WILMINGTON – With play in the PGA Tour’s four-day BMW Championship set to commence Thursday, the field of players has been determined and most have already spent time on the northern Delaware course.
Who’s here?
As the penultimate tournament of the PGA’s FedEx Cup Playoffs, the BMW Championship features the Top 70 ranked golfers, however, two have dropped out of the tournament before its start and won’t be replaced.
Cameron Smith, the No. 3 ranked Australian golfer who won the British Open major in July, dropped out due to a hip injury, although he has also been linked with reports that he may soon leave the PGA Tour in favor of the rival Saudi-backed LIV Golf league. British golfer Tommy Fleetwood has also not played on the PGA Tour since the British Open following the death of his mother, despite ranking No. 58.
Topping the rankings after winning the first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs is American Will Zalatoris followed by major champions like Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Jordan Spieth and other top-ranked golfers like Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay, Sam Burns and Tony Finau, among others.
The BMW Championship will be aired Thursday and Friday, 3-7 p.m. (Golf Channel); Saturday, noon to 3 p.m. (Golf Channel), 3-6 p.m. (NBC); Sunday, noon to 2 p.m. (Golf Channel), 2-6 p.m. (NBC). Tickets to attend are still available at bmwchampionship.com/2022-tickets/
For a full ranking of the Top 70, see the end of this story.
Who’s not playing?
Notably, big names like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Sergio Garcia, Bryson DeChambeau, and Brooks Koepka all won’t be playing due to insufficient ranking or participation in LIV Golf.
The sport’s biggest draw, Tiger Woods, didn’t make the cut after only playing a few tournaments this year following rehab from a devastating car crash in 2021. He was in Wilmington on Tuesday, however, as he met privately with roughly 20 of the PGA Tour’s top players at the Hotel DuPont as they discussed strategy to prevent further LIV Golf defections.
Woods reportedly flew into a Philadelphia airport along with friend and fellow PGA golfer Rickie Fowler on Tuesday afternoon, driving to Wilmington for the meeting and staying a few hours.
PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, who has been seeking to assuage the tour’s players after the Saudi league began paying riches for big-name players to play faster, smaller tournaments around the world, is set to meet with the players Wednesday in a private meeting as well.
What’s at stake?
The players are looking at both immediate winnings in the Wilmington tournament as well as a shot at greater riches in the season-ending TOUR Championship next weekend in Atlanta.
The total prize pool for the BMW Championship is $15 million, with the winner’s share totaling $2.7 million.
Even more important are the FedEx Cup Playoff points, with the BMW Championship winner earning 2,000 points, or four times that of a regular season tournament. Zalatoris, who ranks No. 1 after winning the FedEx St. Jude Championship last week, jumped from No. 12 to the top spot, exemplifying the importance of such late wins. Less than 200 points separate the top two spots, while the 10th spot is fewer than 1,700 points back.
The Top 30 players make the cut to the TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club starting on Aug. 24, which will feature a strokes-based system for the first time, raising the stakes for good finishes in Wilmington.
The FedExCup points leader will begin the TOUR Championship at 10-under par, while the No. 2 player will start at 8 under, the No. 3 at 7 under; the No. 4 at 6 under; and the No. 5 at 5 under. Players 6-10 start at 4 under; players 11-15 start at 3 under; players 16-20 start at 2 under; players 21-25 start at 1 under; and players 26-30 start at even par.
After a four-day tournament playing from those advantages, the lowest scoring golfer will win $18 million and a five-year PGA tournament exemption.
What have they been saying?
Most of the golfers have spent time playing the course in practice rounds from Saturday to Tuesday, and some participated in a pro-amateur tournament Wednesday. Only Justin Thomas has played Wilmington Country Club before, although that was nearly a decade ago in the collegiate Palmer Cup tournament.
The players have largely told the press this week that they had never been to Delaware, let alone the course. They’ve primarily been shuttling between the Hotel DuPont and the Wilmington Country Club, although McIlroy has been spotted at several city restaurants.
