2020 BMW Championship Props and Best Bets

• The BMW Championship tees off Thursday, August 27th from Olympia Fields CC, in Illinois
• Mackenzie Hughes has racked up four top-13 finishes in his last nine events
• See odds and predictions for our favorite BMW Championship props in the story below

The BMW Championship tees off Thursday from Olympia Fields Country Club, in what promises to be a demanding test for the 70 players remaining in the FedExCup Playoffs. Early reports from the course suggest Olympia Fields is going to play extremely firm and fast, putting an extra emphasis on ball striking.

Greens are going to be missed, so we’ll also want to target players who are strong around the green, and can bail themselves out with the putter. If that sounds like Mackenzie Hughes to you then we are on the same wavelength. The pride of Hamilton, Ontario is fresh off a 13th place at the Northern Trust and represents excellent value in this week’s Top Canadian Player prop.

BMW Championship Prop #1: Top Canadian Player

Hughes is priced the same as Adam Hadwin and has longer odds than Corey Conners, despite significantly outplaying both of them recently. In addition to his strong week at TPC Boston, he’s also posted a sixth place finish at the Memorial and a third place finish at the Travellers since the restart. He was runner up at Honda earlier this season and has gained at least 4.1 strokes with his short game in six straight tournaments.

Mackenzie jumped up 16 spots to 36th on the FedEx Cup rankings.

Needs top 30 to qualify for the Tour Championship

— Mackenzie Hughes Tracker 🇨🇦 (@TrackerHughes) August 23, 2020

Conners enters the week fresh off two missed cuts in his last three events, losing 6.7 strokes putting along the way. Yes, he’s a better ball striker than Hughes, but is short game is atrocious and he has a history of performing poorly at difficult tracks. This season alone, he missed the cut at the PGA Championship, Arnold Palmer Invitational, Honda Classic and Genesis, four of the more challenging events on the schedule.

Corey Conners lost 2.99 strokes putting on Thursday. He actually has seven other rounds that have been worse.

Losing 5.66 in R2 of the 2018 Safeway Open is his worst.

— Rick Gehman (@RickRunGood) July 9, 2020

Hadwin meanwhile, has lost strokes ball striking in each of his last five starts, and has just one finish inside the top-25 since October of last year.

Pick: Mackenzie Hughes Top Canadian (+250)

BMW Championship Prop #2: Top Australian Player

Jason Day came crashing back down to earth last week, losing 6.5 strokes on approach, but that didn’t stop oddsmakers from making him the frontrunner to win top Australian this week. Day is priced ahead of Adam Scott, who looks like a much safer play.

Next stop is Olympia Fields, where only 4 players in the BMW Championship played the 2003 US Open there: Tiger, Charles Howell III, Adam Scott and Paul Casey.

— Doug Ferguson (@dougferguson405) August 24, 2020

Scott is one of the few players with experience at Olympia Fields, and has gained strokes tee-to-green in seven straight starts. He’s one of the best ball strikers in the game, and made an epic run during last year’s FedExCup playoffs, racking up top-9 finishes in all three events.

Normally a bit of a shaky putter, he should get back on track this week as the bluegrass greens play a lot like Poa, his preferred putting surface.

Neither of the other Aussies in this prop, Cameron Smith and Marc Leishman, have posted a top-15 finish since the restart, but if you were going to take a flier on one I’d suggest Smith. He gained 7.4 strokes tee-to-green last week, the most since his win at the Sony in January.

Pick:  Adam Scott Top Australian (+200)

BMW Championship Prop #3: Hole in One

Olympia Fields features four Par-3’s, two of which are listed at 212 and 247 yards. Both of those holes play above par, and yield a birdie rate below 8.5%.

The other two Par-3’s have averaged a score of par or slightly better in previous professional tournaments, but the main reason to bet “No” on this prop is the lack of opportunity. This 70-man field field is less than half the size of a full-field event (156) which means there will be significantly less shots fired at these holes throughout the course of the week. That, plus the extreme difficulty of two of the four holes, makes “No” the right side here.

Pick: No (-250)

BMW Championship Prop #4: Winning Margin

Nobody should expect another Dustin Johnson 11-stroke victory this week, but the BMW Championship has routinely produced a multiple stroke winner over the years. Since the tournament began in 2007, only twice has it not been decided by at least two shots.

There’s been one playoff winner here (Keegan Bradley in 2018), and three winners by more than four strokes (Marc Leishman in 2017, Jason Day in 2015, and Tiger Woods in 2009). The most common margin of victory has been two strokes (six times) and it just so happens that outcome is priced very attractively this week.

Pick: 2 Strokes (+350)