin Niemann at 35/1 (Sky Bet, William Hill 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
1pt e.w. Maverick McNealy at 100/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
0.5pt e.w. Mackenzie Hughes at 300/1 (General 1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
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The most profound thing uttered across the two Wayne's World films, as it relates to golf in 2022 at least, came in the first of them. Dressed head to toe in Reebok gear if I remember rightly and sipping on a Pepsi, Garth Algar rued the that "people only do things because they get paid, and that's just really sad." The joke, of course, is that Algar is advertising while he speaks. Perhaps Brooks Koepka was doing a Wayne's World joke all along.
Anyway, why Wayne's World? Well, because that is what I think of when I hear the word Delaware, and Delaware hosts its first PGA Tour event this week. Students of arguably the two greatest films of all time (the other, dear reader, is Wayne's World 2) will know what I'm talking about: the scene where Wayne and Garth are in front of a blue screen, which allows them to go from New York ('hey, I'm in New York...') to Texas ('howdy...') to... Delaware.
We are of course meant to infer that Delaware is unremarkable. So unremarkable that the lads from Aurora, Illinois (a suburb of Chicago, natch) can't think of anything to say. Having never been there myself, and hailing from one of the United Kingdom's most unremarkable towns, I couldn't possibly comment. But I would suggest that the course which has been chosen for the BMW Championship, Wilmington Country Club, probably fits the description.
A par 71 which has been expanded to cover 7,534 yards, it is quite long. It's also wide off the tee, with bright, near-white bunkers whose shapes are refined. The greens are massive, almost absurdly so and fully twice the size of some we've witnessed this summer. After rain, the course will likely play soft, which you could argue is just how organisers of this nomadic tournament seem to like it. Perhaps I've misread things, but this is one for the PGA Tour purist, rather than those who get their kicks in the finer details of architecture or even from a bouncing ball.
As I wrote last week, this doesn't necessarily undermine the viewing experience if you just tune in on Sunday. On the one just gone, it can even be argued that Southwind's watery nature made that final round, while this tournament last year took us to the point-and-shoot Caves Valley, where Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay could not be separated until Cantlay finally managed it in a play-off which had everyone engrossed. Just as some of the year's best finishes have involved unheralded golfers, so have some of them come on shall we say unheralded golf courses.
The trouble, I suppose, is that we have to get through three or so days first. Might I suggest Wayne's World on Thursday night, Wayne's World 2 on Friday night, and then we'll see?
Now, we could spend longer on Wayne's World. We'd all like that. We could talk about Jim Morrison, Del Preston, a bloody great big bengal tiger, a thousand M&Ms, a gun rack, or its finest scene – when, in Wayne's World 2, Christopher Walken chases the crew through town until they reach the Tool Box and perform the YMCA.
Last week, Scheffler missed the cut owing largely to a hopeless putting display during the first round at Southwind. On paper, that was a mere continuation of the issues which cost him a crack at the Open, a fifth win in 2022 at the Charles Schwab, possibly even the US Open too, so it's hard to argue in good faith that this was a freak occurrence.
That said, sometimes you have to trust your judgement and mine was that Scheffler's entire tournament could so easily have gone very differently. On his first hole, he hit a perfect drive, and a pin-high wedge to four feet. On his second he fired an approach shot to eight feet. Neither putt went in and you may well have seen various memes relating to his frustration, which surely bled into some mistakes in his long-game as the day unfolded.
He still matched the first-round score of the eventual winner, but unlike Will Zalatoris, Scheffler wasn't able to undo the damage on Friday. Nevertheless, he was able to putt considerably better, to the tune of more than five strokes, and remained excellent off the tee. Poor approach play numbers limited his score to a two-under 68 and he missed the cut by one, but Southwind exaggerates mistakes in that department and for most of round two, playing in attack mode, he continued to look close to his very best.
The other reason I'm not too concerned about a rare missed cut is that five of the last six times Scheffler has failed to make the weekend, he's had a chance next time: seventh in Phoenix last year, runner-up in the Match Play, third at Memorial, runner-up earlier this summer at Colonial, and then when in the mix before a poor final day at the Open. Only in the CJ Cup, where he produced a freakishly bad driving display, has he failed to bounce back at the first opportunity throughout this run.
Niemann made some clumsy mistakes after a bright start to round one, but for the remainder of the tournament his approach play was exceptional to the extent that having ranked outside the top 60 on Thursday night, come Sunday he was second only to Zalatoris.
Alongside this his driving improved day-by-day, and with these huge greens to aim at on a course I suspect will be vulnerable to low scoring, slight concerns about his short-game are easy to overlook. Certainly, if we do get a little more out of his putter as we have in this part of the USA before, his first title having come in West Virginia, then he'll look a big player.
Niemann's all-the-way Riviera win remains one of the best performances of the season and his approach work last week was close to the same levels. With first and fifth in West Virginia, third in Ohio, second and fifth in Michigan and third place in this event in Illinois, again we really do tend to see his best golf away from bermuda and so often on bentgrass greens, and the turning nature of this course will appeal to him.
