The penultimate: BMW Championship at Bellerive

text size

Tournament: BMW Championship
Tournament dates: Sept. 1-7
Course: Bellerive CC, St. Louis, Mo.
Field Size: Top 70 in the standings; no 36-hole cut
Looking Forward: Only the top 30 in the Playoffs advance to the finale, THE TOUR Championship presented by Coca-Cola, three weeks later.
TV: GOLF CHANNEL/NBC

Last year: Tiger Woods won the tournament at Cog Hill, firing a course record-tying 63 in the final round and totaling a tournament-record 262 to beat Aaron Baddeley by two strokes. Woods, who has four career wins in this event, moved to first in the FedExCup standings with the victory.

Summary: Bellerive has been waiting for the PGA TOUR's return since 2001 when the World Golf Championships-American Express Championship was canceled after the terrorist attack on the United States earlier in the week.

Bellerive has been the site of a long list of vaunted championships, beginning with Frank Stranahan winning the 1949 Western Amateur and Dutch Harrison capturing the 1953 Western Open (now the BMW Championship) at a former course location where the University of Missouri-St. Louis is now situated. Gary Player beat Kel Nagle in a playoff in 1965 for his only U.S. Open title when the new Bellerive course, recently designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr., became the youngest course to host the national championship. Nick Price won his first major here in the 1992 PGA Championship and Peter Jacobsen captured his first Champions Tour win at the 2004 U.S. Senior Open. The BMW has been played at various locations around St. Louis since the first stop in 1908.

The golf course underwent a year-long renovation in late 2005 and early 2006 by Rees Jones, the son of Robert Trent, and reopened in October 2006. The course, originally dubbed "the Green Monster" in the mid-1960s, can stretch to more than 7,400 yards at a par of 71 with a 500-yard par 4 at the 10th hole and two 600-yard par 5s at the eighth and 17th holes. Jones made the greens a bit smaller and more undulating, added some fairway bunkers and made the greenside bunkers more penal.

Cog Hill will be the host course again from 2009-2011 after a revision by Rees Jones within the last year. Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., where the 1991 PGA Championship was played, will be the site in 2012.

Local knowledge: "It's a long course with big greens. The premium will be on ball striking. I remember two very difficult holes -- the sixth hole, a par 3 (now 215 yards) and No. 15, a very difficult par 4 (now 496 yards). With the big greens, I always felt you could play well there if you drove the ball in the fairway and positioned yourself on how to attack the pins... Playing in St. Louis, where I had never played before, the crowds were just so ready to have a golf championship there. It was so well supported." -- Nick Price, the 1992 PGA Championship winner at Bellerive.

"Bellerive just lends itself to championship golf and a big-time tournament. It just reeks of championship golf, like Riviera, Winged Foot or Medinah. You know when you get on the property that it's a special place. I think the back nine will be the difference, particularly the par-3 16th which is a 235-yard par 3 with an impossible putting green where you can three- or four-putt. I made a 12-foot par putt, downhill and breaking, when I won the 2004 Senior Open." -- Peter Jacobsen, the 2004 U.S. Senior Open winner at Bellerive.