Fantasy Golf Sleeper Report – 2024 BMW Championship

2024 BMW Championship Fantasy Sleeper Report

From despair to glory, it’s been an emotional couple of weeks for Hideki Matsuyama.

Just days after winning a bronze medal at the Olympics, he and his team had their bags stolen while sightseeing in London – forcing his usual caddie and coach to head home to Japan after their legal documents were stolen.

But even with a temporary replacement on his bad, Matsuyama would not be denied at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, overcoming a troublesome Sunday to land his tenth PGA TOUR title.

The Japanese ace was as short as 1/50 with the sportsbooks having opened up a five-shot lead, but playing holes 14 and 15 in +3 – as well as fast-finishing rivals – put Matsuyama under the microscope.

But he’s a serial winner, and champions routinely find a way to win – he birdied the final two holes to get over the line and cap what must be amongst the most emotionally-charged fortnights of his career.

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In nine of the last eleven years, a player has won more than one of the FedEx Cup playoff events in the same season – that marks Matsuyama out as one to watch in Colorado this week.

Mind you, making any concrete proclamations about the Castle Pines course, our host venue, is fraught with risk: it hasn’t been seen since the 2006 edition of The International, a long-forgotten stableford event.

The unique thing about Castle Pines is its length – the real estate extends beyond 8,000 yards, but with an altitude of 6,000ft above sea level, it will actually play somewhere closer to around 7,300 yards.

Mind you, the players and their caddies will need to mind their work with club selection this week, although much of the danger at Castle Pines is down the left-hand side of the holes – staying over to the right off the tee will mitigate many of the risks posed.

The Bentgrass greens are a decent size too, so all in all we’re expecting a birdie-heavy shootout this week in Denver….although we are making some assumptions, given that competitive golf hasn’t been played at Castle Pines in nearly two decades.

The FedEx Cup race has been whittled down to the top 50 players now, but even so there’s still some value to be had betting on the right guys at longshot odds.

As such, here’s our sleeper shortlist for the 2024 BMW Championship:

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Sungjae Im – 50/1 – So adept is Sungjae Im on Bentgrass greens – this really is his best surface by some margin – that he has to form part of the betting plan this week given his iron and wedge play form of late.

The Korean has gained strokes on the field on approach in five of his last six starts, including a juicy +0.98 at the St. Jude.

Im was unusually poor off the tee in Memphis – hence his T40 finish, but that is rare by his usual standards, and besides it looks as if there’s plenty of room off the tee on many holes at Castle Pines.

With six top-10s on the PGA TOUR since the start of May, Im has been consistently good for some time now; he’s ready to contend for honors once more.

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Cameron Young – 50/1 – In Cameron Young, we have quite a unique golfing stereotype.

During the 2024 season, he ranks 30th on TOUR for Birdie or Better Percentage….and just 136th for Bogey Avoidance.

That goes to show that he’s an absolute contender to win at easy courses, but where there’s trouble to be found off the tee or on approach, you can be sure that Young will find it – just as he did at the ever-testing TPC Southwind last week.

We’re not convinced that Castle Pines will prove all that challenging, with plenty of birdie chances to be had – especially for those who can send big booming drives out on the Par 5s. 

Young fits the bill….if he can stay out of trouble, he can shoot low numbers this week.

Jason Day – 60/1 – The prognosis is looking much better for Jason Day, who will perhaps be cursing the fact that the PGA TOUR season – this main body of it, at least – is coming to an end just as he’s hitting his stride.

The Aussie played some reasonable stuff at the St. Jude, which follows T9 at the Olympic Games and T13 at the British Open – in terms of pure ball-striking, that latter performance was his best for some time.

A player with a notoriously high launch angle off the tee, Day should get plenty of extra juice from the altitude at Castle Pines: can he make it count, given that the rest of his game is in good shape right now?

Davis Thompson – 60/1 – Given how far he hits the ball off the tee in any given week, we could be seeing some extraordinary driving distances from Davis Thompson in Colorado.

That will be a huge help on the four Par 5 holes at Castle Pines, where you suspect much of the big scoring will be done.

It’s been a revelatory year for Thompson, with that maiden title at the John Deere Classic plus a T9 at the U.S. Open, which showed there’s more to his game than simply hitting bombs off the tee.

Next on the to-do list will be to win a higher-grade PGA TOUR event: the BMW Championship certainly fits the bill.

Matt Fitzpatrick – 66/1 – The Englishman just seemed to find a little something in his game in Memphis last week, and for such a proven campaigner at altitude that’s eye catching indeed.

Fitzpatrick brought an end to his wretched run with irons and wedges in hand at TPC Southwind, making a small gain on the stellar field on approach.

His short game was in fine fettle, as it always tends to be, too, which suggests that if he can set up the requisite birdie opportunities at Castle Pines, he will take them.

Don’t underestimate the importance of previous success playing at altitude this week, and Fitzpatrick has bags of that from his time on the DP World Tour. 

He’s a two-time winner, and runner up, of the Omega European Masters, which is played at Crans-sur-Sierre in Switzerland – which sits some 5,000ft above sea level.

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Want more of this week’s fantasy predictions? Check out our full fantasy preview for the BMW Championship here.

Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2024)

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