Win probabilities: BMW Championship

DUBLIN, Ohio – Early Wednesday morning at an eerily quiet Muirfield Village, the most talked about golfer in the history of the game was playing a practice round with the most talked about golfer over the last month. It made for a very curious scene. One is returning to competitive golf for the first time in five months. The other is turning golf upside down, or perhaps bench pressing it to new places. One can only imagine the conversations between Tiger Woods and Bryson DeChambeau during the nine holes. Facial expressions seemed to convey a full gambit. It looked like periods of education, questioning and thought provoking subjects … and also those of revelry and humor both simple and complex. Whether they talked about shaft stiffness and spin rates or how cheap parmesan cheese smells like vomit we will never truly know … our curiosity remains. But theirs was likely, somewhat, satisfied. Woods is selective with his practice partners and DeChambeau knows it. Throughout his storied career, getting a practice round with Woods before a PGA TOUR event is something only a few have experienced. It is why when the 26-year-old was called out for inadvertently calling Woods old after this preparation round for the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, he laughed it off but yet still squirmed just a little. It’s a treat folks don’t want to jeopardize. In the early years of his career it would routinely be Mark O’Meara or maybe Jay Haas tagging along with Woods. On the odd occasion, caddie Steve Williams would be a conduit to laid back international players getting a spot. But generally speaking, prep time was a closed shop to other competitors. But as Woods matured in age, and continued to add to his golf wisdom, the doors began to open for more to fill the slots. Thanks to his injuries, Woods spent a lot of time watching golf from a distance. One could surmise curiosity was a small branch on his ever growing personal tree during this time. Over the last decade or so, Woods began to accept the advances of those who piqued his interest. Bubba Watson was shaping the ball in a way most couldn’t dream of and then found himself around the Woods camp. Jason Day, who like Woods grew up with an Asian mother, slipped in there as he began to hit his straps on course. Woods also began forging friendships with young players on TOUR who live near him in Florida. Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas come to mind as those who were part of his recovery from back surgery as motivators. And then there is DeChambeau. Perhaps the ultimate curiosity for all involved in golf right now. Already known as an outlier in the golf space thanks to his scientific based methods of analyzing the golf swing, DeChambeau has turned disruptor again with his recent bulking program. His play has once again thrust the distance debate back into golf. The six-time TOUR winner stacked on 40 pounds of muscle during the pandemic break and increased his distance off the tee significantly. He leads the PGA TOUR in driving distance (323 yards) and Strokes Gained: Off the Tee (+1.113). In his recent win at the Rocket Mortgage Classic he averaged a near obscene 350.6 yards off the tee for the event. He also led the field that week in Strokes Gained: Putting, the only player to do both and win since 2004. This distance dominance, paired with accuracy and touch, is something the TOUR hasn’t seen since a young Woods joined in the late 1990s and was miles ahead of the competition in strength, fitness and distance. He also had a wicked short game to go with it. So when DeChambeau asked Woods if they could have a hit on Wednesday at Muirfield Village, it brought together two big storylines. But it wasn’t really a surprise the answer was yes. The pair have already shared a connection through Bridgestone, the brand of ball both use, and they share a kinship in their interest in product testing. DeChambeau and Woods have been bonding for some time, a thrill for the former. “Back in the day, he was it. He was the golden star. He was the one everybody looked up to. Junior golfers that I played with were all inspired by Tiger and how far he hit it and how he dominated tournaments,” DeChambeau says. “I watched in just complete awe, going, man, how is he doing this, especially when you’re young and you know you can’t hit it more than 250 or something like that, he’s hitting it 330 back in the day. Even now, he’s hitting it pretty long. There was a couple holes he hit 320, 325. I’m like, that’s pretty good for his age. It’s amazing for his age.” How a 44-year-old Woods takes that last comment is yet to be seen but, in context, with multiple back surgeries behind him it isn’t far from fact. And DeChambeau stressed it is something the man himself says often. Woods was asked about DeChambeau earlier this week and had plenty of praise based on what he’d seen from afar. “He’s figured out a way to increase distance and maximize his efficiency with not only his driver but all of his clubs,” Woods said on Tuesday. “What Bryson has done is no easy task. He’s put in the time and has put in the reps, and he’s figured it out. He’s gotten stronger, faster, bigger, and has created more speed. But more importantly let’s look at the fact that he’s hitting it as straight as he is. “That part of the most difficult thing to do. The further you hit it, the more the tangent goes crooked … the fact that he’s figured that out and has been able to rein in the foul balls to me has been equally as impressive as his gains off the tee distance-wise.” Woods might not have been the one to ask for Wednesday’s round but he would have been happy to get an up close and personal look at DeChambeau 2.0. In turn, DeChambeau also got a sneak peek at Woods, who hasn’t played on TOUR for five months. “Whenever we play, I usually ask kindly. That’s the way it kind of goes about,” DeChambeau admitted Wednesday. “It was more of me wanting to see what he was doing actually to be honest with you. I’m always interested to see what new things he’s doing. And I think it was mutual. Obviously he likes playing with me. We’ve had a great relationship. We have great conversations. So it was just mutually beneficial and we had a lot of fun.” DeChambeau claimed there wasn’t much chatter about his newfound power game save a few jokes. Therein lies another key for Woods these days. Fun. In his early years of heightened mental focus it wasn’t a word often associated with Woods from others. But the 82-time TOUR winner loves to inject humor into his life and enjoys finding good targets who can appreciate the give and take. “First off, it’s amazing to get to play with Tiger. I respect him. I have the highest respect for him and what he’s done for the game and inspired a whole new generation and generations to come,” DeChambeau added. “He played a couple jokes on me today, just messing with me, I’ll keep it personal … but he’s worried about winning the tournament this week just like I am. I don’t feel like we talked too much about it.” If they did talk about it, Woods wasn’t giving anything away either. After all, they say curiosity killed the cat. “I never asked and we didn’t really talk about it. We talked about a lot of other different things and just had a normal practice round,” Woods said wryly as the pair split ways. Normal practice round? There’s no such thing with either of these two. Curiosity remains.

