PGA Tour: BMW Championship in-play betting preview and tips ahead of final round

Recommended bets

2pts Dustin Johnson to win the BMW Championship at 15/8

1.5pts Brendan Steele to win his two-ball at 15/8

There’s an old saying that a week is a long time in politics, and it would be fair to say it can be a long time in sport, too. Seldom if ever has the contrast between one golf tournament and the next been so stark as we've seen from The Northern Trust to the BMW Championship, but the outcome may well be the same as DUSTIN JOHNSON bids for back-to-back victories.

When the action was done and dusted at last week's event, the golf-watching public and pundits were split on whether Johnson had just produced one of the greatest displays the PGA Tour had ever seen or whether he had simply bullied an outdated and way too easy TPC Boston in to submission on his way to a 30-under par total.

Well, seven days later the golfing gods certainly have their revenge as Olympia Fields has proved an absolute brute of a test and through 54 holes only two players, Johnson and Hideki Matsuyama, sit under-par.

A combination of thick rough and firm, fast greens is all it has taken to transform scoring and it has been very noticeable that some of the newer kids on the block who are used to bombing it as far as they can and taking wedges out of the rough, have been unable to reign it in on a course that clearly requires more strategy than brute power. Plenty then for many of the game's stars to think about before the US Open rolls in to Winged Foot in three weeks' time.

Johnson has coped with the shift as well as anyone and looks the man to beat, with 15/8 a perfectly fair price as we head into the final round.

Imperious last week at the Northern Trust, he has kept that momentum rolling on the outskirts of Chicago, showing that when his game is on he is just as much at home on a tough, US Open-style test as he is in a birdie fest like the one he was presented with last week, something which of course we already knew given he cracked Oakmont for his first major championship in 2016.

At 12th in distance and 24th in accuracy off the tee this week, DJ has combined his power with a solid tee game, beyond which his iron play has done the talking. Second in strokes-gained: approach, he has time and again been hole high and on the right side of the pin thus leaving himself with minimal stress on these challenging greens.

On Saturday after a scrappy opening bogey on the par-five first and a further bogey at the fifth he barely looked in trouble for the rest of the day while those around him struggled and he has total control of his ball right now, enough to inspire confidence that he can make it three wins from a summer he began with questions to answer.

In contrast to Johnson, co-leader Matsuyama leads the field from tee to green largely due to some impressive short-game numbers. having struggled to find fairways – he currently sits 61st in driving accuracy for the week. Having lost strokes to the field with his approach play for the past two days a lot of his success can be put down to an amazing touch around the greens which has seen him scramble superbly and gain over four shots in this department over rounds two and three.

The trio of nearest challengers to this pair are Joaquin Niemann, Mackenzie Hughes - who hung in there superbly on Saturday in his quest to make East Lake - and Adam Scott, who all sit two shots back on one-over, while another six players sit a further shot adrift on two-over including Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy.

McIlroy revealed on Saturday that he is expecting his first child with his wife Erica and this goes a long way to explaining why he has perhaps lacked focus since the Tour's resumption. Rahm on the other hand shot 66, the joint-best round of the day, to spring in to contention, despite a bizarre penalty shot at the fifth hole where a mental lapse saw him pick up his ball on the green without marking it.

With nine players within three shots of the leaders, in any normal PGA Tour event all of these players and indeed those a further shot or two back would fancy shooting a low one to pinch the trophy on Sunday.

As we established at the beginning though this is not a normal PGA Tour event, it is more akin to an old school US Open and as we see regularly in that type of grinding tournament the winner invariably comes from the last group or two on Sunday as it is incredibly tough to play catch-up.

The bottom line is 68 is a fantastic score here. There were only eight of this number or lower on Saturday and that was on a day the Tour took pity and watered the greens slightly in the morning. With no rain in the forecast, if one of the front two can post a level-par round it will be mighty hard for anyone to catch them.

All roads then lead back to Johnson. He has a solid record when holding or sharing the 54-hole lead having converted nine of 19 including last week, and he is no stranger at going back-to-back having followed one victory with another on three occasions.

Matsuyama is a class act and having been absent from the winners' enclosure since his 2017 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational success he is long overdue, however he has had to rely on his short-game too much for my liking and unless he finds more fairways and sharpens up his iron play on Sunday it is hard to see him taking Johnson down.

Taking a brief look at the final round two-balls and to smaller stakes I am happy to take on Bryson DeChambeau with BRENDAN STEELE when they tee off together at 4.10pm UK time.

This isn’t so much about having a strong feeling for Steele who has largely struggled this week but more about wanting to be against DeChambeau, who sits last in driving accuracy and seems to refuse to accept there is any other way to play a course than to hit it as far as he can and work it out from there, wherever it lands.

The pair have all but matched each other round for round however DeChambeau has relied on a hot putter to keep his score down to where it is and Steele, who sits seventh in approach play for the week, looks worth risking at 7/4 or 15/8 if you can get it.

Posted at 0925 BST on 30/08/20

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