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Gary Woodland entered the 2026 BMW Championship in 31st in the FedEx Cup Playoff standings, two points off the bubble and needing a strong week to play his way into next week’s Tour Championship in Atlanta.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After two rounds of play at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis, Woodland is doing more than enough to earn his way to East Lake, firing a 5-under 65 on Friday to back up his opening 64 and head to the weekend at 11 under.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Woodland’s resurgence has been one of the best stories of this PGA Tour season. The 2019 U.S. Open champion picked up his first win since then earlier this year at the Houston Open, marking his first victory since having surgery to remove a brain tumor in 2023. He’s given himself another opportunity to contend heading into the weekend at the BMW Championship.<\/p>\n
The 41-year-old is still one of the longest hitters on the PGA Tour, and that’s been crucial on a long golf course that’s playing even longer after rain earlier in the week softened the course.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Woodland leads the field in strokes gained off the tee and on approach through two rounds of play, putting on an elite ball-striking display that’s allowed him to take full advantage of his length. Woodland is first in driving distance and has paired that with accuracy, finding 20-of-28 fairways — which is critical given the length of the rough this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Finding the short grass off the tee has opened up chances to be aggressive with the irons, which he’s taken advantage of by hitting 29-of-36 greens in regulation. That’s the recipe for creating scoring opportunities, and even though he’s lost half a stroke on the greens so far this week, he’s still been able to climb near the top of the leaderboard entering the weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Woodland began the week knowing he needed a solid four rounds to pass either Rickie Fowler or Bud Cauley, who were just two points ahead of him in the standings. Through two rounds of play, he’s done more than that and will be the fan favorite at Bellerive on the weekend as he tries to capture his second win of the season to continue a storybook year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The leader<\/p>\n
1. Wyndham Clark (-12)<\/p>\n
Clark backed up his opening 64 with another on Friday. He is yet to make a bogey this week, as he has been incredibly steady through two rounds of play, marking the first time he’s gone bogey-free over the first 36 holes of an event in his career.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The two-time winner on the PGA Tour this season leads the field in greens in regulation, as he’s limited his mistakes and created consistent opportunities to find birdies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Clark entered the week already in fifth in the FedEx Cup standings, but could climb to third with a win, which would increase his bonus payout next week to $8 million from $5.4 million — on top of the $3.6 million payday that awaits the winner in St. Louis.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Other contenders<\/p>\n
2. Gary Woodland (-11)
3. J.J. Spaun (-10)
T4. Chris Gotterup, Sungjae Im (-9)
T6. Patrick Cantlay, Michael Thorbjornsen (-8)
T8. Rory McIlroy, Russell Henley, Collin Morikawa, Maverick McNealy (-7)
T12. Viktor Hovland, Justin Thomas, Kristoffer Reitan, Michael Brennan (-6)<\/p>\n
Spaun got to 11 under midway through his back nine and held a four-shot lead at one point early on Friday, but a small stumble dropped him back to 10 under. Still, he’s looked to be in terrific form after putting his U.S. Open-winning putter back in the bag this week in search of his second win of the year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Gotterup dropped a couple shots early but got back in the mix after nearly acing the par-3 6th, and he’s lurking menacingly in pursuit of his fourth win of the season, which would break a tie with Matt Fitzpatrick for the most on the PGA Tour in 2026.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Im, Cantlay, Thorbjornsen and Thomas will be fascinating to watch all weekend, as they all began the week outside the top 40 and are battling with each other for the last few spots in the Tour Championship. As it stands now, Im and Thorbjornsen would sneak inside that top 30, with Cantlay as the last man out in 31st and Thomas staying outside the top 40. All of that can change in a hurry on the weekend, but it shows just how thin the margins are for each of those players, as Cantlay is in the top 6 and that’s still not enough for him to reach the Tour Championship with the way this leaderboard stands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy began the day as the top story, as the world No. 2 was tied for the lead after the first round and seemed to have shaken off the rust that caused him to have a disastrous week in Memphis. He didn’t seem quite as comfortable with his swing on Friday, but he was able to stay in the top 10 and give himself a chance heading into the weekend. But five shots back of Clark’s lead, McIlroy will need to find the gas pedal again on Moving Day if he’s going to threaten to get his second win of the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Updated 2026 BMW Championship odds, picks<\/p>\n
Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook<\/p>\n
Wyndham Clark (19\/10)Gary Woodland (11\/2)Chris Gotterup (15\/2)J.J. Spaun (15\/2)Sungjae Im (14-1)Rory McIlroy (14-1)Patrick Cantlay (14-1)<\/p>\n
I’ll stick with my Gotterup pick from yesterday and add a little Woodland position. The fact that Woodland has scored this well without really getting the putter warmed up is an encouraging sign that he can maintain this pace on the weekend. Clark has proven that when he gets in contention, he knows how to finish off wins, but Woodland’s ball-striking and play off the tee has been so good it’s hard to see him not being in the mix all the way through Sunday afternoon.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This page may contain affiliate links. If you click and sign up, make a deposit, or place a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[88,1443,994,1873,2912,44,205,144,9898,4478,995,206,5966],"class_list":["post-54314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bmw-championship","tag-88","tag-bmw-championship","tag-coverage","tag-fedex-cup","tag-fedexcup","tag-golf","tag-leaderboard","tag-pga-tour","tag-playoffs","tag-round-2","tag-schedule","tag-scores","tag-standings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}