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AUSTIN, Texas – The bracket has been released for this week’s World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play, which will start Wednesday at Austin (Texas) Country Club. Among the intriguing matchups in the 16 four-man pools are the impending match between world No. 1 Jon Rahm and match-play specialist Patrick Reed. Former FedExCup champ Justin Thomas may face the toughest road out of pool play, while Bryson DeChambeau’s return to competition will include a rematch against Lee Westwood, with whom DeChambeau dueled in last year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. RELATED: Click here to sign up and play the Bracket Challenge The 64-man field is divided into 16 four-man pools. Players face each member of their pool once, with the player with the best record advancing to single-elimination rounds starting Saturday. Ties in pool play will be broken by sudden-death playoffs. Two rounds apiece will be played Saturday and Sunday to crown a champion. Billy Horschel is the defending champion after beating Scottie Scheffler, the current leader of the FedExCup, in the final match. Thomas, fresh off a T3 finish at the Valspar Championship, finds himself in the same pool as his good friend and noted match-play specialist Kevin Kisner, as well as Presidents Cup stalwart Marc Leishman and Luke List, who won this year’s Farmers Insurance Open. Kisner, who has a runner-up (2018) and victory (2019) in the Dell Technologies Match Play, and Thomas often trash talk when their alma maters, Georgia and Alabama, clash in college football. Thomas has advanced out of pool play just once in five appearances in this event. The former Alabama standout holds an 8-10-1 record in the tournament, highlighted by a fourth-place finish in 2018. Coincidentally, he opened that run by facing List, as he will on Wednesday, before getting the chance to exact revenge on Kisner. Kisner, the 2019 champion, beat Thomas, 2 and 1, in group play a year ago to curtail his chances. Kisner will first need to take on Leishman in what shapes as the perfect audition for his Presidents Cup claims. Leishman is 8-10-3 in the event but has never lost a Singles match at the Presidents Cup. Horschel finds himself in Group 12 with Belgium’s Thomas Pieters, recent AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am winner Tom Hoge and Australia’s exciting young prospect, Min Woo Lee, who is the brother of LPGA star Minjee Lee. Horschel also won the DP World Tour’s flagship event, the BMW PGA Championship, during his successful 2021. He is 31st in this season’s FedExCup. Hoge has been one of the TOUR’s strongest players this year, ranking fifth in the FedExCup. Lee won a Rolex Series event, the Genesis Scottish Open, last year, while Pieters picked up a Rolex Series win of his own at the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in January. It was his second win on the DP World Tour in a span of three starts. Rahm will need to get past Sebastian Munoz of Colombia and rookie Cameron Young, a rising star who has two runners-up this season and ranks 15th in the FedExCup, before getting a shot at Reed, who went 6-0 in match play in leading Augusta State to consecutive NCAA Championships before burnishing his match-play reputation at the Ryder and Presidents cups. Rahm was runner-up to Dustin Johnson at Austin Country Club in 2017 and returned to the quarterfinals last year before losing to Scheffler. Reed has made it to the Round of 16 twice (2016, 2018) but failed to advance any further. Scheffler, who has won twice on TOUR in his last four starts, is grouped with three Englishmen in Group 5. Scheffler, who famously dispatched Rahm in Singles at last year’s Ryder Cup, faces another player known for Ryder Cup success in Ian Poulter. Scheffler will then face world No. 46 Tommy Fleetwood and world No. 25 Matt Fitzpatrick, a former U.S. Amateur champion who has four top-10s in five starts in 2022. Jordan Spieth, who like Scheffler attended the nearby University of Texas, finds himself with three fellow major champions in Group 11: Keegan Bradley, Justin Rose and Adam Scott. Mackenzie Hughes of Canada will get his chance to impress International Presidents Cup captain Trevor Immelman when he takes on three Americans in Group 8. Hughes will face 2020 FedExCup champ Dustin Johnson, a