(((((FEDEX CUP PLAYOFFS)))))

RAFA Cabrera Bello is also out of this week's Northern Trust - as he awaits the birth of his "baby princess". There are no alternates to take his place this week since it's a FedEx Cup Playoffs event - he's 59th in the FEC Standings - only the Top 70 will play next week at the BMW Championship.

PRESIDENTS CUP
USA Team vs International Team.....leading Pints scorers...

Dustin Johnson 4.5 Louis Oosthuizen 2.5
Jordan Spieth 3.5 Branden Grace 2
Justin Thomas 3.5 Jason Day 1.5
Patrick Reed 3.5 Anirban Lahiri 1.5
Phil Mickelson 3.5 Hideki Matsuyama 1.5
Rickie Fowler 3.5 Si-woo Kim 1
Kevin Kisner 3 Marc Leishman 1
Brooks Koepka 2 Charl Schwartzel 1
Daniel Berger 2 Adam Scott 1
Matt Kuchar 2 Jhonattan Vegas 1
Kevin Chappell 1.5 Adam Hadwin 0.5
Charley Hoffman 1 Emiliano Grillo 0

Adam Scott sits at 21st in the FedEx Cup race ahead of the Northern Trust - had finished T10 in six of his 13 starts prior to a MC at The OPEN and T40 at the WGC-FedEx St.Jude.

The Aussie returns to a familiar venue... at the 2013 Barclays Adam Scott came from six off the pace on Sunday to heist the trophy with rounds of 69-66-72-66=273 (-11).
That went in the books as his 10th PGA TOUR win and he arrives with three more trophies added to his case, but none since the 2016 WGC-Cadillac C/ship.
It's the longest winless drought of his career but with two runner-up finishes on the season, he's been close.

ADAM SCOTT (maybe up to 14th in the FedEx rankings), Sneds & Rambo moving in the right direction too.

We’re off to MEDINAH just 40km west of Chicago (just 69 players incl Tiger - Stenson’s gone home until March 2020).

No NA this week either (#55 on the FedEx) - plagued with various injuries all year

Medinah hosted FIVE Majors over the years - most recent were the 1999 & 2006 PGA Championships (both won by Tiger in his prime).
Also hosted the 2012 Ryder Cup (Europe won 14.5/ 13.5).
The Country Club's Course #3 plays host this week - the course may be soaked in the lead-up with plenty of rain in the early-week forecast and gradually get harder as the course firms up.

IF HE PLAYS this week...

Tiger Woods: "I’m not going to hit that many drivers because it won’t really allow me to. Most of the holes are doglegged. Obviously I’d have to take driver up over the top of these tall trees, and it doesn’t make any sense. Yeah, I’m going to use it a few times, definitely.
But overall, just like it was back in ’99, I hit just a bunch of 2 irons and a bunch of 3 woods here. Just because that’s the way the golf course allowed you to play. You play to a lot of the corners and obviously fire from there. If you try to take on a lot of the corners or shape the ball around the corner, yeah, you can, but it’s not always the easiest thing to do."

Top 30 bubble will get plenty of talk this week at BMW, but keep in mind per Tour projections the top 23 are already a lock for East Lake.
Means we essentially have 46 guys playing for 7 tickets to Atlanta.

BMW Championship betting preview and tips from Ben Coley
Recommended bets
3pts e.w. Justin Thomas at 16/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
1pt e.w. Tony Finau at 40/1 (1/5 1,2,3,4,5,6,7)
1pt e.w. Joel Dahmen to lead after R1 at 150/1 (1/4 1,2,3,4,5)


