The second leg of the FedExCup Playoffs brings fifty golfers to Bellerive Country Club with no cut and a trip to the Tour Championship on the line for the top 30. Everyone here plays four rounds regardless of how Thursday goes.
What changes this week is the golf course, not the format. Bellerive is a Robert Trent Jones Sr. design from 1960 playing 7,448 yards at par 70, which is 160 yards longer than TPC Southwind at exactly the same par. There are twelve par 4s averaging 450 yards, six of them over 460, and two par 5s at 613 and 624 that the field simply cannot reach. Strip out the par 3s and it is 6,639 yards across fourteen driving holes. It is bentgrass from tee to green after a week on Bermuda, and Justin Rose holds the course record at 260 from the 2018 PGA Championship.
Below is the full FTA Sims breakdown for DraftKings and FanDuel: golfer grades built on a price residual model rather than raw value, win and finish probabilities, the ownership overlays worth attacking, why there is almost no leverage in this field, and four sample builds.
BMW Championship DFS Picks and Lineups: 2026
Fifty golfers, no cut, and the smallest field of the season so far. The second leg of the FedExCup Playoffs cuts to the top 30 after Sunday, and everyone here plays four rounds regardless. What changes this week is not the format, it is the golf course. Bellerive is a Robert Trent Jones Sr. brute that plays 160 yards longer than TPC Southwind did last week at exactly the same par, and almost nothing that worked in Memphis transfers to St. Louis.
The Course: Bellerive Country Club
Bellerive is a length test and it is not subtle about it. There are twelve par 4s averaging 450 yards, six of them stretching past 460, and two that are not really par 4s at all: the 4th plays 514 and the 10th plays 510. The two par 5s measure 613 and 624, which puts them out of reach for the field rather than turning them into the birdie holes that decided Memphis. Strip out the four par 3s and you are left with 6,639 yards across fourteen driving holes, an average of 474 yards per hole.
The par 3s are no relief either, averaging 202 yards with the 16th at 237. Robert Trent Jones Sr. built it in 1960 and it is bentgrass from tee to green, a full surface change from the Bermuda the field played last week. Justin Rose holds the course record at 260, set when he won the 2018 PGA Championship here.
Do not carry last week over. TPC Southwind rewarded position off the tee, mid-irons into small greens and clean cards. Bellerive rewards length, long-iron play and the ability to make a par 4 of 500 yards feel normal. Two par 70s, 160 yards apart, asking opposite questions.
How We Graded This Week
No cut means make-cut probability is a constant 100 percent for all fifty golfers, so it carries no information and our model drops it automatically. What replaces it is a measurement of every golfer against what his own salary implies. We fit projection, ceiling and projected ownership against price across the field, then grade on the gap.
That matters more than usual in a fifty man field. Six roster spots across fifty golfers puts baseline ownership near twelve percent, and every single golfer here is projected above three percent. Any grade built on raw points per dollar would simply rank the cheapest names and call it analysis.
Grades below are DraftKings. FanDuel prices this field differently enough that its ownership picture is genuinely its own, and it gets its own section further down.
EAT: What the Model Is Paying For
| Golfer | Salary | Proj | Own | Own for price | Pts vs price | Top 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ben Griffin | 6,900 | 70.1 | 19.5% | 10.3% | +3.25 | 43.5% |
| Min Woo Lee | 7,200 | 71.0 | 20.5% | 11.0% | +2.99 | 45.1% |
| Scottie Scheffler | 14,400 | 96.7 | 21.9% | 19.0% | +2.60 | 87.0% |
| Justin Rose | 6,800 | 68.3 | 13.6% | 10.1% | +1.94 | 37.6% |
| Nicolai Hojgaard | 6,700 | 67.8 | 12.9% | 9.9% | +1.81 | 37.4% |
| Sungjae Im | 7,000 | 68.7 | 12.5% | 10.6% | +1.52 | 39.7% |
| Michael Thorbjornsen | 7,500 | 70.7 | 13.3% | 11.6% | +1.49 | 44.4% |
| Alex Smalley | 6,700 | 67.5 | 12.6% | 9.9% | +1.48 | 36.9% |
Scheffler grades correctly chalky for the second straight week. At 14,400 he is 21.9 percent owned against the 19.0 percent a golfer at that price normally draws, and he still projects +2.60 points above his own price curve with an 87.0 percent top 20 probability. The gap between him and the field is wide enough that the ownership is simply correct.