past winner of this event; three-time TOUR winner Max Homa and young star Matthew Wolff. Collin Morikawa, who was a disappointing 0-2-1 in his tournament debut last year, headlines Group 2 along with Jason Kokrak, who’s won three times in the past two seasons, match-play specialist Sergio Garcia and Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre. Norway’s Viktor Hovland highlights Group 3. He’ll face another European, Honda Classic champion Sepp Straka of Austria, and a pair of Americans in Cameron Tringale and Will Zalatoris. Tringale enters the week ranked 51st in the world and is seeking his first Masters invitation in seven years by cracking the top 50 at week’s end. Zalatoris is 25th in this season’s FedExCup standings. Further Presidents Cup auditions can be seen in Group 7 where Xander Schauffele, the Olympic gold medalist, and Tony Finau are clustered with Australian Lucas Herbert and Japan’s Takumi Kanaya. Herbert earned his first win at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship in the fall, while Kanaya, who was once the world’s top-ranked amateur, is a three-time winner on the Japan Tour. FedExCup champion Patrick Cantlay finds himself in Group 4 with South Korea’s Sungjae Im, winner of this season’s Shriners Children’s Open, Ireland’s Seamus Power and Keith Mitchell, who’s coming off a solid Florida Swing. DeChambeau, who’s playing on the PGA TOUR for the first time since January, has a rematch with Westwood on the schedule. The two tussled for two weeks in Florida last year, at both Bay Hill and THE PLAYERS. Talor Gooch, who earned his first PGA TOUR win this season, and 49-year-old Englishman Richard Bland also are in this group. Group 10 pits South African Louis Oosthuizen with England’s Paul Casey, who has advanced to at least the Round of 16 in seven of his 15 appearances in this event, Corey Conners of Canada and Sweden’s Alex Noren, who made the quarterfinals in 2017 and finished third in 2018. Group 13 features England’s Tyrrell Hatton, Daniel Berger, former PLAYERS champ Si Woo Kim and South Africa’s Christiaan Bezuidenhout. Joaquin Niemann, who won The Genesis Invitational in impressive fashion, is in a pool with the last man in the field, Maverick McNealy, as well as Russell Henley and Kevin Na. McNealy got in the field when Sam Burns withdrew after winning the Valspar Championship on Sunday. Mexico’s Abraham Ancer, one of the stars of the most recent Presidents Cup, faces Webb Simpson, who lives on the venue for this year’s Presidents Cup, Quail Hollow. Brian Harman and former Match Play winner Bubba Watson also highlight this group. Watson and Simpson are often teammates in international team matches, but they’ll be opponents this week, while Watson and Harman are both former Georgia Bulldogs. Major winners Brooks Koepka and Shane Lowry are in Group 16 along with Harold Varner III, who’s coming off a sixth-place finish at THE PLAYERS, and South Africa’s Erik Van Rooyen, who won his first TOUR title (Barracuda) and made his first TOUR Championship last year. A closer look at the groups (players’ seeding in parentheses): Group 1 Jon Rahm (1) Patrick Reed (23) Cameron Young (40) Sebastian Munoz (58) Group 2 Collin Morikawa (2) Jason Kokrak (22) Sergio Garcia (43) Robert MacIntyre (61) Group 3 Viktor Hovland (3) Will Zalatoris (24) Cameron Tringale (45) Sepp Straka (63) Group 4 Patrick Cantlay (4) Sungjae Im (21) Seamus Power (42) Keith Mitchell (62) Group 5 Scottie Scheffler (5) Matt Fitzpatrick (20) Tommy Fleetwood (41) Ian Poulter (59) Group 6 Justin Thomas (6) Kevin Kisner (29) Marc Leishman (37) Luke List (53) Group 7 Xander Schauffele (7) Tony Finau (18) Lucas Herbert (39) Takumi Kanaya (56) Group 8 Dustin Johnson (8) Max Homa (30) Matthew Wolff (38) Mackenzie Hughes (51) Group 9 Bryson DeChambeau (9) Talor Gooch (27) Lee Westwood (47) Richard Bland (54) Group 10 Louis Oosthuizen (10) Paul Casey (19) Corey Conners (36) Alex Noren (50) Group 11 Jordan Spieth (11) Adam Scott (32) Justin Rose (46) Keegan Bradley (60) Group 12 Billy Horschel (12) Thomas Pieters (26) Tom Hoge (33) Min Woo Lee (49) Group 13 Tyrrell Hatton (13) Daniel Berger (17) Si Woo Kim (48) Christiaan Bezuidenhout (52) Group 14 Joaquin Niemann (14) Kevin Na (25) Russell Henley (34) Maverick McNealy (64) Group 15 Abraham Ancer (15) Webb Simpson (31) Brian Harman (44) Bubba Watson (57) Group 16 Brooks Koepka (16) Shane Lowry (28) Harold Varner III (35) Erik van Rooyen (55)

