This Thursday kicks off the BMW Championship, the second and penultimate playoff of the FedEx Cup. A total of 50 players start the tournament and only the top thirty will access the Tour Championship next week at East Lake. It is played at the Castle Pines Golf Club in Denver, Colorado, and the first objective, therefore, is to secure a place among the top 30. It’s not easy. We are talking about a forty percent cut.
What’s going to happen this week? It’s impossible to guess. The combinations are almost infinite. Mathematically it is very difficult to establish with certainty who is safe from any sorpasso. Really, it’s impossible from Robert MacIntyre, twelfth place in the FedEx, to the first, but from there the probabilities are very diverse. Thus, in these cases, it is best to resort to history to get an approximate idea of what is going to happen.
That’s what we’ve done. We analyze the last twelve years of the FedEx Cup. From 2012 until now. It turns out that the player who was better ranked has left the BMW below 30th place and therefore has been left out of the Tour Championship was Rickie Fowler in 2016. The golfer from California arrived at the BMW in 22nd place, practically convinced that he was untouchable, but a series of caroms ended with his bones outside of East Lake. He surely even had the trip to Atlanta closed.
Pulling from that example, the biggest of the last twelve years, we can say that of those who play this week, Aaron Rai, and those who are better ranked than him, can sleep soundly and book a restaurant for next week in Atlanta. History says they can’t fall. The Englishman, of course, occupies 21st place in the FedEx Cup.
Fowler’s thing was something exceptional, but yes, history tells us that all those who are between 25th and 30th place can already be careful these days and play well, otherwise they can easily be left out of the final. There are many cases in the last twelve years of players who started the BMW in 25th or 26th place and ended up outside of East Lake. In this situation now are: Jason Day (25), Davis Thompson (26), Taylor Pendrith (27), Tom Hoge (28), Brian Harman (29) and, of course, Denny McCarthy (30), known as the bubble man.
Another fact that history throws at us. Never since 2012 have more than four golfers fallen into the abyss. This year we could be close to that figure, since the reality is that there is a lot of equality in points, although obviously it will depend on how those who are in those positions between 25 and 35 play. The first five who are out this week are: Tommy Fleetwood (31), Chris Kirk (32), Corey Conners (33), JT Poston (34) and Stephan Jaeger (35). Of course, all those who play this BMW have the mathematical possibility of getting into the Tour Championship, starting with Keegan Bradley, who occupies 50th place.
The accounts are much simpler above. Only Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele can reach the Tour Championship in the first position of the FedEx Cup. However, to surpass Scheffler, Schauffele only serves to win and be fifth or worse.
