BMW Championship

Willy Z has finally broken through and won his first PGA Tour event, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Zalatoris battled all week and ultimately defeated Sepp Straka in a playoff. It’s no secret the critics have been all over Zalatoris, grilling his putting abilities and his recent struggles with not being able to close a tournament when it counted. Most notably Zalatoris lost in a playoff to Juston Thomas at this year’s PGA Championship. Zalatoris has also missed tons of putts down the stretch that he very easily could have made. Will’s putting has been his Achilles heel this season, but it wasn’t last week. The determination and grit shown throughout last week’s event and the whole year for the matter has been unwavering. If there is somebody to watch not only for his physical abilities but for his mental fortitude, Zalatoris is the man to watch. 

In just two short days a lot has happened surrounding the PGA Tour. For starters Cam Smith has withdrawn from the BMW Championship the second leg of the playoffs. He withdrew due to hip discomfort, now while this could be possible it seems that there is more to this story than simply just hip discomfort. Nevertheless at the end of the day Cam could be feeling sore and doesn’t feel confident enough to compete. We will see how things play out at the Tour Championship at East lake in a few weeks. OF all things that happened this week that was the least exciting. As of Tuesday morning the PGA Tour and Jay Monahan held a special players only meeting that included Tiger Woods. The premise of the meeting was to talk about LIV Golf and where the players and the tour stand. We can only speculate on what’s happened behind those doors but one thing for sure, Tiger Woods made a special trip to Delaware for this meeting so the Tour and Monahan mean business. Finally the last insane thing that happened this week is Patrick Reed has filed the newest lawsuit, this time Reed and his team of Saudi lawyers are going after Brandel Chamblee and the Golf Channel. Reed is suing Brandel Chamblee, the PGA Tour and the Golf Channel for defamation of character and he will be seeking upwards of $750 million in damages. This is yet another unusual situation because the only person who actually defamed Reed’s character would be Brandel, but at the end of the day nothing Brandel said about Reed was all pretty factual. Reed claimed he was leaving the PGA Tour in the hopes of playing less golf and now Reed is competing on the China circuit which in fact would have him playing the same amount if not more golf with almost double the travel. All and all the claim is ludicrous and almost has little to no validity in the end, and on top of the suit itself the money he is asking for is absurd in its own right. It’s safe to say golf will get extremely interesting in the time leading up to the Tour Championship. 

Despite all of that drama, the playoffs roll on. This week the tour heads to Wilmington Country Club in Wilmington, Delaware for the BMW Championship. As the playoffs press on the field sizes shrink. Last week the field was filled with the top 125, this week the field is cut down to the top 70 in the FedEx Cup rankings and finally at East Last it drops down to the top 30. This week is when things get very interesting. Anybody in the field can not only win, but they can move up significantly in the points race. As things currently stand right now Will Zalatoris has taken over first place in the rankings closely behind him is Scottie Scheffler who trails by less than 150 points. The next closest after Scottie is Cam Smith who is trailing by over 1000 points, but he is not in the field this week so his ranking could drop him potentially out of the top five. The second event is the most important because you can either extend your lead to the point where it’s impossible for anybody to catch you or you can jump from 70th to a comfortable top 10 spot with a chance to win the $18 million grand prize. As for this week, keep an eye on Will Zalatoris, he won't win but he’s very likely to finish top 15 at the very worst. As for the winner, it has to be Tony Finau. Tony not only knows how to win, he knows how to win when it counts. Just last week Tony notched a top five finish and was only four shots out of first. His game is very much trending in the right direction and he is poised for another great playoff event and potentially his second playoff win in just two years. (Mike)

 It has been said many times already, but the golf fan is the real loser in all of this LIV stuff. We are seeing the biggest non-majors of the year lack some of the stars most people are familiar with. We constantly are hearing about the pathetic amount of money these guys are playing for, which never does seem to be enough. Seems that there is at least one lawsuit a week now. There is not an end to any of this in the near future and the longer this goes on the more the fans will continue to lose. I hope the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour have a way forward to bring some fans in, but I certainly am not optimistic about things improving for the common fan anytime soon. 

I do think there is something to be said about Tiger Woods flying in the top PGA players about LIV Golf. It is certainly not going anywhere and it will be interesting to see what comes from yesterday‘s meeting. Justin Thomas has already stated that having Tiger Woods there was very critical and that nothing in mens golf is successful without Tiger Woods backing it. Tiger has a historic golf legacy already, but if he can once again improve the Tour all while killing LIV golf…the legend around him will be bigger than ever. (Tyler)

  Pick’s of the Week:

Tyler:  As for the golf this week, my pick for this week is Sam Burns. He is not the household name to the average sports fan, but he has had quite the year. Even with his monster year, he still seems to fly under the radar too often for a guy with his talent and resume. Since this is the first time I will have seen Wilmington CC I am not sure what to expect, but Sam Burns is a great pick to get it done this week and make a charge to win the big prize next week at East Lake.

 My sleeper for this week is Keith Mitchell. He is an excellent driver of the golf ball and I think that will be very important this week. Other parts of his game often let him down, but he usually finds a couple tournaments a year to put it all together. We saw last week with Stratka that someone can be playing some awful golf and then just turn it on one week. This week I expect it to be Keith. With the field going from 70 to 30 next week there are plenty of guys that will be playing with a lot on the line. A lot of lesser known guys will have big weeks as they make their final push of the season. (Tyler)