DraftKings PGA DFS Picks: BMW Championship Cash and GPP Strategy

This article is part of our DraftKings PGA DFS Picks series.

BMW Championship

Purse: $20M
Winner's Share: $4M
FedEx Cup Points: 2,000 to the winner
Location: Castle Rock, Colo.
Course: Castle Pines Golf Club
Yardage: 8,130
Par: 72
2023 champion: Viktor Hovland (Olympia Fields)

Tournament Preview

Tournament Preview

There are so many eye-popping numbers in sports, numbers that at one time seemed unimaginable: 2,131 (Cal Ripken's consecutive games played), 100 (Wilt Chamberlain's points in one game), 18 (Jack Nicklaus' major titles). Of course, an 8,000-yard golf course is not an iconic accomplishment on par with those greats, but until not too long ago, it was equally unimaginable.

An 8,000-yard golf course. Who'd have thunk it?

The longest course in PGA Tour history will be in play this week at 8,130-yard Castle Pines Golf Club for the BMW Championship playoff event.

Now that we've got your attention (Hopefully! Maybe?), Castle Pines is at extreme altitude outside Denver and will play nowhere near 8,000 yards.

It actually will play at around 7,300, which would make it the *shortest* 8,000 yard course in the world.

But it still will be the biggest talking point leading up to the penultimate event in the PGA Tour season, one in which only the 50 best golfers get to play. And it will be interesting -- and critical -- to see which golfers best navigate the roughly 10 percent difference in club yardage.

Current PGA Tour pros have played at elevation before -- Mexico, Arizona, etc. -- but nothing like this. At least 6,000 feet above sea level and as high as 6,400, they will be more than a mile in the sky. (Hence the name Mile High Stadium in Denver.)

You basically know all the golfers, and we'll get to them in short order, but let's dive right into this course.

Castle Pines, a 1981 Nicklaus design, might be familiar to golf fans of a certain age. It played host to the quirky International for two decades from 1986 to 2006. The tournament used the Modified Stableford Scoring System, the one now in use at the Barracuda Championship. Back then, Castle Pines played some 500 yards shorter in the 7,600 range.

About 30 miles south of Denver and immersed in the Rocky Mountains, Castle Pines should be magnificent on TV, filled with stunning scenery and breathtaking vistas. 

Even though the holes won't play as long as listed on the scorecard, the yardages do catch your eye. Things start off with a nice, little 662-yarder to get the blood flowing. That's one of three 600-yarders -- also 655 and 601. There are 10 par-4s and the shortest is 439 (the longest is 514). All four par-3s are 200-plus, topping out at a svelte 254.

Yes, golfers will hit the ball much farther than they normally do. Four-hundred-yard drives will be commonplace. But there's more to Castle Pines than length. While driving distance will be more important than accuracy this week, the fairways are narrow-ish. There are 10 water hazards affecting 10 holes. There are 77 bunkers. The Kentucky bluegrass/fescue rough will be four inches tall. All that leads to multi-tiered bentgrass/poa medium-size greens averaging of 5,600 square yards while running a super speedy 13 on the Stimpmeter.

There are a lot of topographical changes, lots of fairway undulations, uphill and downhill, all of which likely will make Castle Pines a pretty hard walk. The weather shouldn't be too bad, with high temperatures in the 80s. We should see some rain the first two days -- but with only 50 golfers round completion should not be an issue. The wind should not be much of a factor.

Eight years ago, Nicklaus and his team did a complete redesign of the course and he said every hole has been modified in the past five years, including the addition of a couple of lakes.

We've fawned enough -- er, we mean, prepped you enough -- on the course. Let's look at the field.

All the usual suspects are here, plus some unusual ones -- not that they're weird, just that at the beginning of the season few could've predicted the likes of Matthieu Pavon, Max Greyserman and Taylor Pendrith would've been playing deep into the PGA Tour playoffs. (And that Jordan Spieth would not be.)

Here's where the top-30 situation stands:

26. Davis Thompson
27. Taylor Pendrith
28. Tom Hoge
29. Brian Harman
30. Denny McCarthy
---------------------------
31. Tommy Fleetwood
32. Chris Kirk
33. Corey Conners
34. J.T. Poston
35. Stephan Jaeger

The big prize that all the top-50s have received for advancing this far is placement in all eight of next year's $20 million Signature Events. Make it to next week's season-ending TOUR Championship and even more rewards await.

Now for lineup construction. History shows us that the majority of playoff events, including this one at all its different courses, are won by the top 10-15 guys -- the Schefflers, Schauffeles and McIlroys, etc. We want to get as many of them as possible into our lineup, at least two and maybe even three since some will dip into the low $9000s. But since the field is 50 and there is no cut, we have no reservations about turning to the lower-priced guys to fill out the lineup. The good news is, everyone will get four rounds. We'll add two or three guys from the low-$7,000s on down and hope they can sneak their way into a high or semi-high finish.

Castle Pines factoids: John Elway is on the club's executive committee and a board member. The PGA Tour's last big-time golf tournament in Colorado was a decade ago when the BMW was played at Cherry Hills, where Billy Horschel went on his torrid run en route to winning the FedEx Cup title. ... Per the official Golf Course Superintendents' fact sheet: "A herd of 250 elk co-exist around the golf course. Other wildlife on the course include deer, bobcat, mountain lion, bear, bald eagles, hawks and of course hummingbirds." Of course.

BMW Championship factoids: This is technically the third oldest golf tournament in the world, having started in 1899 as the Western Open before going on its meandering BMW road show. Only the Open Championship (1860) and U.S. Open (1895) are older. This will be the 121st edition. The tournament used to be exclusive to the Chicago area before the PGA Tour started traveling with this venerable event. BMW came on board as the title sponsor when the FedEx Cup playoffs began in 2007. 

