2021 BMW Championship: Caves Creek caves again on Sunday

As difficult as it is to believe, Caves Creek, the PGA Tour’s BMW Championship host site, played even easier Sunday than it had the rest of the week.

I have written previously about how Caves Creek failed to present a suitable challenge to the Tour pros through the first three rounds of the penultimate event of the tour’s FedEx Cup season.

Both the Thursday and Saturday rounds ranked among the five lowest scoring — relative to par — on Tour all season.

With the conclusion of the event, it can now be officially said that things only got more embarrassing Sunday for whoever was in charge of setting up the course to challenge the Tour’s best.

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The field of 69 competitors averaged 68.45 strokes Sunday, a total that is 3.55 strokes under par. Aside from the Sentry Tournament of Champions, a select-field event played on a par 73 course, that is the lowest score relative to par completed on Tour all season.

There’s more. The final full-field average for the week was 276.81, 11.19 strokes below par.

At only four tournaments all season did players score better, and all four were second-tier or worse events. The four were the Shriners (-13.61), the Sony (-12.28), the Barbasol (-11.62) and the Safeway (-11.46).

Perhaps most amazingly, not a single player in the 69-man field failed to break par for 72 holes. The last place finishers, Phil Mickelson, Cameron Champ, Kevin Kisner and Carlos Ortiz, were all 1-under for the week.

It’s the first time in a full decade that every player finished under par in a PGA Tour event.

There were only two rounds of plus-four (76) or higher recorded all week, those being 77s by Phil Mickelson Friday and Maverick McNealy Sunday. In contrast, there were 114 rounds of four-under or better, including 32 on Sunday alone.

Four players — Patrick Cantlay, Bryson DeChambeau, Sungjae Im and Erik Van Rooyen — shot 68 or better all four rounds.

This remarkable destruction of par as a meaningful standard of accomplishment comes on the heels of a similar field performance in the first round of the FedEx Cup playoffs, last week’s Northern Trust at Liberty National. As poor a test of championship mettle as Liberty proved to be — those completing four rounds averaged eight strokes under par in New Jersey — that was actually three strokes more stern a challenge than Caves Creek.

Some have cited adverse weather, which softened the course and permitted players to play ball-in-hand Thursday and Friday, for the low scores. The weather obviously was a factor.

But the folks who set up PGA Tour courses are pros at adapting those courses to neutralizing such challenges…if they want to. They know how to protect pins…if they want to. The reality is that —based on field averages — the two easiest course setups were Saturday and Sunday when the ball was being played down, and the course was presumably at its driest.

The obvious motivation was to make the tournament attractive to viewers who presumably enjoy a birdie-fest. Mission accomplished on that score.

Next. 2021 BMW Championship: Winners and Losers. dark

At the same time, the practical effect was to turn the first two of the Tour’s three climatic events into highly glorified pitch and putts. Imagine playing the World Series on a Little League field or settling the Super Bowl champion under Arena League conditions.

That’s what the PGA Tour achieved these past two weeks at Liberty National and Caves Creek.

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