After a wonderful week in Ireland, the DP World Tour now heads to its headquarters for its flagship event as the BMW PGA Championship is staged with the backdrop of the Ryder Cup looming on the horizon to add to the interest in what is always a big event.
It was big for Shane Lowry as he won the tournament which was reduced to 54 holes last year due to the passing of the Queen in the middle of the event. The Irishman is back looking to defend the title and will do so against a top level field.
Recent Winners
2022 – Shane Lowry
2021 – Billy Horschel
2020 – Tyrrell Hatton
2019 – Danny Willett
2018 – Francesco Molinari
2017 – Alex Noren
2016 – Chris Wood
2015 – Byeong-Hun An
2014 – Rory McIlroy
2013 – Matteo Manassero
The Course
The West Course at Wentworth is the home of this tournament and with the touches it has had done to it over the last 10 years it is now a stunning facility. The one thing that hasn’t changed around here is the tightness of the track. It is a treelined course with some undulations on the opening nine and some tough holes on the back nine. The track finishes with two of the best par 5s on the European Tour.
The course itself is a par 72 which measures 7,267 yards so it isn’t overly long but after an intensely hot summer month have been some heavy showers around in the week leading up to the event so it could play that full yardage. We’re looking for good drivers of the ball this week and those with a wonderful iron game. These greens are big and they are full of undulations so the leaderboard tends to be packed with good approach players. The two main statistics tend to be greens in regulation and scrambling so those who are more comfortable with the irons in hand should be favoured.
The Field
This is a Rolex Series event so even though the PGA Tour Fall Season begins this week, the field for this event is the best of the year on the DP World Tour with four members of the top 10 in the world here and another three in the top 20. World number two Rory McIlroy is in the field this week as is number three Jon Rahm and number four Viktor Hovland. Matt Fitzpatrick completes the top 10 members here while the three top 20 players are Tyrrell Hatton, Tommy Fleetwood and Tom Kim.
Such is the quality of the field there are stars everywhere you look this week. The defending champion Shane Lowry will be joined by his soon to be teammates Sepp Straka, Justin Rose, Robert MacIntyre, Nicolai Hojgaard and Ludwig Aberg. International stars such as Adam Scott, former winner Billy Horschel, Ryan Fox, Min Woo Lee and Tom Hoge are here as is Adrian Meronk, who has a point to prove, and the winner in Ireland last week in Vincent Norrman who is looking for successive wins.
Market Leaders
The new FedExCup champion Viktor Hovland is a 7/1 favourite to win the title this week. The Norwegian will be eyed as one of the key men in the Ryder Cup in two weeks and has the chance to show that he is one of the best in Europe this week. Hovland has only played this event three times and has a T11 and a T5 in that time, and might actually have been closer than fifth last year if we had all four rounds. He is striping the ball from tee to green and suddenly his short game is much more enhanced than it was. He feels like the worthy favourite here.
Hovland is only half a point bigger on the best prices than Rory McIlroy, the man who was favourite to win his home open with nine to play last week but who like he has on a number of Sundays over the last couple of years fluffed his lines. That would be a concern at backing him at 15/2 but the Irishman does come alive around here. His last five starts have been 1-MC-2-T9-T2 so he probably shouldn’t be written off too quickly but those Sunday struggles is enough to put me off.
Jon Rahm is a point bigger at 17/2 to win this title. He has been a little quiet in recent times and Luke Donald in particular will be hoping that someone he will see as a potential talisman in Rome has a good week here. Rahm has had two spins around here and finished second on both occasions and flew round in 62 blows in the final round last year. That was in damp conditions though and with the temperatures set to rise through the week he won’t get those conditions here. His recent form doesn’t feel reflective of this price in my eyes.
