Winners and Losers from the 2015 BMW Championship
Jason Day took home his second FedEx Cup playoff title of the year and his fifth victory of the season.
Clearly fatigued at the Deutsche Bank Championship, where he tied for 12th, the week off clearly did Day good.
Not surprisingly, then, Mr. Day is this week’s big winner.
Who joins him on the good side of the ledger? Not the PGA Tour, for one.
Read on to find out why.
Winner: Jason Day
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Here’s an easy one: The sizzling, superlative Jason Day is a winner this week. We’ll take a look at how good Day was this week, but first a word about his recent brilliance: Day missed out on the playoff that decided the Open Championship by a stroke, he won the open Championship, he tied for 12th at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational and he won the PGA Championship and The Barclays.
Day nearly shot 59 in his opening round and never looked back, following the stellar round with a Friday 63. A pair of weekend 69s later and Day found himself at the podium with a six-stroke victory.
A wire-to-wire winner, Day has now won five times this season and is the top-ranked golfer in the Official World Golf Ranking, per the Associated Press (via ESPN).
Loser: "59" Suspense
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This was dumb. Sure, Jason Day had a chance of shooting 59 if he holed a 50-yard wedge shot, but to pretend that there was any real likelihood of that happening and to act like opening with 61, rather than 59, is a disappointment, was silly.
The first round was suspended with Day facing the aforementioned shot to finish his round. If he would have holed it, he would have shot 59, sure, but why set up a faux dramatic situation?
Instead of revelling in the possibility of “golf’s magic number,” the scribes could have talked about how the week off clearly refreshed Jason Day or how he’s bombing his new TaylorMade M1 driver. Instead, most outlets seem to take the easy route, fixating on 59.
Winners: The Scribes
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While the media were a little too caught up on “59,” the scribes are still big winners this week. Why? Beer and pizza, of course.
In what’s becoming a trend on tour, Jordan Spieth, after making a hole-in-one in his opening round, sent 30 Chicago deep-dish pizzas and beer to the media tent and to volunteers, echoing Rickie Fowler and Brian Harman’s generosity earlier this year.
An abundance of beer and pizza and a job where you get paid to attend professional golf tournaments and write about them: not bad.
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Loser: The PGA Tour
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While he wasn’t a participant in the BMW Championship, having not even qualified for the playoffs, news of the tour’s needle-mover’s back surgery loomed large this week.
Tiger Woods, long the face of the PGA Tour and still able to drum up attention and interest (especially from the casual sports fan) like no other, underwent a second back surgery in as many years.
Woods won’t be teeing it up at the Frys.com Open as planned, and neither will he be competing in his Hero World Challenge.
Having Woods on the shelf is never a good thing. And when a top player’s absence is a leading storyline, the league is a loser.
Winner: Henrik Stenson
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Fighting through a wrist injury Friday, Henrik Stenson nearly called it quits.
According to Golf Channel’s Ryan Lavner: “After fixing a ball mark on the previous hole, Stenson said his wrist locked up on the 13th hole and that the lunate bone needed to be put back in place by the on-site physiotherapist.”
The Swede then went on to birdie four of the next five holes and fire a back-nine 31 to rocket up to finish at eight under for the day.
Stenson carded rounds of 71 and 67 on the weekend to notch a top-10 finish. While he didn’t come close to catching the torrid Jason Day, going from nearly withdrawal to a top-10 finish earns you “winner” status in this rundown.
Loser: Jim Furyk
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Unfortunate week for tour stalwart Jim Furyk. Furyk, who was among the tournament favorites and shot 59 at Conway Farms in 2013, withdrew after just six holes.
Furyk, who was playing with a heavily taped wrist, said after the WD, "I'm beyond sore out there and trying to manage it when I'm not near 100 percent."
Furyk was eventually diagnosed with a bone contusion, according to Golf Channel’s Ryan Lavner (via Kyle Porter of CBSSports.com). He plans to rest and try to hit balls next week, but with the Presidents Cup in two weeks, his status is in jeopardy.
Winners: Players on the Right Side of the Line
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As the talking heads at NBC told you 1,000 times: The top 30 golfers in the FedEx Cup standings following the BMW Championship earn a spot in next week’s Tour Championship.
- No. 25: Brooks Koepka (T49)
- No. 26: Bill Haas (T19)
- No. 27: Kevin Na (T10)
- No. 28: Sangmoon Bae (T53)
- No. 29: Louis Oosthuizen (T19)
- N0. 30: Harris English (T19)
Losers: Players on the Wrong Side of the Line
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Likewise, the following golfers didn’t get the job done in Chicago and found themselves on the outside looking in.
- No. 31: Daniel Summerhays (T41)
- No. 32: Justin Thomas (T13)
- No. 33: Matt Jones (T32)
- No. 34: Russell Knox (T45)
- No. 35: Ben Martin (T68)
Stats via PGATour.com
Ben is on Twitter, for what that’s worth.
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