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The state of Texas hosts five events on the PGATOUR calendar this season and the AT&T Byron Nelson at TPC Craig Ranch bats in the clean-up spot in the order for the second consecutive year. The TOUR will complete the quintet of events in a fortnight at Colonial after playing the PGA Championship at Southern Hills in Tulsa next week. RELATED: Expert Picks | Power Rankings The preparation for the PGA Championship this time last year was an exercise in loosening up the shoes, swinging hard and making as many birdies as possible. Tom Weiskopf’s Par-72 was absolutely run over as it played the fifth easiest of 51 layouts on TOUR last season at 69.574. The only two Par-72 tracks to play easier were Sherwood Country Club (ZOZO CHAMPIONSHIP) and Caves Valley (BMW Championship). Superlatives: • The top 36 players all made 20 or more birdies. • There were exactly nine rounds over par from the top 54 players for the ENTIRE week. • The top six players were 20-under or better. • The top 60 players were 10-under or better. The recipe for success will be very similar this week as the design obviously is built around Mother Nature and the Texas wind. There’s PLENTY of room (35 acres) of fairway off the tee so if it does blow, there’s ample space to get it in play. Bentgrass greens roll true and at 6,800 feet on average there’s not much excuse not to hit them. Putts fall here because the Stimpmeter hangs right around 11 to 12 feet because nobody wants golf balls blowing off the greens. It’s also close to a perfect speed to hole putts and not have the fear of running them by four to five feet! Need a key stat this week? There is NEVER one stat that tells the entire story except the least amount of strokes taken at the END of 72 holes but we’re always looking for clues! While TPC Craig Ranch is hosting just for the second time, I’d also take a look at winners from other events in Texas who are used to these conditions. The wind always blows in Texas. Adam Scott remains the only player to win all four stroke play events in the Lone Star State in PGATOUR history. Another direction would be those who excel on Tom Weiskopf designs. KH Lee lost by a shot to Brooks Koepka at the 2021 WM Phoenix Open before arriving to TPC Craig Ranch and posting 25-under to win by three. The field of 156 will be reduced to the top 50 and ties to play the final two rounds. On the line is a purse of $9 million with the winner collecting $1.63 million plus 500 FedExCup points. If not already qualified, the champion will be the last player entered into the 2022 PGA Championship. Let’s find some horses for courses! Horses for Courses Odds sourced on Tuesday, May 10th at 1 p.m. ET. For live odds visit betmgm. Recent Event Winner Stats Extra Credit (players entered this week only) 2021 KH Lee secured his first TOUR victory and became the second Korean winner in as many events in Dallas (Sung Kang, 2019). … Sam Burns (2nd) posted the tournament course record (62) in Round 2 and led after 36 and 54 holes. … Patton Kizzire (T3) posted rounds of 64 and 63, low round of the day Sunday. … Charl Schwartzel (T3) made two eagles and just three bogeys (T1) for the week. … Scott Stallings (T3) led the field with 30 birdies. … Joseph Bramlett (T7) registered just T59 Fairways. … Seamus Power (T9) led the field in SG: Around the Green and Scrambling while carding just two bogeys and a double. … Doc Redman (T9) hit 48 of 56 Fairways, best of the week. … Jordan Spieth (T9) opened with 63 to share the first round lead with JJ Spaun (T47). … Only Zalatoris and Redman hit more GIR than Jhonattan Vegas (T9) for the week. … 2019 event champion Sung Kang (T47) didn’t fare as well on this layout as he did at Trinity Forest. Notes: • 59 bogey free rounds for the week but only one on Sunday (DeChambeau, not entered). • Of the 72 players to make the cut (6-under) 63 of them squared LESS THAN 10 BOGEYS for the week. • Hank Lebioda led the field in Proximity. • Kizzire led the field in Par-3 scoring (-4). • Lift, Clean and Place in effect Round 1 in closely mown areas. Key stat leaders Top golfers in each statistic on the 2021-2022 PGA TOUR are listed only if they are scheduled to compete this week.

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