OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. – Sunday at the BMW Championship is one of the most consequential days on the golf calendar.
Choose your own adventure:
Maybe it’s the race for East Lake, with the top 30 guaranteed a spot in the Tour Championship and exemptions into three of the four majors next year.
Perhaps it’s the final day to automatically qualify for the U.S. Ryder Cup team, with the top six players in the standings earning a spot on the squad that will look to win overseas for the first time in 30 years.
If that’s not intriguing enough, there’s also the jockeying for position at the top of the FedExCup standings (where $18 million awaits the champion); and for the attention of U.S. captain Zach Johnson; and for the recommendation of the Tour membership for Player of the Year.
Of course, there’s also the tournament at hand. Matt Fitzpatrick bogeyed the last hole to drop into a share of the lead with world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, but there’s eight other players within four shots of the lead at Olympia Fields.
Let’s break it all down:
TOP 30
There’s a mega-star currently just outside the number for East Lake:
Jordan Spieth, who is trying to avoid missing the season finale for the fourth time in the past six seasons.
Spieth’s position became even more precarious Saturday when he signed for a 2-over 72 in the third round, leaving him in a tie for 30th at the BMW.
Tour projections essentially have him needing to finish in the top half of the field – one spot better than he is currently – to advance to the Tour Championship. He also didn’t make East Lake in 2018-20, while in the midst of a slump. Spieth has posted seven top-10s this season, including a tie for sixth last week in Memphis, when he made three late bogeys – strokes that could prove crucially important in an increasingly tight race.
He’s projected three points behind the 30th and final qualifying spot.
Vastly improving his fortunes in the third round was Denny McCarthy, who has become accustomed to this late drama. A year ago, he came to the BMW at No. 36th in the standings and needing a high finish to advance to the season-ender for the first time in his career. He shot 66 in the third round and sat tied for 10th.
Full-field scores from BMW Championship
“I’m coming out and trying to win a golf tournament,” he said at the time. “I know I need to have a good finish. But winning is a pretty good finish, too.” But on Sunday, he retreated and shot 74. He wound up 37th in the standings.
It’s a similar story this year – and he’s hoping for a different ending. McCarthy carded a bogey-free 65 Saturday at Olympia Fields to climb all the way into a tie for seventh, four shots back. He’s also inside the green, at No. 30, with 18 holes to go.
In an eerie similarity to 2022, he said here Saturday, “I’m in the hunt to win a tournament, too.”
That McCarthy is even in this spot is a product of some bad luck. Last month, he was warming up on the range ahead of his first Open Championship when he hit a shot fat in the rain and injured his lower back. Since then, he had missed two cuts and tied for last at the playoff opener in Memphis, plummeting him in the standings, to No. 34.
McCarthy said he won’t pay attention to the massive leaderboards or fret about the projections on Sunday.
“If I come out with the same mindset I did stepping on 1 tee today where I’m not fazed by anything, and it doesn’t matter what kind of bad shots I hit and just keep moving on, that’s all I can control,” he said. “We’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
East Lake isn’t the only way that McCarthy could lock down the major exemptions; he sits 37th in the world, after the best season of his career, so he would earn an invitation to the 2024 Masters if he maintains that top-50 position at the end of the calendar year.
Overall, three players are projected to move inside the top 30: Fitzpatrick, the tournament co-leader; Rose, who sits in a tie for seventh; and McCarthy. In corresponding moves, Spieth would drop out (27th to 31st), as would Colonial winner Emiliano Grillo (23rd to 32nd) and John Deere Classic champ Sepp Straka (24th to 33rd).
FEDEXCUP LEAD
Just like last year, Scheffler is projected to be the FedExCup leader heading into the last event of the Tour season.
A year ago in Atlanta, Scheffler ballooned his advantage to six shots heading into the final round, but he shot 73 and was passed by Rory McIlroy, who captured his third FedExCup.
At the moment, Scheffler would start at 10 under at East Lake, two shots ahead of Jon Rahm and three clear of Rory McIlroy. Lucas Glover and Fitzpatrick would round out the top 5, respectively.
McIlroy trails Fitzpatrick and Scheffler by three shots here in Chicago, and even if he can’t make up the final-round deficit, McIlroy has his eye on another leaderboard.
“Even if I don’t win, I’m still going to be in a great spot going into East Lake,” McIlroy said. “The higher up you are on that board going into East Lake, the better chance you have.”
Since the starting-strokes system was implemented in 2019, the leader entering the event has twice gone on to win.
CAPTAIN’S PICKS
It hasn’t been the kind of summer that Sam Burns was hoping for, especially not after he looked (and was) unbeatable at the WGC-Match Play. Since then, he has just a single top-10, denting his season-long prospects but also damaging his hopes for a captain’s pick for his first Ryder Cup team. Entering the BMW, Burns sat 12th in the team standings.
