8-12-2025 4:51am

Hunt Valley Welcomes

The First Look: FedExCup Playoffs continue at new-look Caves Valley for BMW Championship

It’s the second leg of the 2025 FedExCup Playoffs, with the race to see who earns their way to East Lake heating up.

The PGA TOUR’s BMW Championship returns to Caves Valley Golf Club, where the TOUR’s best will see an extensively renovated layout.

The top 50 in the FedExCup standings earned their way into the field this week, with five making the leap via their finish at the FedEx St. Jude Championship last week.

And of course, only the top 30 in the FedExCup standings will earn a spot in the TOUR Championship.

There will once again be plenty of drama at the top of the leaderboard and the FedExCup bubble – but this is also the final week for hopefuls to try to automatically qualify for the U.S. Team to compete in the Ryder Cup this September, with the top six in the points standings after the BMW Championship automatically on the squad.

Here's everything else you need to know about the second FedExCup Playoff event of 2025, the BMW Championship.

FIELD NOTES: Scottie Scheffler continues to lead the way in the FedExCup standings and padded his position on top after finishing T3 in Memphis – Scheffler’s 14th top-10 finish in 17 events so far in 2025. In fact, Scheffler hasn’t finished outside the top 10 since THE PLAYERS in March. Scheffler finished T22 at the BMW Championship at Caves Valley in 2021. … Rory McIlroy returns to action for his first start of the 2025 FedExCup Playoffs. McIlroy, who remains at No. 2 in the standings behind Scheffler, finished fourth at Caves Valley in 2021. … Justin Rose is looking to go back-to-back in the FedExCup Playoffs after his impressive playoff win over J.J. Spaun in Memphis. Rose moved from No. 24 to No. 4 in the standings (Spaun moved to No. 3). Rose is now in a prime position to earn his way to the TOUR Championship for the first time since 2019. … U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Keegan Bradley is set to defend his title at the BMW Championship. Bradley, who has five top 10s this season, including a victory at the Travelers Championship, sits 10th on the Ryder Cup standings. He is looking to become the first golfer to go back-to-back at the BMW Championship since Patrick Cantlay in 2021 and 2022. … Speaking of Cantlay, he won the event in an epic six-hole playoff the last time it was contested at Caves Valley and after finishing at an incredible 27-under par for the week. Cantlay finished T9 last week in Memphis, his first top-10 finish since May. Some fine play is coming at a good time as he makes a final run up the Ryder Cup standings. … Other notables who are back in the field this year after top-10 finishes at Caves Valley in 2021 include Sungjae Im (finished T3) and Sam Burns (finished eighth).

HIGHEST-RANKED PLAYERS IN THE FIELD
FedExCup	World Ranking
1. Scottie Scheffler	1. Scottie Scheffler
2. Rory McIlroy	2. Rory McIlroy
3. J.J. Spaun	3. Xander Schauffele
4. Justin Rose	4. Justin Thomas
6. Russell Henley	5. Russell Henley
7. Ben Griffin	6. Collin Morikawa
8. Tommy Fleetwood	7. Harris English
9. Justin Thomas	8. J.J. Spaun
10. Harris English	9. Ludvig Åberg
11. Andrew Novak	10. Keegan Bradley

FEDEXCUP BUBBLE UPDATES: Five golfers earned their way into the BMW Championship via their play at the FedEx St. Jude Championship and jumped into the top 50 in the FedExCup standings.

Name	Result in Memphis	Starting FedExCup standings	New FedExCup standings
Kurt Kitayama	T9	No. 52	No. 37
Bud Cauley	T14	No. 53	No. 46
Rickie Fowler	T6	No. 64	No. 48
Jhonattan Vegas	T14	No. 56	No. 49
J.T. Poston	T22	No. 51	No. 50

The five golfers who were bumped from the top 50: Wyndham Clark, Jake Knapp, Min Woo Lee, Aldrich Potgieter and Jordan Spieth.

Lucas Glover holds onto the No. 30 spot heading into the BMW Championship, leading No. 31 Sam Stevens by just 27 points and No. 32 Ryan Gerard by 32 points.