Tommy Fleetwood has been looking like a winner in waiting in the latter stages of the last PGA Tour season but didn’t quite get over the line. Heading back down to the grade below that level he is entitled to be a leading runner, although in fairness this field matches up to any non-major or Players Championship field on the PGA Tour. That would be a bit of a concern but the conditions in Europe do suit him better. One top 10 finish in 12 starts is enough to put me off getting involved at 14/1.
Main Bets
I thought it was interesting that Justin Rose put a social media post out on Wednesday regarding his pro-am group but the most important part of the tweet was how he revealed he is back with Fooch on his bag and that feels like a significant thing to me. Fooch was on the Billy Horschel bag when he won around here a couple of years ago and Rose had most of his success with the veteran bagman as his caddy. That partnership had Rose as one of the best players in the game and with no shortage of motivation within Team Rose after he was granted a Ryder Cup wildcard pick, I expect Rose to add to his respectable record around here. He has finished twice here and has five top 10 finishes, two of which were in the last four years when he wasn’t at his best. Having won on the PGA Tour in 2023 he arrives with more confidence in his game and the way he strikes the ball around a course he knows so well he has to be a leading contender.
I’ve often thought that this track would be a good one for Nicolai Hojgaard and with him to make his Ryder Cup debut in a couple of weeks he also has plenty of motivation to show his best golf this week. Hojgaard was T20 on debut here a couple of years ago but missed the cut last year. I’m reluctant to read too much into that second effort as he was under par for the 36 holes he played and the goalposts moved after the first round. The Dane has won at the Ryder Cup course in Rome which isn’t too dissimilar to this place and he was fifth there earlier this season. He arrives of last four starting results of T6-T23-3-T5 which goes back to the Scottish Open and he heads up the Tour in strokes gained from tee to green. He feels a huge runner here.
Outsiders
I’ll go with three outsiders this week. Two of them are ones I took in Ireland last week that I’m not finished with yet but before those the first outsider is Joost Luiten. The Dutch player looks to be coming into a rich vein of form. We have known about his ball striking for the majority of his career but he is beginning to score as well. It has never fully clicked for him here as he has no top 10 finish around Wentworth yet he has five top 25 finishes so it isn’t like he is terrible, he just needs to put the four rounds together, something he has been doing much more often recently. Luiten has five top five finishes on the DP World Tour this season and another two top 10s and a lot of that form has come on classic tests like this. Luiten sits at five on the strokes gained tee to green stat on the Tour this season and gains strokes on the field putting. That all combined puts him as a dark horse this week.
Last week I played Connor Syme and Ross Fisher and the former placed for me and the latter was in the final group on the Saturday before the ridiculous pace of play within that three ball seemed to set him back which wasn’t ideal. Syme arrives in great form. He has gone T4-T3-T7 in his last three starts and ranked sixth from tee to green in Ireland last week. I do think form from last week will be relevant here because there is a similarity in the requirements of competing around both places so after the Scot placed for us I’m not ready to finish with him yet.
While Fisher got our hopes up last week only to fade away, I’m convinced he has a big week in him and it might very well be here. Fisher sits at 16 on the entire DP World Tour for strokes gained from tee to green so if he plays to that level in the long game department then he is likely to be competitive here because he has played this tournament so often that he’ll know all of the nuances on the greens. That is reflected in his recent form here where his last six starts have gone T9-T8-T31-T20-T35-MC so he has been competitive even though his overall form hasn’t been great in that time. Fisher was eighth in Denmark recently and T23 last week, which was so much better at halfway, and I think he’s an outside runner here.
Tips
Back J.Rose to win BMW PGA Championship (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 34.00 with Sky Bet (1/5 1-8)
Back J.Luiten to win BMW PGA Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 81.00 with Sky Bet (1/5 1-8)
Back N.Hojgaard to win BMW PGA Championship (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 41.00 with William Hill (1/5 1-8)
Back him here:
Back C.Syme to win BMW PGA Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 101.00 with 888sport (1/5 1-8)
Back R.Fisher to win BMW PGA Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 251.00 with 888sport (1/5 1-8)
Back them here:
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