The Value Is All At The Bottom
Ben Griffin at 6,900 and Min Woo Lee at 7,200 are the two largest ownership overlays on the DraftKings board, drawing 19.5 and 20.5 percent against fits of 10.3 and 11.0. Normally that combination is a fade signal. Here it is not: Griffin projects +3.25 points above his price curve and Lee +2.99, the two best marks in the field. The crowd has found them and the crowd is right.
Justin Rose, and Why Course Fit Is Not Sentiment
Last week at Southwind the model actively disliked Rose, and we said so: the defending champion projected below his price with the weakest ceiling in his salary range, and his low ownership was the field agreeing rather than leverage. This week he grades EAT at 6,800, 13.6 percent owned against a 10.1 percent fit, projecting +1.94 points above his price with a ceiling +1.59 above it.
He also happens to hold the Bellerive course record. We are not playing him because of 2018, and a single week eight years ago is not a projection. But when a long, demanding Robert Trent Jones Sr. course produces a 260 from a particular golfer, and the model independently likes him at 6,800 dollars, those two things are pointing the same direction.
There Is Almost No Leverage This Week
One golfer in fifty grades as a fade. Projected ownership tracks projections at 0.90 on DraftKings and 0.95 on FanDuel, which is tighter than any board we have graded. The crowd is priced correctly on essentially everyone. Hideki Matsuyama is the only FADE and even he is marginal, 14.5 percent owned against a 14.4 percent fit. Manufacturing contrarian exposure in a field this small and this efficiently priced is how you lose a no cut tournament.
The two biggest ownership underlays on DraftKings are Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood, owned 11.9 and 11.2 percent against fits of 17.5 and 17.0. That reads like leverage until you check the other column: they project -4.23 and -3.85 points against their prices, the two weakest marks at the top of the board. The field is not overlooking them. The field is agreeing with the model.
PIVOT: The Six Names With A Tournament Case
| Golfer | Salary | Proj | Own | Own for price | Pts vs price | Top 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ryan Fox | 6,200 | 64.4 | 9.2% | 8.7% | +0.41 | 29.5% |
| Adam Scott | 7,100 | 68.0 | 11.3% | 10.8% | +0.39 | 37.2% |
| Kurt Kitayama | 7,900 | 71.0 | 10.4% | 12.4% | +0.20 | 44.5% |
| Michael Brennan | 7,300 | 68.7 | 10.5% | 11.2% | +0.32 | 37.9% |
| J.J. Spaun | 7,600 | 69.6 | 10.4% | 11.8% | -0.04 | 42.0% |
| Jake Knapp | 8,200 | 70.8 | 9.5% | 13.0% | -1.11 | 41.9% |
FanDuel Is A Different Board
This is worth more than any single pick. FanDuel prices this field so differently that its ownership overlays share no names at all with DraftKings. On DraftKings the crowd is piled onto Griffin and Lee. On FanDuel the largest overlays are Alex Fitzpatrick, Bud Cauley and Si Woo Kim, none of whom are near the top of the DraftKings list.
