After a one-week reprieve, the world's 70 best golfers descend on Conway Farms this weekend for the penultimate tournament of the 2015 FedEx Cup.
Since the playoff's inception in 2007, the winner of the BMW Championship has gone on to take home the $10 million prize twice, including Billy Horschel a year ago. The 2015 event appears to be a battle of two of the world's three best players. PGA Championship winner Jason Day enters the weekend with a 511-point lead over world No. 2 Jordan Spieth after taking home the Barclays and finishing 12th at the Deutsche Bank Championship.
The FedEx Cup has gotten off to a largely miserable start for Spieth, who has been cut twice and lost his No. 1 ranking to Rory McIlroy. The marked decline has been a surprise given Spieth had missed only two cuts all season and none since May before the FedEx Cup.
Spieth talked about the recent poor performances, per Michael Whitmer of the Boston Globe:
I've done a lot of things I've never done positively this year. This is something I've never done that's negative. Normally my mental game is my strength. These past two weeks it was a weakness for me. I've just got to go back and reassess how to remain positive.
Last season, Spieth finished a solid eighth at the BMW Championship and tied for 16th in his other career appearance. He's one of three golfers, including Day and McIlroy, who can be the world's top-ranked golfer at the end of the weekend.
"As one, two and three in the world, we're the three that have to beat each other at the top right now in order to try to get to the top, or to remain at the top (of the rankings)," Spieth said, per Mark Lamport-Stokes of Reuters. "I'm not focused on what either one's doing on the leaderboard unless they're in the lead, and then if they're in the lead, how do I get up there and surpass them?"
McIlroy moved back into the No. 1 spot this week despite not playing in a tournament, thanks to a previous tournament dropping off his two-year total. As noted by ESPN.com's Bob Harig, the 0.023 average points of separation between McIlroy and Spieth are the fewest since the World Golf Ranking started in 1986. It was the fourth time the pair have traded off since the PGA Championship.
McIlroy talked about the tight battle between him and Spieth, according to Lamport-Stokes:
It'll be like that until one of us separates ourselves a little bit. At the end of the day, it's just about playing and playing well. I don't know any other way we could determine the best player in the world. You could do it on a one-year point system instead of two. I think two years is a good reflection of how you played.
Both Spieth and McIlroy would probably acknowledge they're not the best golfer in the world at the moment. That distinction would go to Day, who has won three of his last five tournaments and has not finished worse than 12th since being cut from June's Memorial Tournament. The Australian appears unshackled by shedding his Best Player to Never Win a Major label and only turns 28 in November; there's a chance golf's two-headed monster is about to become a three-man battle royal.
Day talked about his improved confidence, per the Australian Associated Press (via Daily Mail):
I always thought that I had the skills to play and win at the highest level and be competitive, but mentally I think the last piece of the puzzle was to really believe. Everyone out here is a good golfer. Everyone can be great.
The biggest thing that separates the best players in the world from the good players is upstairs. And now that's the mentality I have to get to all the time, and I think once I get to that, then I'll be a lot more consistent, not only in my finishes but more consistent in my wins, as well.
The trio at the top, of course, will be competing with 67 others looking to knock them off their pedestal. Rickie Fowler's win at the Deutsche Bank thrust him into FedEx Cup contention, while Henrik Stenson and Bubba Watson are hanging around on the backs of their overall solid seasons. With McIlroy quietly four months removed from his last win, Watson or Stenson might wind up being a better mid-odds bet this weekend.
Either way, don't expect the focus to shift off the Spieth-McIlroy-Day threesome much.
via http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2567256-bmw-championship-2015-tee-times-dates-tv-schedule-and-prize-money
RSS Feed
