Last week was a really strong week with both Hideki and Rafa Cabrera-Bello finishing inside the top 10. I did get on Bryson later in the week, as I realized that the course was really setting up well for him, but in hindsight I definitely wish I had a bit more. Bryson started off somewhat slow but decided to get into contention with a third-round 63, while playing with Tiger, no less, and then capped it with a 67 on Sunday to win by two shots. Bryson now takes a strong lead into this event, but also carries a hefty price tag of $10,000 this week.

We now head to the BMW Championship for the third-leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. This will be the last time you hear from me until the start of the Fall Swing at the Safeway Open, so I am looking forward to finishing off the season on a high note.

This field is limited to the top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings, and with a Daniel Berger withdrawal we are down to 69 players with no cut. Because of that, this will be a great week to play light and/or play more GPPs than normal. This week I am going to give you my course-breakdown along with a cheat sheet of my top plays for each tier, since I really won’t have a core group of players with only 69 guys playing.

Aronimink Golf Club is one of the nation’s oldest clubs with roots stretching back to the late 1800s. The club finally settled on the property it still sits upon in 1926 when famed designer Donald Ross agreed to design the layout. He created a very demanding test of golf with his signature raised greens, heavy bunkering, and great mix of both short scorable holes and long challenging ones. The course will play as a par 70 at 7,267 yards. With par 70 courses, we will definitely be looking at par 4 scoring in the prior 4-6 events.

Donald Ross set up the fairways at Aronimink to be lined with thick rough and deep bunkering. Players will be able to hit a variety of clubs off the tee given that it’s not overly long, but there is a premium on finding fairways in order to set up the best approach opportunities to the green. Looking back at this course in 2011 and 2010, the approach shots from 75 to 225 yards in the fairway ranked inside the top seven of the most difficult those years, and ranked No. 1 most difficult out of the rough. This really shows us that getting the ball in good position off the tee is key at Aronimink. I will be weighing SG:T2G and GIR% in order to capture a player who is both driving it well and capitalizing on those tee shots by hitting the green.

The greens here at Aronimink Golf Club are some of the most difficult these guys will play all year, excluding Augusta National. Even though we cannot predict extraordinary putting performances, we can avoid poor putting performances fairly well. To do this I will be looking at 3-putt avoidance this entire year. The winning score will not be very low, so minimizing bogeys will be extremely important and a lot of bogeys have come from 3-putts on this course in 2011 and 2010. I am also adding scrambling into my model because I do expect to see a lower GIR percentage this week compared to the 2018 PGA Tour average.

Let’s see who is popping for me this week.

$10K+
Dustin Johnson ($11,600)
Justin Thomas ($10,700)
Brooks Koepka ($10,500)

$9K+
Tony Finau ($9,500)
Jordan Spieth ($9,400)
Tiger Woods ($9,200)

$8K+
Adam Scott ($8,700)
Tommy Fleetwood ($8,600)
Patrick Cantlay ($8,500)

$7K+
Tyrrell Hatton ($7,700)
Louis Oosthuizen ($7,500)
Emiliano Grillo ($7,400)
Ian Poulter ($7,100)

$6K+
C.T. Pan ($6,900)
Abraham Ancer ($6,800)
Scott Piercy ($6,500)