Akshay Bhatia is No. 29, while former FedExCup winner Viktor Hovland (the BMW Championship winner in 2023) is at No. 28.

FEDEXCUP THIS WEEK: The winner of the BMW Championship receives 2,000 FedExCup points.

The first two FedExCup Playoffs events award 2,000 points to the winner (quadruple points of Regular Season events), while the Playoffs finale, the TOUR Championship, will be played as a 72-hole stroke-play event with all players starting the tournament at even par.

The best performer over the course of four rounds at the TOUR Championship will win the FedExCup.

The FedExCup Playoffs feature a progressive cut, with fields of 70 for the FedEx St. Jude Championship (TPC Southwind, Memphis, Tennessee), 50 for the BMW Championship (Caves Valley Golf Club, Owings Mills, Maryland) and 30 for the TOUR Championship (East Lake Golf Club, Atlanta, Georgia), where the FedExCup champion will be determined.

There are no cuts after 36 holes during FedExCup Playoffs events.

COURSE: Caves Valley Golf Club, par 70, 7,601 yards. Opened in 1991, the Tom Fazio design was updated with infrastructure changes over an 18-month timeframe in order to host the PGA TOUR in 2021, but it has since undergone another extensive and significant renovation. Many holes were reworked, while every green complex was newly built, with some looking entirely different from their previous iterations. Different grass types were planted to help promote firm and fast conditions, while 10 miles of a new drainage system was installed underneath.

Since the 2021 BMW Championship, the scorecard has changed from a par-72 to a par-70, with nearly 60 yards added via the multitude of changes to the course. Prior to 2021, the PGA TOUR hadn’t played an event in Baltimore since the 1960s, but Caves Valley was no stranger to hosting some of the best golfers in the world – the U.S. Senior Open, the Constellation Senior PLAYERS Championship and the first International Crown on the LPGA Tour were all played at the course.

72-HOLE RECORD: 261, Patrick Cantlay, Bryson DeChambeau (2021 – Caves Valley Golf Club)

CAVES VALLEY TOURNAMENT RECORD: 261, Patrick Cantlay, Bryson DeChambeau (2021)

18-HOLE RECORD: 59, Jim Furyk (second round, 2013)

CAVES VALLEY COURSE RECORD: 60, Bryson DeChambeau (second round, 2021)

LAST TIME: Keegan Bradley, who was the last man in the field at the BMW Championship in 2024, parlayed that into a big-time one-shot victory. Bradley, who had the first-round lead after an opening 66, held on tight with an even-par 72 in Sunday’s finale to top Ludvig Åberg, Sam Burns and Adam Scott by one. Burns’ 65 was the round of the final day.

The last time that Caves Valley hosted the BMW Championship (2021), Patrick Cantlay topped Bryson DeChambeau in an epic six-hole playoff. Cantlay and DeChambeau, who shot a second-round 60, were four shots clear of Sungjae Im, who finished third.

How to follow (all times ET):

Television:

Thursday-Friday: 2-6 p.m. (Golf Channel, NBC Sports app)
Saturday: 1-3 p.m. (Golf Channel, NBC Sports app), 3-6 p.m. (NBC, Peacock, NBC Sports app)
Sunday: noon-2 p.m. (Golf Channel, NBC Sports app), 2-6 p.m. (NBC, Peacock, NBC Sports app)

Special programming alert:

Wednesday, 3:30-5 p.m.: Watch "On the Range presented by ReliaQuest" from the BMW Championship on Golf Channel, PGA TOUR YouTube and FAST.

PGA TOUR LIVE on ESPN+:

Thursday-Friday: 9:15 a.m.-6 p.m.
Saturday-Sunday: 9 a.m.-6 p.m.

PGA TOUR LIVE is available exclusively on ESPN+ and consists of four streams:

Main feed (Stream 1): Primary tournament-coverage featuring the best action from across the course
Marquee group (Stream 2): New "marquee group" showcasing every shot from each player in the group
Featured groups (Stream 3): Traditional PGA TOUR LIVE coverage of two concurrent featured groups
Featured holes (Stream 4): Combination of par 3s and iconic or pivotal holes as well as the ESPN BET feed

PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio