Will Zalatoris can finally shed his reputation as the best player in the world without a PGA Tour win. The 25-year-old got it done in Memphis during the first of three FedEx Cup Playoff events, moving to No. 1 in the rankings entering this week’s BMW Championship in Delaware. But he’s not the golf betting favorite ahead of the action at Wilmington Country Club, where the top 70 players will fight for the final 30 spots in next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake.

That honor goes to Rory McIlroy for the second tournament in a row, despite the fact that McIlroy missed the cut at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. McIlroy is still a lock for Atlanta at No. 9 in the rankings and sits atop the board at +1000 golf odds. From there, things get interesting.

With a top-heavy group of evenly-matched contenders, eight players are listed below McIlroy with identical odds of +1400 at online sportsbooks. That includes Zalatoris, Xander Schauffele, Tony Finau, Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Cantlay, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm.

While Zalatoris just picked up his first win in a playoff, Finau is still the hottest player on Tour after back-to-back victories at the 3M Open and Rocket Mortgage Classic. Scheffler is still No. 1 in the world but, like McIlroy, he missed the cut last week and is looking to bounce back as the playoffs heat up with an $18 million prize at stake next week in Atlanta.

2022 BMW Championship Odds

Odds via DraftKings and current as of publication.

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2022 BMW Championship Expert Picks & Predictions

Viktor Hovland Top 10 Finish

Odds: +240 at DraftKings

It’s been an up-and-down year for the 24-year-old Norwegian, but we love the way his game is trending. Hovland, who hadn’t teed it up since a T-4 at the British Open, finished T-20 in Memphis and hit it great across the board. While the irons weren’t cooperating for a short mid-summer stretch, he’s back up to 10th on Tour in Strokes Gained Approach and we think that will be huge this week.

Chipping is still Hovland’s biggest glaring weakness, but these look like huge putting surfaces and he shouldn’t have too many tricky short shots around Wilmington Country Club. That’s good news because the flat stick has been hot – Hovland has finished with positive Strokes Gained Putting in eight of his last nine tournaments.

Hovland also ranks eighth in Strokes Gained Tee-To-Green and his streak of 12 consecutive cuts made – while not applicable this weekend in the no-cut event – points to how consistent the game has been in recent months. We expect it to get even sharper down the stretch.

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2022 BMW Championship Betting Tips

There’s essentially zero course history to go on here. Wilmington Country Club has never hosted a professional event. There have been a few big amateur tournaments and Justin Thomas played here in the 2013 Palmer Cup, but almost every other player in the field will be flying blind to start the week.

This looks like a big ballpark on paper, a par-71 layout stretching more than 7,500 yards, with the back-nine par-5s listed at 634 yards and 649 yards. Water should only come into play on a few holes if that, and overall this looks like a straightforward test.

We’re leaning heavily on Strokes Gained Approach at the moment – the nice thing about the playoffs is we have Strokes Gained stats from last week for every guy in the field. We’ll target players who struck it well in Memphis and won’t be relying too heavily on the short game stats this week.

As far as we’re concerned, this is a second-shot course until proven otherwise and we’ll see what this classic Delaware track has in store as the field is cut to 30 ahead of the Tour Championship in Atlanta.

2022 BMW Championship Time, Date & TV

When: Thursday-Sunday, Aug. 18-21

Where: Wilmington Country Club, Wilmington, Delaware

TV: Golf Channel, NBC