Burns didn’t do much across the first two rounds at Olympia Fields either, but that changed Saturday when he tied the course record (shot a day earlier by Max Homa) with an 8-under 62 that put him just four shots off the BMW lead. The sizzling round didn’t just propel him back inside the top 30 of the FedExCup race (to No. 19), after beginning the week on the number – it also gave Johnson something sparkly to look at.
“At the end of the day, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to make the Ryder Cup. I want nothing more,” Burns said. “But that’s a goal that’s different than coming out here and playing golf. I think, for me, it’s just trying to put a good game plan together and executing.”
Sam Burns projected inside the FedExCup top 30 after this chip-in! 👀 #BMWChamppic.twitter.com/wWuSAwjJHa
— Golf Central (@GolfCentral) August 19, 2023
Meanwhile, it wasn’t as productive of a day for another cup hopeful, Lucas Glover, who bogeyed two of his last four holes and managed only a third-round 69 to slide down the leaderboard, into a tie for 15th. The 43-year-old has won each of the past two weeks to become an out-of-nowhere prospect, but he likely needed to sustain his hot streak to earn one of the six wildcard picks.
Cam Young, ranked ninth in the standings, is also in a tie for 15th after three rounds.
RYDER CUP QUALIFICATION
Sunday is the final day to automatically qualify for the U.S. Ryder Cup team. Scheffler, Wyndham Clark and Patrick Cantlay are the only players who have locked up a spot on the American squad. Open champion Brian Harman, sitting in solo third here at the BMW, is also in good shape.
But the final two U.S. spots are up for grabs.
Brooks Koepka entered the week No. 5 in the standings, but his automatic spot could be in jeopardy depending on the final-round play of Homa and Xander Schauffele.
Homa, the 36-hole leader, played a seven-hole stretch in 5 over par Saturday but held it together to shoot 71, keeping him just two shots back of the final group. Schauffele’s third-round 67 vaulted him into the four-way tie for seventh place.
As a result, Homa and Schauffele could bump out Koepka for the last of the six automatic spots. (Schauffele must finish solo ninth or better, while Homa has to be solo 10th or better.) Though it makes for a juicy storyline in the ongoing Tour-LIV war, it seems unfathomable that Koepka would ultimately be left off the Ryder Cup team if he were to fall out of the top six. After moving to LIV, Koepka has only been eligible to earn Ryder Cup points at the majors. He tied for second at the Masters, won the PGA and finished inside the top 20 at the U.S. Open.
“Zach, last year, he said, ‘Well, I’d like to not have to pick you,’ and I said, ‘All right – there’s my promise. I’ll try to get an automatic,’” Homa said this week. “That’s been my goal since these playoffs started, to get into that top six. All that obviously takes some great golf; you’re playing against a lot of great players. It’s been fun keeping that goal in mind, though, because you’re competing against the best Americans, which is a tall task.”
PLAYER OF THE YEAR RACE
Scheffler could make the Player of the Year award even tighter with a victory Sunday at the BMW.
Scheffler currently trails Jon Rahm, 4-2, in the win department this season, but his fellow Tour members could be swayed by the quality of his victories (Players, Phoenix and perhaps, now, the second Tour playoff event), his strokes-gained metrics (2.465 total, tops on Tour by 0.2) and his Tour-best scoring average (68.59). The Player of the Year race continues through the end of the calendar year, though neither player is expected to compete in a Tour event this fall.
“This is now the second year where I’ve really been in the spotlight a lot, and I’d say there’s definitely challenges to it,” Scheffler said. “There’s a lot more energy that gets taken away from the course, and at this point in the year I’m definitely very tired and I’m looking forward to next week being done. But at the same time, I didn’t work this hard and for this long just to cash in the last two weeks and not really do my best. I just want to put my best foot forward and continue to trend in the right direction.”
Interestingly, neither player has won on Tour since the Masters in April, when Scheffler slipped the green jacket over Rahm’s broad shoulders. But that doesn’t mean that the players haven’t been padding their respective resumes. Scheffler’s streak of 19 consecutive finishes of 12th or better ended last month at The Open, where Rahm tied for second (six shots back of Harman). It was Rahm’s third top-10 of the major season; Scheffler had a pair of top-3s, at the PGA and U.S. Open.
Working against Rahm currently is that he hasn’t been at his best in the playoffs. First, he tied for 37th in Memphis. Now, he’s in a similar spot, T-38, with one round to go at the BMW.
If Scheffler beats another top field, on a championship test like Olympia Fields, that could go a long way with voters.
