Horses for Courses: Approach play will carry red-hot Si Woo Kim to another big result at Bellerive

And then there were 50.

The FedExCup Playoffs continue this week, with the field shrinking from the top 70 players to the top 50 for the BMW Championship. We are headed to Missouri and Bellerive Country Club, a course that last hosted a major event when Brooks Koepka won the 2018 PGA Championship.

What we know about this Robert Trent Jones design is that it should be a driver-heavy golf course. The rough is thick, but the missed-fairway penalty isn't quite as severe as you might expect. We have seen leaderboards here littered with golfers who can absolutely pummel the ball off the tee.

The 3.5-inch rough will certainly cause some problems, but there is still an advantage to pushing the ball farther down the golf course rather than clubbing down and laying back. This is a brute of a golf course at more than 7,400 yards, and that length creates plenty of long approaches. Golfers do get some relief with massive greens that measure roughly 7,500 square feet on average.

The biggest separator we saw besides distance in 2018 was approach play. Golfers who dominated with their irons consistently put themselves in better positions than their fellow competitors.

That might sound a little strange because I typically put more emphasis on approach play at courses with smaller greens. Here, however, it makes sense because players will be forced to hit so many long irons. You want golfers who can create scoring opportunities from distance.

That's exactly where we're going first.

Strokes Gained: Approach (last 24 rounds, data via Betsperts)

• 1. Sam Burns
• 2. Tom Kim
• 3. Viktor Hovland
• 4. Scottie Scheffler
• 5. Patrick Cantlay
• 6. Matt Fitzpatrick
• 7. Si Woo Kim

Si Woo Kim, Top 20 (-125)

Before getting into the course fit, let's acknowledge the season Si Woo Kim (+2500) has put together.

In 22 PGA TOUR starts, Kim has six top-five finishes, 11 top 10s and 13 top 20s. That's a 59.1% top-20 hit rate this season. With a 50% top-10 rate, I also think there's value in his top-10 market. If you go that route, I would play the top 10 with ties. It's only a 50-player field, but a bunched leaderboard can still hurt a dead-heat payout.

Kim does go against one of the biggest things I'm looking for this week. He isn't a bomber. There are only seven golfers in this field who average a shorter driving distance than Kim.

But let's not act like he's bunting it around the golf course. He's still averaging roughly 300 yards per drive, and what he lacks in distance he makes up for with accuracy. Kim is one of the most accurate drivers in the field, ranking third in driving accuracy.

Then we get to his approach play. Depending on the data source, Kim ranks anywhere from inside the top 10 to inside the top three in Strokes Gained: Approach over the last 24 rounds.

Bellerive also features just two par 5s, putting more emphasis on par-4 scoring. Kim ranks 10th in this field in that category, which makes sense considering how consistently he finds fairways and how well he's hitting his irons.

For Kim, it has always been about the putter. If the putter cooperates, the rest of his game is good enough to contend. He's gaining strokes with the flat stick over his last 16 rounds and is essentially neutral over his last 24. A neutral putter might be all we need. That's how good the rest of the bag has been.

I don't expect Bellerive to produce a winning score of 24- or 28-under par, but golfers are still going to need to make birdies. Bogey avoidance is important with thick rough in play. Still, if the missed-fairway penalty isn't as severe as the rough length suggests, there should be plenty of birdie opportunities, especially with these massive greens.

Birdie or Better Percentage won't carry the heaviest weight in my model, but I definitely want it included.

Birdie or Better Percentage (last 24 rounds, data via Betsperts)

• 1. Hideki Matsuyama
• 2. Michael Brennan
• 3. Viktor Hovland
• 4. Tom Kim
• 5. Scottie Scheffler
• 6. Wyndham Clark

Best Value on the Board

Sam Burns to win (+2000)

Will Sam Burns win before the end of this season or early next season? If he keeps playing like this, the answer is probably yes.

Burns has five PGA TOUR victories, but he has played some of the best and most consistent golf of his career this season. It really started at the Masters, where he finished T7, and he has carried that form throughout the year.

One finish I really like for this week is his T4 at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. I think Muirfield Village provides a solid comparison for what Burns will be asked to do at Bellerive.

Everyone also remembers his run at the U.S. Open, where he had a legitimate chance to win. He put himself in contention again at the Travelers Championship and the FedEx St. Jude Championship. Now he heads to Bellerive, playing like someone who should be among the favorites.

There is a lot to like about Burns' game right now. He's first in SG: Approach over the last 24 rounds, second in SG: Total and fourth in par-4 scoring. He's also scrambling well enough to avoid costly bogeys.

I would love for the driving accuracy to be a little better, but Burns still ranks 19th in this field while averaging roughly 310 yards per drive. He's also a birdie-maker, ranking eighth in Birdie or Better Percentage.

Burns has repeatedly put himself in position to win this season. The Sundays haven't always gone his way, but the game is clearly there. If he can build himself a little cushion entering the final round, I think this could finally be the week he finishes the job and picks up his sixth PGA TOUR win.

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