Playoffs preview: Quick look at 2009 BMW Championship

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Condon/PGA TOUR

After a year in St. Louis, the BMW Championship returns to Cog Hill Golf and Country Club in the Chicago area.

Preview: 2009 Playoffs

The Barclays Deutsche Bank Championship BMW Championship THE TOUR Championship

FIELD SIZE: Top 70 in the standings; no 36-hole cut

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LOOKING FORWARD: Only the top 30 in the Playoffs advance to the finale, THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola, two weeks later. A points reset will bunch the players tighter.

TV: GOLF CHANNEL/NBC

LAST YEAR: Colombia's Camilo Villegas went wire to wire to win in 2008 at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis. Villegas shot four rounds in the 60s to beat Dudley Hart by two.

COURSE: Cog Hill Golf & Country Club (Dubsdread), Lemont, Ill.

SUMMARY: Cog Hill is the host course again (from 2009-2011) after a revision by Rees Jones. The public course reopened in May after taking a one-year break from its longtime run at the BMW Championship (1991-2007). Jones oversaw work on the original 1963 design by Dick Wilson and Joe Lee, including 18 new greens with Sub-Air Systems and new bunkering, a risk-reward pond on No. 7, additional tee options and a 497-yard, par-4 finishing hole featuring a green moved closer to the nearby pond.

The course can stretch to 7,500 yards but has numerous tee options, which allow for a shorter look, such as the 379-yard, par-4 eighth being played at 341 yards. Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., where the 1991 PGA Championship was played, will be the tournament site in 2012.

LOCAL KNOWLEDGE: "We added some length, we pushed out the fairway bunkers, and we removed some shorter (bunkers) that penalized average golfers. We moved some tees up, even. We really stressed making it more fun. We put the bunkers farther out. The greens are (now) ample size, and most have tongues for lower approach shots." -- Rees Jones