Zalatoris called Wilmington Country Club “a big-boy golf course.”
“All three of the par-5s are basically not reachable. Huge, sloping green,” he commented, echoing a common feedback on the par-71 course that measures 7,534 feet.
Schauffele, who ranks No. 6, said he looks at the Wilmington course “sort of like a harder Caves Valley,” referring to the Baltimore-area course where the BMW Championship was held last year.
“A lot of the fairways dogleg, and that first cut will catch the ball but almost makes it unpredictable coming into the greens,” he noted.
Fan favorite Rory McIlroy, who arrived in Wilmington on Saturday after missing the cut in Memphis, has played the course several times and spent time out in downtown Wilmington.
“Length is an advantage here, where in Memphis it’s not really. Sort of just my sort of golf course that I feel like I can excel on,” he said Wednesday after playing 18 holes at the pro-am.
Thomas agreed but added that he felt some greens were reachable but difficult to gauge.
“The greens are big, but you can’t use a lot of them. They’re so severe and crazy in some spots to where you can’t use them,” he said, referring to dramatic slope differences on some parts of the greens.
Any surprises?
The weather looks like it will cooperate for Wilmington’s grand sporting event, with rain only potentially in Saturday morning’s forecast. Players prefer drier courses where the greens and rough are more predictable, and crowds will surely enjoy the average mid-80s temperatures over the weekend.
One big question mark hanging over the area this weekend is whether the BMW Championship may receive a rare presidential visit. President Joe Biden is a member of the Wilmington Country Club and a golf fan – he is set to appear as an honorary chairman at the President’s Cup tournament at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C., next month, as most prior presidents. While the host Western Golf Association hasn’t received word of a Biden visit to the course, the president did return to his home less than 15 minutes from the course on Tuesday night.
The president’s official schedule does not feature any events this weekend as of Wednesday, but such a visit may be impromptu to ease the potential security of such a stop.
Biden actually played a round of golf Wednesday afternoon at his other members-only club, Fieldstone Golf Club, less than 2 miles from where BMW Championship week was underway.
Top 70 ranked players
- Will Zalatoris
- Scottie Scheffler
- Cameron Smith*
- Sam Burns
- Tony Finau
- Xander Schauffele
- Patrick Cantlay
- Sepp Straka
- Rory McIlroy
- Justin Thomas
- Sungjae Im
- Matt Fitzpatrick
- Cameron Young
- Jon Rahm
- Hideki Matsuyama
- Max Homa
- Jordan Spieth
- Viktor Hovland
- Joaquin Niemann
- Collin Morikawa
- Tom Hoge
- Billy Horschel
- Brian Harman
- Talor Gooch
- J.T. Poston
- Joohyung Kim
- Davis Riley
- Sahith Theegala
- Kevin Kisner
- Corey Conners
- J.J. Spaun
- Aaron Wise
- Maverick McNealy
- K.H. Lee
- Lucas Glover
- Denny McCarthy
- Seamus Power
- Shane Lowry
- Keith Mitchell
- Cameron Tringale
- Trey Mullinax
- Mito Pereira
- Luke List
- Russell Henley
- Keegan Bradley
- Adam Scott
- Scott Stallings
- Andrew Putnam
- Kurt Kitayama
- Sebastián Muñoz
- Tyrrell Hatton
- Cam Davis
- Mackenzie Hughes
- Jason Kokrak
- Si Woo Kim
- Lucas Herbert
- Emiliano Grillo
- Tommy Fleetwood*
- Troy Merritt
- Chez Reavie
- Adam Hadwin
- Christiaan Bezuidenhout
- Chris Kirk
- Taylor Moore
- Matt Kuchar
- Brendan Steele
- Harold Varner III
- Alex Noren
- Taylor Pendrith
- Marc Leishman
* Not playing
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a reporting error on where Tiger Woods arrived. He flew into Atlantic Aviation airfield in Philadelphia, not an Atlantic City, N.J., airport. We regret the error.
