For those who may not know: today, Thursday, the BMW Championship kicks off, the second play off of the FedEx Cup, where the top fifty in the ranking play and where the exclusive list of thirty players who will compete in the grand final, the Tour Championship, will also be formed next week at East Lake.
The peculiarity of this tournament: it is played at the Castle Pines Golf Club, (Castle Rock, Colorado), on a beautiful and very long course that is located almost 2,000 meters above sea level, with all that this implies. Of course, all the players have had to adjust their game, their measurements: the ball flies more at altitude (around ten percent more), but in a certainly inconsistent way, since the trajectory of the ball greatly influences the equation; the higher, the more flight.
In this scenario, physical finesse also becomes important, since we are talking about a field of more than 7,000 meters in length (over 8,000 yards) and in a certainly demanding orography that must be managed with the pertinent reduction of the oxygen level. As the details end up deciding, the adaptation and physical finesse can be decisive this week. “I’ve already told my caddie that this week we’ll limit the conversations on certain fairways, to focus only on breathing well,” said Ludvig Aberg, with a certain Nordic jest.
Scheffler and Schauffele will fight to get to East Lake first, although Xander needs to win and Scottie to finish fifth or worse to unseat him. From there, we will have to be aware, for example, if Hovland is able to continue climbing in the ranking, to give himself one last chance in Atlanta to defend his FedEx Cup 2023 champion title. And the performance of others like Matsuyama, in great shape, or Rory McIlroy, a real mystery.
But we are going to focus now on a different look at this second play off. We will do it in Ryder key, especially from the European side’s point of view. We have thirteen European players in Colorado and, compared to the last squad, the one from 2023 in Rome, we quickly realize that the litmus test usually does not deceive. In this case, the test of a second play off, with very restricted entry. Of the thirteen Europeans present, eight were in Rome (Rory, Lowry, Fleetwood, Hovland, Aberg, Fitzpatrick, Straka and MacIntyre).
The interesting thing, since the litmus test does not deceive, is to check who the other five are, because any of them we could have in a little over a year at Bethpage. In reality, of those five only four count, since the German Stephan Jaeger is not a member of the European circuit nor does he plan to be at the moment; the Ryder is not in his plans. He is almost one more American: he has only played in his career, and he is 35 years old, eight tournaments of the regular European circuit calendar, and two of them are hybrids that are played on American soil (Barracuda, editions of 2022 and 2023). Jaeger, as he has been seen this year, could be an interesting signing for Luke Donald, but he cannot and should not be counted on.
Let’s go, then, with the other four. They are Thomas Detry, Matthieu Pavon, Alex Noren and Aaron Rai. Any of them fits perfectly in the Bethpage 2025 team, including the tireless Noren. However, they are going to have to fight very hard with guys from LIV like Jon Rahm or Tyrrel Hatton, either through direct qualification, if the Spaniard and the Englishman stand out in the Majors, or through the captain’s choices, since Donald would not hesitate to call them to the ranks as long as their performance was good in the Saudi league. In some way, these play offs help us to establish a very specific circle of candidates, although then the Ryder year of qualification puts each one in his place and, let’s not forget, not even the eight who were in Rome and today are in Colorado, have anything assured. A Ryder year of qualification, by the way, that starts next week with the dispute of the British Masters, which is the first tournament that counts.
A final note referring to the American team, although those of the stars and stripes are now pending the Presidents Cup. Of the twelve players who represented the United States in Rome, nine are present in this second play off, only Spieth and Fowler are missing, who have not earned their place in the field, and Koepka, who obviously could not be due to his membership in LIV. Well, the litmus test usually does not deceive.
