Out of the Rough: BMW Championship (2025)

The penultimate event of the 2025 PGA Tour season is here with this week’s BMW Championship.

Serving as essentially the semi-finals of the season, this event will cut the field from 50-golfers to 30-golfers for next week’s TOUR Championship. 

Caves Valley Golf Club in Maryland will play host this season, marking the second time the venue has hosted this event. The last time this event was played here, Patrick Cantley won his first-of-two back-to-back BMW Championship titles.

The Field

All eyes will be on the magic number of 30 this week as just the top 30 of the season-long FedEx Cup Standings will advance to next week’s TOUR Championship.

As it sits, Chris Gotterup (26th,) Jacob Bridgeman (27th,) Viktor Hovland (28th,) Akshay Bhatia (29th) and Lucas Glover (30th) are the first five within the cut line and will look to remain at least status quo this week to play themselves into next week’s field. 

Sam Stevens (31st,) Ryan Gerard (32nd,) Daniel Berger (33rd,) Ryan Fox (34th) and Taylor Pendrith (35th) are the first five out and will need big weeks to see themselves playing in a week’s time.

There are also plenty of notable names beyond the top 30-mark, but none more notable than Xander Schauffele (43rd) who missed a good part of the early season with a rib injury and has not been his same since. He’ll all but need a victory to be playing next week.

Team USA Ryder Cup Captain Keegan Bradley was the winner of this event a season ago at Castle Pines, holding off all three of Ludvig Aberg, Sam Burns and Adam Scott by a stroke.

As previously mentioned, Cantlay was the victor here in 2021, the last time this event was hosted at Caves Valley Golf Club.

The Course

Caves Valley Golf Club is a Tom Fazio design that was opened in 1991 and renovated in 2020.

It held the US Senior Open in 2002. It also held the 1995 US Mid-Amateur, the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Championship in 2005 and the first International Crown on the LPGA Tour in 2014.

It plays as a par-70 at roughly 7,600 yards.

Although listed as a par-70, this is still a super-long course that will take plus distance off-the-tee to remain atop the leaderboard this week.

The bentgrass fairways are bordered by fescue-bluegrass rough that will play at roughly four-inches.

Bunkers, many large in size, were moved in the 2020 renovation to be brought into play for the big hitters off-the-tee.

Additionally, bunkers were placed in front of many greens, forcing pin seekers to fly the ball in the air onto the greens.

The greens are also smaller-in-size in relation to other PGA Tour tracks. Like the fairways, they too are bentgrass and will run around 12.5 on the Stimpmeter.

The course is darn near a mile long but still consists of 12 par-fours, four par-threes and just two par-threes.

In all, this is not that challenge of a course. In 2021, just three holes averaged over par. The par-four 18th ranked as the hardest hole on the course but only averaged 4.15. 

The Weather

As of the time of writing this, there is a 50-percent chance of heavy thunderstorms on Thursday. From there however, Friday is currently calling for a zero-percent chance of precipitation as both Saturday and Sunday are calling for just a 15-percent chance. Winds will be at the highest on Thursday at nine miles-per-hour before settling to five-or-six miles-per-hour across the rest of the week. Temperatures are set to remain at 89-degrees from Thursday through Friday before peaking at 93-degrees on Sunday. 

Key Stats

• Strokes Gained: Tee to Green (SG: TTG)

• Average Driving Distance

• Strokes Gained: Putting on Bentgrass (SG: PUTT Bentgrass)

• Par-Four Average Scoring

• Proximity to the hole from 200-plus yards

• Birdie-or-Better Percentage

• Bogey Avoidance

Betting Card

Rory McIlroy (+750)

I’m not sure if I’ve ever once gone with a single bullet on the PGA Tour but here we are. Per my stats based model, McIlroy was far-and-away my favorite this week. He is currently second on Tour in average driving distance, tenth in birdie-or-better percentage, 11th in SG: TTG, 16th in par-four average scoring, 18th in bogey avoidance, 24th in SG: PUTT Bermuda and 62nd in proximity to the hole from 200-plus yards. We haven’t seen him since The Open Championship where he finished seventh. Prior to that he was second at the Genesis Scottish Open, sixth at the Travelers Championship and 19th at the U.S. Open. He was also fourth here in 2021, when the event was last held at Caves Valley Golf Club.