Key Stats to Winning at Castle Pines

The most important indicators every week are current form and course history. "Key Stats" follow in importance.

• Driving Distance/Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee
• Strokes Gained: Approach
• Strokes Gained: Putting
• Proximity from 125-150 yards and 150-175 yards
• Birdie or Better Percentage

Past Champions

2023 - Viktor Hovland (Olympia Fields)
2022 - Patrick Cantlay (Wilmington Country Club)
2021 - Patrick Cantlay (Caves Valley)
2020 - Jon Rahm (Olympia Fields)
2019 - Justin Thomas (Medinah)
2018 - Keegan Bradley (Aronimink)
2017 - Marc Leishman (Conway Farms)
2016 - Dustin Johnson (Crooked Stick)
2015 - Jason Day (Conway Farms)
2014 - Billy Horschel (Cherry Hills)

Champion's Profile

The first thing that jumps out -- besides the course's length -- is the thread of top golfers that have won this event over the past decade, save Bradley, Leishman and Horschel, who still were/are stars in their own right. Expect the same this week.

Driving distance will help this week, for obvious and not-so-obvious reasons. You know the obvious. While the fairways are on the narrow side, and water lurks all around, accuracy will take a little bit of a back seat this week (but don't ignore it entirely).

The lightning-fast greens should favor the better putters.

The books expect a birdie-fest. The over/under from golfodds.com was set at 264.5, which is 23.5 under par.

DRAFTKINGS VALUE PICKS

Based on Standard $50K Salary Cap

$10,000+

Scottie Scheffler - $12,300 (Winning odds at the DraftKings Sportsbook: +330)
Lather, rinse repeat. If there's any concern, it's whether Scheffler's putter can get him into the mid-20s under par, which may be required to win. But he's gotten to at least 20-under four times already in 2024. With Ted Scott on his bag, you have to figure that Scheffler will have little trouble figuring club yardages in the thin, elevated air.

Xander Schauffele - $11,100 (+550)
Lather, rinse, repeat. Schauffele and Scheffler have shown they are in the mix almost every week. Last week, they both were top-5 and it would surprise no one to see it again. Schauffele had the edge last week and may again with the far better putter.

Viktor Hovland - $10,400 (+1800)
A look at Hovland's stats begs the question: How has his season been so bad? He is ranked eighth in SG: Off-the-Tee, 28th in Approach, 29th in Putting and 25th in Total. And yet last week's runner-up was only his second top-10 all year. Hovland is also ranked an unsightly 170th in Around-the-Green, but that can't be the issue by itself. Sometimes you just play better than your score, and vice versa.

$9,000-$9,990

Sam Burns - $9,400 (+3000)
The feeling here is that Burns is always a risky play because he's inconsistent. But he's been playing very well after a midseason swoon and tied for fifth last week. It was his seventh top-10 of the season, though they've been on the quiet side because he hasn't really been in contention late on a Sunday. If Castle Pines mandates a lot of birdies to win, one of the best putters in the field is not a bad place to turn.

Wyndham Clark - $9,200 (+2800)
One of the narratives already forming this week is that the Colorado native has played Castle Pines more than anyone else in the field and knows it better. And knows the effects of the elevation better. No argument here. Like Burns, Clark is also playing much better after a midseason slump, with top-10s in three of his past four PGA Tour starts, plus a tie for 14th at the Olympics. He is ranked top-20 for the season in both SG: Off-the-Tee and Putting.

$8,000-$8,900

Akshay Bhatia - $8,400 (+5500)
Honestly, the entire $8,000s are a dead zone for us this week. We're picking one, Bhatia, just to pick one. Of course, we like him best among the 10 guys in the 8's. Bhatia tied for 12th last week, his best showing since his soul-crushing runner-up at the Rocket Mortgage. Maybe it took some time for him to get over it. He ranked sixth in the field in putting at TPC Southwind. Bhatia won the 2023 Barracuda played at elevation, some 5,800 feet worth in Truckee, Calif.

$7,000-$7,900

Robert MacIntyre - $7,600 (+5000)
MacIntyre has been driving the ball farther than most of the guys in this field and putting better than almost all of them -- all but Schauffele, in fact, over his last 24 rounds. The Scotsman is coming off another great week with a tie for seventh at Memphis. His place in the TOUR Championship is secure.

Taylor Pendrith - $7,300 (+8000)
Pendrith would be in the TOUR Championship if it started today, sitting 27th in points. So he has a lot to play for. Fortunately for him, he's been playing quite well. Last week's T22 was his 12th top-25 of the year, half of which have doubled as top-10s. He had a pair of fifth-place finished before that, one at the Barracuda at elevation (see: Bhatia). Pendrith is ranked 12th on Tour in SG: Putting.

$6,000-$6,900

Eric Cole - $6,500 (+10000)
Cole tied for 18th at Memphis to become one of three golfers to jump inside the top 50 last week. It was the second tournament in a row in which he closed with a 63. In his past six starts, Cole has three top-10s plus that T18, salvaging a poor season before it was too late. At No. 46 in points, he has an arduous task ahead to crack the top 30 but has the putter to make a run at it.

Max Greyserman - $6,300 (+7500)
No matter what happens this week, Greyserman's season is a huge success. He'll be in all the Signature Events next season. Of course he'd still like to make a run at the TOUR Championship, but beginning in 47th place makes that an uphill climb (perfect for Castle Pines?). The oddsmakers think plenty highly of Greyserman, who at 75-1 has lower odds than Bradley, Sepp Straka, Pendrith and Cole.
 
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