10 golfers most likely to win BMW Championship

Tiger Woods is still in a great position to win the FedEx Cup. (USATSI)

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The FedEx Cup playoffs are held over a relatively short time period: 16 days of actual golf over a five-week stretch. The reality, though, is that these playoffs are an absolute grind.

And the key to winning the $10 million prize at the end of the road is to pace yourself if you're playing in these events.

Since the PGA Tour started resetting FedEx Cup points after the BMW Championship in 2009, only Tiger Woods has won the FedEx Cup without winning the Tour Championship. Of the other three FedEx Cup winners (Brandt Snedeker, Bill Haas, and Jim Furyk), none of them won before the final event.

So this year's champ is likely somebody who hasn't won a playoff event yet (and likely won't be this week's BMW Championship winner). Sorry, Henrik Stenson and Adam Scott and whoever wins this week.

I know these golfers try to win every single tournament they play in but it seems like if you're a Tiger Woods fan (or a fan of anyone playing) you want him to show well this week and then go off at the Tour Championship.

If he plays decently at the BMW he should be close enough to the top that a Tour Championship win would easily give him the FedEx Cup.

Either way, I love these events with smaller fields (70 golfers this week). There's no cut and you always have monster names hovering around the lead.

The first two events both gave us top 10 in the world golfers as our winners and I'd expect nothing less this week.

It should be a blast.

Here are the 10 golfer I think are most likely to win this week at the 2013 BMW Championship:

Player	Odds	Analysis
	20/1	It's just tough for me to imagine Rory McIlroy going a full calendar year without winning a tournament. He showed well at the PGA Championship a few weeks ago and is the defending champ of this tournament.
	33/1	That sentence I wrote above about not being able to imagine Rory McIlroy going a full year without winning -- same thing for Keegan Bradley. He has two top 20 finishes in his last three events and I wouldn't be surprised to see him sneak into a backdoor FedEx Cup win.
	40/1	Charl Schwartzel had top 25 appearances in each of the first two playoff events and he finished in the top 30 at this event last year. He's as due as the first two guys.
	11/2	Tiger Woods is always the favorite when he plays and this week is no different. I'm feeling a top 10 finish but not a win.
	33/1	Dustin Johnson has been pretty quiet on the golfing front (tabloid news is a different story) since his meltdown at the Canadian Open. I love it when his odds are over 30-1.
	22/1	Would anybody be surprised if Jordan Spieth put a bow on his incredible year by winning one of these last two tournaments? If he wins them both he'll get some player of the year buzz.
	33/1	I'd expect a big tournament out of Webb Simpson after being picked by Fred Couples for the Presidents Cup. As he showed at the PGA Championship, he can get as hot as anybody for at least a few rounds.
	12/1	Adam Scott has three top fives in his last five events and that includes two majors. So yeah, he'll be in the mix.
	25/1	You know who's going to get some player of the year love if he wins the FedEx Cup? Jason Dufner. In the Tiger Woods era no major has determined the player of the year more often than the PGA Championship. Recency is always most powerful.
	28/1	One of these days Jason Day is going to shed that one-time winner moniker. And it's going to happen in one massive wave of, like, three wins in four tournaments.