BANK OF UTAH CHAMPIONSHIP
Purse: $6M
Winner's Share: $1.08M
FedEx Cup Points: 500 to the Winner
Location: Ivins, Utah
Course: Black Desert Resort
Yardage: 7,421
Par: 71
2024 winner: Matt McCarty
Tournament Preview
If it doesn't seem as if the PGA Tour has been around much lately, you're not wrong. There have been only three tournaments in the past eight weeks.
But now the Tour will begin a final, furious four-week sprint to the end of the 2025 season. It's a monthlong stretch in which careers will be made, or not. And, with fewer Tour cards available than ever before, there will be more heartache than ever before.
The Tour will distribute 2026 playing cards to the top 100 players in the FedExCup Standings, down from the longstanding 125. Seventy of those 100 have already been accounted for by the golfers who made the playoffs. Players currently ranked in the 70s in the standings are safe. But after that? Some might be safe, some surely aren't.
So in this second edition of the Bank of Utah Championship -- yes, that's a new sponsor -- the 132-man field is filled with golfers chasing what may be about 20 available spots. In the wide of swath of players situated between 80th and 150th in the standings, all but a dozen are in the field, and some of those missing are already exempt for next season based on prior tournament wins or some other qualification category.
Still, there are actually some bigger names playing, notably Max Homa, Billy Horschel and Jason Day. You can also include Luke Clanton and Sahith Theegala if you'd like.
Welcome to Utah, Max Homa ⛳️
With 6 PGA TOUR victories to his name and a major presence on every leaderboard, Homa brings championship pedigree to Black Desert.
— Bank of Utah Championship (@BOUChampionship) October 17, 2025
🎟️ Tickets still available — get yours now! pic.twitter.com/lBASmKwHBR
There are even two players among the top 20 in the world rankings here, No. 17 Alex Noren and No. 19 Maverick McNealy.
Noren is an interesting case. He's been on fire in Europe, winning twice since August. He also tied for third at the Wyndham. But since he missed much of the year with an injury, he's only 111th in the FedExCup Fall Standings. If he doesn't get into the top 100, something he is clearly trying to do by going to Utah, he could also gain entry to the PGA Tour next season via a top-10 position in the DP World Tour's Race to Dubai rankings. He's currently eighth there, with three events left in their season. He would like to play in the final two big ones the first two weeks of November -- in Abu Dhabi and Dubai -- so he'd surely like to solve his top-100 issue this week.
The defending champion this week is Matt McCarty, who won at 23-under, three better than Stephan Jaeger, who also is back.
Many tournaments like to invite young amateur players, usually from the local area. This week, they are Kihei Akina, a freshman at BYU who played last year and missed the cut by a stroke; Connor Howe, a fifth-year senior at Georgia Tech who is a Utah native and has played some Korn Ferry Tour events; and David Leichty, a freshman at Utah Tech (yes, that's apparently a real school).
We should note that for the second straight year, the best golfer from Utah, Tony Finau, is not in the field.
The PGA Tour returned to the Beehive State last year for the first time in six decades. The tournament was called the Black Desert Championship. Now, the Bank of Utah has come on board in a three-year agreement to be the title sponsor. The purse has dropped from $7.5 million to $6 million.
Black Desert is a Tom Weiskopf/Phil Smith design, Weiskopf's final work that opened in late 2022 just months after his passing. It is located in the southwestern corner of Utah, right near Nevada and Arizona and not that far from Las Vegas (about 125 miles). The course is at elevation, more than 3,000 feet, so it will play at far less than the scorecard distance, even less than 7,000 yards.
Black Desert is a rocky, sandy desert track built in the middle of a lava field. Chiseled out of it, actually. (And before you picture volcanos with fiery lava spewing out, no, that's not this.)
There are incredible vistas and topography, wide fairways (averaging 30 yards but far greater in spots) with severe undulations and angles and large multi-tiered greens. They are bentgrass, average 7,000 square feet and will run a speedy 12 on the Stimpmeter. There are only 44 bunkers and water comes into play on two holes. The rough will again be two inches, according to the Golf Course Superintendents fact sheet.