…..there's a good chance that we get a winner from the very front of the market after a slightly surprising one-two in New Jersey, but my pick of them is in fact Justin Thomas.
This will be the third time I've sided with Thomas in three starts since The Open Championship, but perseverance may at last pay off here as he looks primed to close out the season in style.
Quite simply, I believe Thomas has finished as far down the leaderboard as he could have lately, and with finishes of 9-11-12-12 since the Travelers Championship that means he's achingly close to winning for the first time in a year.
Last week at Liberty National, he made an encouraging start - despite, you might say, being an onlooker as Bryson DeChambeau made headlines for slow play - and there were more positive signs as he made a Sunday move to finish just outside the top 10.
Crucially, not only did he drive it better than he had been, but Thomas maintained the outstanding levels with his approach play that have made him such an eye-catcher throughout the summer.
At a course where quality iron players populated major leaderboards in 1999 and 2006, the fact that Thomas has been inside the top-five in strokes-gained: approach on each of his last three Stateside starts is hugely significant and it's surely a matter of time before he takes full advantage.
"I feel like I'm in a great spot," Thomas told reporters at Liberty National. "I feel like I'm really close to winning some more tournaments."
Rewind to last February, and he'd produced back-to-back top-five performances with his irons without reward, then stepped up a level to win the Honda Classic. The previous year, his 50/1 success in the PGA Championship - on a long, classical, tree-lined course not dissimilar to this one - came after he'd found his long-game in the previous week's WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.
With the incentive of having won in every season since his 2014 breakthrough, and the knowledge that he's close, expect Thomas to be right in the thick of things from the off here and perhaps made a late bid for what would be a second FedEx Cup triumph.

The Top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings.
Top 10 in order: Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Matt Kuchar, Xander Schauffele, Webb Simpson, Abraham Ancer.
No Tiger, Spieth, Lowry, Molinari, Day or Mickelson.


A new format. The winner will automatically be crowned the FedEx Cup champion too.
Rather than a points reset, the No. 1 seed in the standings (Justin Thomas) will start the TOUR Championship at -10.
No. 2 seed (Patrick Cantlay) starts at -8,
No. 3 seed (Brooks Koepka) at -7 and so on with the 26-30 seeds starting at even par.


Last 5 winners of the Tour Championship
2018 (-11, 269) Tiger Woods – 80th PGA TOUR win
2017 (-12, 268) Xander Schauffele – 2nd PGA TOUR win
2016 (-12, 268) Rory McIlroy – 13th PGA TOUR win
2015 (-9, 271) Jordan Spieth – 6th PGA TOUR win
2014 (-11, 269) Billy Horschel – 3rd PGA TOUR win

Players seeded 26-30 will begin 10 shots behind Justin Thomas.
There have been 432 regular PGA Tour stroke play events this decade. Only 2 wins have come from 10+ shots back after 18 holes. Not apples-to-apples, but gives you an idea of the uphill climb.

Yes, I like it. Number 30 would need to be at least 10 shots better than JT to achieve that.
They would also to beat all the others at the top of the handicap by multiple shots.
410 for Glover is the shortest price for those playing off scratch. Which gives you an idea of the chances of it happening.

Quincy - yes, basically the Tour Championship and the Fedex Cup are now merged into one.  I know some won't like it but it makes perfect sense.  Given that the Fedex is a year-long competition the winner of it has always felt like a more legitimate "tour champion" than the winner of a one-off Tour Championship and so having two guys winning two prizes never made much sense.

The handicap won't go done well with the purists but it is (or ought to be) calculated to reflect the probability each guy had to win the Fedex in previous years - for example in previous years number 30 would need to not only win the Tour Championship but then have all the Fedex leaders finish very far down the board to win the Fedex, so it was always very, very unlikely and a handicap of 10 shots is meant to reflect that. 

This way it's an easier representation of what each guy needs to do rather than having commentators constantly go through permutations ("player a needs to win and have b and c finish in positions y and z").  At least now, in some sense, the players all have their fate in their own hands.  I like it.

Only one guy has ever come from way down at East Lake to win the FedEx, Haas in 2011. Under the new system, he wouldn't have come close. The players at the bottom have feck all chance if history is a guide. This is all at the want of FedEx who want to be the star, in fairness they are the ones putting up the cash.

The great moment we had last year with Tiger would mot have happened either under this new system. Firmly against, contrived nonsense is what we have this week and betting aside, I hope JT shoots a 63 on Thursday and reduces the event to nothing to inspire a rethink.

So let’s say a target of -17, and add Justin’s-10 start = TARGET minus -27 (over 4 days).