| Golfer | Salary | Proj | Own | Own for price | Pts vs price | Top 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alex Fitzpatrick | 6,800 | 65.3 | 14.8% | 7.7% | +3.62 | 35.8% |
| Bud Cauley | 6,900 | 65.2 | 13.9% | 7.8% | +3.17 | 34.6% |
| Si Woo Kim | 10,300 | 77.5 | 19.4% | 13.8% | +2.83 | 57.6% |
| Alex Smalley | 7,400 | 66.4 | 13.3% | 8.1% | +2.73 | 36.9% |
| Ben Griffin | 8,300 | 69.6 | 14.4% | 9.2% | +2.75 | 43.5% |
| Ryan Gerard | 8,600 | 70.5 | 14.4% | 9.7% | +2.57 | 44.5% |
Note what is missing from that list. Scheffler is 42.0 percent owned on FanDuel, roughly double his DraftKings ownership, and he still does not appear as an overlay, because at 15,600 his price already implies that kind of ownership. Heavy chalk and mispriced chalk are not the same thing. If you play both sites, build them separately.
Lineups
Cash builds maximise projection at the cap. Tournament builds run the same solver under a cumulative ownership ceiling set to 65 percent on DraftKings and 90 percent on FanDuel. Those are not round numbers chosen in advance. We buy as much ownership differentiation as three percent of projection can pay for, and the two sites have differently shaped curves, so they land in different places. DraftKings drops from 110.3 percent cumulative ownership to 65.0 for that price; FanDuel only reaches 90.0 before the cost stops being worth it, because Scheffler at 42.0 percent anchors everything.
| Golfer | Salary | Proj | Own |
|---|---|---|---|
| Xander Schauffele | 9,900 | 79.8 | 20.5% |
| Ludvig Aberg | 9,700 | 78.8 | 18.4% |
| Cameron Young | 9,400 | 77.8 | 17.8% |
| Min Woo Lee | 7,200 | 71.0 | 20.5% |
| Ben Griffin | 6,900 | 70.1 | 19.5% |
| Justin Rose | 6,800 | 68.3 | 13.6% |
| Golfer | Salary | Proj | Own |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scottie Scheffler | 14,400 | 96.7 | 21.9% |
| Kurt Kitayama | 7,900 | 71.0 | 10.4% |
| Ryan Gerard | 7,800 | 70.8 | 10.9% |
| Rickie Fowler | 7,400 | 68.2 | 8.7% |
| J.T. Poston | 6,400 | 63.5 | 6.6% |
| Nicolas Echavarria | 6,100 | 62.9 | 6.5% |
| Golfer | Salary | Proj | Own |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scottie Scheffler | 15,600 | 101.3 | 42.0% |
| Xander Schauffele | 11,400 | 81.5 | 21.1% |
| Si Woo Kim | 10,300 | 77.5 | 19.4% |
| Maverick McNealy | 8,900 | 71.0 | 13.0% |
| Bud Cauley | 6,900 | 65.2 | 13.9% |
| Alex Fitzpatrick | 6,800 | 65.3 | 14.8% |
| Golfer | Salary | Proj | Own |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tommy Fleetwood | 11,600 | 79.8 | 15.7% |
| Xander Schauffele | 11,400 | 81.5 | 21.1% |
| Hideki Matsuyama | 10,600 | 75.9 | 13.5% |
| Tom Kim | 9,500 | 71.6 | 10.9% |
| Ryan Gerard | 8,600 | 70.5 | 14.4% |
| Ben Griffin | 8,300 | 69.6 | 14.4% |
How To Play It
- Stop paying the safety premium. There is no cut, so the reason to buy a floor does not exist. Spend for ceiling.
- Do not force leverage. With ownership tracking projections at 0.90 on DraftKings, contrarian exposure here mostly means being wrong on purpose.
- Length matters more than it did last week. Fourteen driving holes averaging 474 yards and two unreachable par 5s reward golfers who can shorten the course.
- Watch the draw, not the wave. It is a single tee start in twosomes from 9:03 AM to 1:55 PM, so weather moves hit the whole field rather than half of it.
- Build the two sites separately. Their ownership overlays share no names this week.
Projections and projected ownership are FTA projections. Ownership moves all week, so treat the ownership columns as a read on the crowd at the time of writing.