They added 50 yards to the course since last year, thanks to new back tees on four holes. There are some very long holes, though they won't play that long because of thin air. There are four par-4s over 500 yards and two par-3s at 200ish-plus. The three par-5s at Nos. 7, 9 and 18 are in the 580-600 range and will play relatively short, so be on the lookout for a potential closing eagle. The 18th was the easiest hole on the course last year, and there were three eagles and more than 40 birdies. The most fun hole might be the 322-yard drivable 14th, where there were also three eagles.
As for the weather, it should be a good week, with high temperatures in the 70s all four days with little chance of rain. It likely will be windy, but it's often windy in the desert.
Utah golf factoids: The last PGA Tour event in the state before last year had been the 1963 Utah Open. As you'll recall, the late Terry Jacobs won one of his four PGA Tour titles that week. ... The LPGA Tour played a tournament at this very same Black Desert course last April.
Key Stats to Winning at Black Desert
The most important indicators every week are current form and course history. "Key Stats" follow in importance.
• Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
• Strokes Gained: Approach/Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green
• Approach from 150ish yards (125-150 and 150-175)
• Strokes Gained: Putting
• Birdie Average/Birdie or Better Percentage
Past Champions
2024 winner: Matt McCarty
Champion's Profile
Last year, McCarty opened with a 9-under 62 en route to a 23-under winning total. But he didn't even have the first-round lead. That belonged to Adam Svensson, who shot a 60 but faded thereafter into a tie for 25th.
What we saw was that driving -- both distance and accuracy -- were not as important as other facets of the game. That's not the say that long drivers could thrive this week -- they always can, as long as they don't hit the ball too far adrift.
McCarty ranked 24th in SG: Approach, sixth in Around-the-Green and seventh in Putting. As for runner-up Stephan Jaeger: 17th in Approach, third in Around, 18th in Putting. A shot behind Jaeger were Lucas Glover, who ranked a very Glover-like first in Approach and 60th in Putting, and Kevin Streelman, 42nd in Approach and first in Putting.
Clearly, these four golfers got to the top of the leaderboard in vastly different ways. The cut line last year at one of the 10 easiest tournaments of 2024 was 5-under.
The over/under on this year's winning score is 262.5 per golfodds.com -- 21.5 under par. The over/under on the first round is a way-low 61.5.
DRAFTKINGS VALUE PICKS
Based on Standard $50K Salary Cap
$9,000-$9,900
Alex Noren - $10,200 (Winning odds at the DraftKings Sportsbook: +1800)
An injured Noren missed the end of last year and the first four-plus months of 2025, at which point he was outside the top 70 of the OWGR. He got hot in late summer, tying for seventh at the 3M Open and for third at the Wyndham before heading to Europe and winning not only the British Masters but the DP World Tour's flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship. His last start was T27 two weeks ago at the Baycurrent Classic. This will be his 11th PGA Tour start in 2025.
Michael Thorbjornsen - $10,000 (+1600)
If the Stanford alum could've putted even a little bit two weeks ago in Japan, he could've beaten Xander Schauffele. He finished solo third after missing makeable putt after makeable putt on the back nine on Sunday. At 72nd in the point standings, Thorbjornsen has his 2026 card. But another perk is finishing inside the top-60 at season's end, which would get him into the first two Signature Events at Pebble Beach and Riviera. He's also looking for his maiden Tour win. Thorbjornsen is a very aggressive player at a track where you have to make a bunch of birdies.
$9,000-$9,900
Kevin Yu - $9,500 (+2200)
Yu had a very successful season, one in which he made the playoffs. He's had top-20s in his two fall starts. At No. 61 in points, he still has a lot to player for the rest of the season, specifically cracking the top 60 by season's end to get into two early 2026 Signature Events. Yu is perhaps the most accurate driver among the longest hitters, and he's also top-40 on approach.
