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Tournament Stats:
BMW Championship
September 4 - September 7, 2008
Bellerive Country Club
St. Louis, Missouri
Par 71 / 7,304 yards
Purse: $7 million with $1.26 million going to the winner
Defending Champion: Tiger Woods
Results & Scores 2007 BMW Championship
Box Score of 2007 BMW Championship
Tournament facts:
Tournament Record:262 (Tiger Woods in the 2007 BMW Championship)
54-Hole Record:
198 (Aaron Baddeley & Steve Stricker in 2007 BMW, Tiger Woods in the 2003 BMW Championship)
36-Hole Record:
132 (Hugh Royer Jr. in the 1970 BMW Championship; Daniel Chopra in the 2006 BMW Championship)
Low round of tournament:
63 (Tiger Woods in final round of the 2007 BMW Championship; Tiger Woods in the first round of the 2003 BMW Championship; Nick Price in the first round of the 2000 BMW Championship; Dudley Hart in the final round of the 1998 BMW Championship; John Adams in the third round of the 1993 BMW Championship; Brian Henninger in the second round of the 2000 BMW Championship; Jeff Sluman in the third round of the 1992 BMW Championship; Stephen Ames in the second round of the 2000 BMW Championship.)
Tournament information:
The Western Open was originally founded and run by the the Western Golf Association. First played in 1899, the event is the third oldest professional golf tournament (U.S. Open and British Open are older). Like the other golf tournaments of the time, the Western Open was dominated by visiting professionals from the UK. In its early decades it was widely regarded as a major championshipFrom 1899 until 1961, the Western Open was played at a variety of locations including Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco to name a few. Beginning in 1962 however, the Western Open settled into the Chicago area. It was hosted at different local courses in and around the city.
In 1974, the Butler National Golf Club in Oak Brook, became the annual venue for the Western Open. The Butler National Golf Club remained the host site until shortly after the 1990 tournament, when the PGA Tour adopted a policy of holding events only at clubs which allowed minorities and women to be members.
This resulted in Butler National being replaced by the Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont, Illinois. The Dubsdread Course at Cog Hill played host to the Western Open from 1991 to 2007. With the advent of the new FedEx Cup Series, the PGA decided a change of name was in order. The event is now known as the BMW Championship and the name will remain until at least 2012.
For the first time since 1962 the event will not be played in the Chicago area as it moves to St. Louis for this year. New year the even will move back to a renovated Cog Hill.
Course information:
Bellerive is the site of this year’s BMW championship, with the tournament moving back to Cog Hill next year for three years. The original Bellerive course was built in 1897 and was close to downtown. In the 1950s when the St. Louis population began shifting westward, the club decided to move to 353 acres of farmland 25 miles west of St. Louis. Under the direction of Hord Hardin, who would become the president of the USGA and chairman of Augusta National, Bellerive got Robert Trent Jones to design the course.When the course opened in 1960, it was hailed as one of the toughest courses in all the country and it hosted the 1965 U.S. Open. Looking back today, it wasn’t a very memorable course, lacking the tradition that most Open courses had and it wasn’t ready to hold a major championship.
Twenty-seven years later, in 1992, the PGA took its championship to Bellerive, and the course, now matured, proved to be a fine site for a major, with golf-starved St. Louis a perfect host city. The 2001 American Express World Golf Championship, scheduled for September at Bellerive was cancelled due to the events of 9-11. In 2004, Bellerive hosted the U.S. Senior Open with Peter Jacobsen winning.
The course has since undergone a major renovation by Rees Jones, who changed every hole, mostly reshaping the bunkering, rebuilding all the greens to improve drainage issues, and redoing all the fairways. Five holes were significantly changed including a new lake on Hole 2 that may be the most dramatic example of the beautification of the course. The putting surfaces have been reduced in size and now feature more undulations. Bunkers were added to the fairways, and greenside bunkers were reshaped and deepened. He also changed the character of holes 7 and 8 as the course will be a lot harder than the last time a championship was held there.
