The 2020 BMW Championship will take place this week, Aug. 27-30, at Olympia Fields Country Club in Illinois.
And yes, locals can bet on the golf event, which hasn’t been the case in recent weeks. That’s excellent news for Illinois sports bettors.
Here are the odds at DraftKings and BetRivers sportsbooks (they are the same), the state’s two live mobile sportsbooks.
2020 BMW Championship odds
| Player | Odds |
|---|---|
| Dustin Johnson | +800 |
| Jon Rahm | +900 |
| Justin Thomas | +1100 |
| Bryson Dechambeau | +1400 |
| Xander Schauffele | +1400 |
| Daniel Berger | +1600 |
| Rory McIlroy | +1600 |
| Collin Morikawa | +1600 |
| Patrick Cantlay | +2800 |
| Scottie Scheffler | +2800 |
| Jason Day | +3000 |
| Tony Finau | +3000 |
| Patrick Reed | +3000 |
| Harris English | +3300 |
| Tyrrell Hatton | +3300 |
| Kevin Kisner | +3300 |
| Tiger Woods | +3300 |
| Viktor Hovland | +3300 |
| Brian Harman | +3300 |
| Adam Scott | +3500 |
| Hideki Matsuyama | +3500 |
| Paul Casey | +4000 |
| Matthew Wolff | +4000 |
| Billy Horschel | +4500 |
| Matthew Fitzpatrick | +5000 |
| Alexander Noren | +5000 |
| Louis Oosthuizen | +5000 |
| Jason Kokrak | +6000 |
BMW Championship event info
- Course: Olympia Fields Country Club (North Course)
- Location: Olympia Fields
- Date: Aug. 27-30
- Par: 70
- Yardage 7,366
- Purse: $9.5 million/Winner $1.66 million
- Fairways/Rough: Bentgrass/Kentucky Bluegrass
- Greens: Bluegrass/Poa annua
- TV: Golf Channel and NBC (Saturday and Sunday)
- Live Streaming: NBCSports.com/live, NBC Sports app and PGA Tour Live
2020 BMW Championship preview
Dustin Johnson won last week’s Northern Trust in decisive fashion, finishing 11 strokes ahead of his closest challenger.
Pair that with his second-place finish at the PGA Championship, and it’s easy to see why DJ is the betting favorite.
Johnson missed the cut at the Memorial, but outside of that, he’s been phenomenal since mid-June.
The 36-year-old won the Travelers Championship on June 28 and has finished in the top two in three of his last five events.
With that said, there’s plenty of firepower in this field behind Johnson. Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas and Bryson DeChambeau aren’t riding the same momentum wave as Johnson, but are more than capable of winning.
Collin Morikawa is intriguing as well, as he just won his first major and burst onto the national scene with a Workday Charity Open win in July (that won a certain bettor a lot of money). He missed the cut at the Northern Trust, and there’s much more variance baked in with Morikawa than someone like Johnson, Rahm or Thomas.
But he’s shown the ability to catch fire for a weekend and isn’t as pricy as some more familiar options.
Golf betting back at Illinois sportsbooks
The Illinois sports betting scene has been a roller coaster in recent weeks, to say the least.
Mobile vs. in-person registration flip-flopping has garnered most of the attention, but the inability to bet on golf has been a strange additional wrinkle.
It would have been a particularly bad look for Illinois if people couldn’t bet on an event in their home state; however, it looks like the problem is resolved.
For background, in July, BetRivers (the only Illinois mobile sportsbook at the time) quietly took down PGA Tour lines.
The likely reason? Integrity concerns with some language in the Illinois gaming bill.
In golf, there’s a possibility that players could miss the cut and not win any money. Therefore, a player’s expenses (flight, training, caddie, etc.) could exceed their winnings.
That wasn’t allowed, for the apparent fear that someone could throw an event in order to win outside betting money.
But on July 23, Illinois sportsbooks requested that golf betting be reinstated. The Illinois Gaming Board (IGB) had to wait 30 days before responding.
And as we are now outside of that window, it looks like we know the IGB’s answer. So, at this snapshot in time, bettors can register from their mobile devices and wager on golf.
It’s a rare glimpse of normalcy in the otherwise hectic Illinois sports betting industry.