Davis Thompson - $9,400 (+2200)
Thompson agonizingly missed the playoffs by one spot, finishing 71st in points. Since the Wyndham, where he tied for 11th, he's tied for 19th at the Procore and for 21st at the Sanderson Farms. Don't be swayed by Thompson's terrible season-long putting stats, currently ranked 143rd. He's been better of late and is midrange in this field over his past 24 rounds.
$8,000-$8,900
Matt Wallace - $8,800 (+3500)
Wallace is 93rd in points after a tie for 10th last time out at the Baycurrent Classic in Japan -- in a far tougher field than this one. He's a former top-25 player in the OWGR and is still ranked 67th. At his best, he's one of the best players in this field. He had top-25s at both the PGA Championship and U.S. Open, and how many guys in this field can say that? Perhaps Wallace's biggest trouble spot is driving accuracy, something that should be easier to correct this week on the wide-open fairways of Black Desert.
Max Homa - $8,500 (+4000)
Homa is grinding. He doesn't need to be playing in all the fall events, or any of them -- his card is secure all the way through 2028. But he wants to put the bad taste of 2025 behind him, wants to finish inside the top-100. He's currently at No. 100 after two top-20s and three made cuts in three fall starts. Wide fairways and big greens should help him this week.
William Mouw - $8,100 (+4500)
Mouw has his card through 2027 after winning the opposite-field ISCO over the summer for his first Tour victory. What we like was that he kept playing well -- T7 his next time out at the 3M Open and top-20 last time out in Japan. Mouw's two best clubs are driver (25th in SG: Off-the-Tee) and putter (33rd in SG: Putting, and that's never a bad thing. He's also ranked 31st in GIR.
$7,000-$7,900
Victor Perez - $7,800 (+5500)
We've liked Perez often in the second half of the season. He's gotten better, but still sits outside the top-100 at 105th. That's after a T11 last time out at the Sanderson Farms. We've said over and over that his stats are better than his results -- in other words, playing better than he's scoring. Eventually, the results should come. Perez is sixth in greens in regulation, a top-20 player in SG: Approach and top-50 in SG: Putting. That's really verry, very good.
Mark Hubbard - $7,700 (+6500)
Hubbard is one of those guys in the 80s in the standings -- certainly good to be there, but not enough to get complacent. He's made his past nine cuts going back to June, including all three fall events so far. He's ranked about 80th on Tour on approach and about 40th in putting. That may not sound great, but in this field it is.
Lee Hodges - $7,400 (+5500)
Hodges has some work to do, currently 109th in the standings. He's missed only eight cuts all year but has five top-25s. It's a little surprising, given his stats. He's just outside the top 25 on Tour in SG: Approach, and he's top-100 in every other strokes-gained metric. He tied for eighth here a year ago.
Taylor Montgomery - $7,400 (+7500)
Montgomery has missed only eight cuts all year, which isn't bad. In fact, when you consider he missed six in a row midway through the season, it's great. He's coming off his best finish of the season, a tie for sixth at the Sanderson Farms. It's just a question of how many putts Montgomery can make this week. And, ranked second on Tour in SG: Putting, he could make a lot.
$6,000-$6,900
David Skinns - $6,800 (+12000)
The 43-year-old Englishman missed the cut in eight of his first 10 starts this season. Coming into this week, he's made seven of his past nine. He's a top-50 player in SG: Approach and greens in regulation and, down here in the $6,000s that's a pretty rare find. Skinns is even among the longest hitters on Tour -- not bad for an "old guy."
Adam Svensson - $6,500 (+20000)
Svensson has had a brutal season -- he's not even in the top 150 in the standings. One of his many trouble spots this season is on the tee -- he is woefully short. That won't kill him this week. But he's highly accurate with his driver, and he's among the best players in the field on approach and around the green. Throw in the great memories of shooting a 60 here last year and that should be enough to boost him to the weekend.
Browsing Len's picks for the Bank of Utah Championship? See how they look in RotoWire's PGA DFS Lineup Optimizer.