The Buzz:
Anybody feel that there is too much golf overload? We just don't know what is more important, the FedEx Cup playoffs or the teams being finalized for the Ryder Cup. It's a bit of a shame that both of these have to fight just to find a few inches in the middle of sports pages across the nation.I have to think that the powers to be at the PGA Tour would love to figure out what the right placement for the FedEx Cup playoffs is. Of course they want the four weeks to be before football gets rolling. The also need to have it just after the PGA Championship, in a way it's like putting a circle into a square. Ratings have been very poor, of course everyone is pointing to the Tiger-factor but another factor is the period between August 20th and Labor Day has always been a poor period because most families are on vacation in this period.
It also isn't helping that Vijay Singh is running away with the FedEx Cup. Unless he gets run over by a bus in the weeks of the BMW and the Tour Championship he will win just by showing up all eight rounds. So no matter what they do with the points the bottom line is that under a four event point system anyone that wins the first couple has a walk in the park the rest of the way.
While were talking about Vijay another question comes into play. He has won three events in the last five weeks, has been runner-up twice and third once. Let's say that Vijay runs the table in the FedEx Cup by winning the BMW and the Tour Championship. Could that make him the Player-of-the-Year over Tiger Woods and Padraig Harrington? Talking about Tiger, for those that have been in a cave the last couple of days, he is going to be a father again. In true Woods fashion the news came on his website without much fan-fare or information other than the kid will be born in late-winter. Does that mean Christmas or later, guess we just have to wait and see but it looks like the kid will be born before Tiger tees it up again in competition.
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Here are some things to look for this week:
Here are some of the secrets that it will take to play well this week at the BMW Championship: For the sixth time in the last eight weeks players will be learning how to play a course that most of the players in the field haven't seen. Since the field is so strong, this makes it easier for a non-marquee player to win this event. In looking for a winner there will be a couple things that we have to look at. The most important fact is to see which players are in good forum based on play over the last couple of week. Second is how well players do on bent greens which has been reduced but are still large and last the course itself, how tough will it play. Bellerive is a lot like TPC Boston, site of last weeks Deutsche Bank Championship. Both aren't what you would call great classic courses and even though for the average player it represents a tough test, its a piece of cake for the tours elite. Two big differences between Bellerive and TPC Boston is lack of water at Bellerive, and how much more Bellerive favors those that hit the ball from right to left.-
Keys to winning the BMW Championship:
For years the event had been played on the dubsdread course at Cog Hill. It had the reputation as a "shotmakers' delight. That is because hitting lots of greens was the key to winning, we can see that same trait at Bellerive. - Putting is going to be very important at Bellerive, the greens are large and have a lot of undulation in them. Lag putting is going to be very important to avoid three putting.
- Course will be long and should favor the long hitter, off the fairways will have rough but the question will be how long the PGA Tour will allow it to grow and how tough they really want to make the course.
- Looking at past winners at Bellerive, Gary Player, Nick Price and Peter Jacobsen they are some of the game’s great shot makers so the course will favor those
- So what will it take to win? Think of this event now as similar to a major in which this course is a new adventure. This brings into play a lot more players as they try to deal with the learning curve of the course, also with the Deutsche Bank not finishing until Monday it gives the players less time to learn what Bellerive is about. So look for a shot maker that can avoid three putting on big greens.
- Lastly and more importantly Bellerive was hit by 9/11 when the American Express was suppose to be played there in 2001 and wasn't able to host. Could more bad luck hit Bellerive this time around? Seems like the remnants of Hurricane Gustov is hitting today and tomorrow and could deposit up to 5 inches of water on the course. This will make things tough to get the event started and even finish on Sunday. One thing in their favor, there is on event next week so spilling it over to Monday or Tuesday isn't that much of a problem for PGA Tour officials, still all the players probably have plans for Monday and Tuesday and wouldn't like to see that happen.. Talking about next week, no tournament so no preview just a reminder as I know that I will get an email or two on why the preview isn't up.
