2011 BMW Championship: First Round Tee Times, TV Coverage And More

The 2011 BMW Championship, the third leg of the 2011 FedEx Cup playoffs, begins play Thursday at the Cog Hill Golf and Country Club in Lemont, Illonois.

The field is limited to the top 70 players in the FedEx Cup point standings, which currently features Webb Simpson at No. 1 following his win last week at the Deutsche Bank Championship. Dustin Johnson, currently ranked second in the standings, is the defending champion, hauling in $1.35 million at the event last year.

This will be the final BMW Championship played at Cog Hill, and several notable players aren’t feeling very nostalgic. On Wednesday, Phil Mickelson, ranked 10th in the FedEx Cup point standings, unloaded on the course, which underwent a significant redesign in 2008.

“There’s really no shot-making here that’s required,” Mickelson said, according to USA TODAY’s Mike Dodd. “It doesn’t really test our ability to maneuver the ball because the fronts of the greens are blocked, and the only shot is to hit a high flop shot that stops. But being able to maneuver it doesn’t really matter.

“A great golf course is a golf course that’s challenging for the good player but playable for the average player, and I feel like this is the exact opposite,” he said. “It’s playable; it’s fine for us ... but the average guy just can’t play it.”

Steve Stricker, ranked seventh in FedEx Cup point standings, was even more pointed with his comments. “They need to get their money back,” he said, according to Reuters. “It’s an unfortunate situation, it really is. Visually it looks much better than what it did, but from the playability standpoint, I’ve got to believe for the average golfer, it is very difficult.

“The players on a whole don’t really care for the re-do. It’s too bad what happened here.”

Whether they like the course or not, the first round tees off at 10:20 a.m. (CDT) Thursday morning. Chris Kirk, Robert Karlsson and Lucas Glover will get things started on hole No. 1, while Rickie Fowler, Steve Marino and Ryan Moore will start play at the same time on hole No. 10. For more tee times, visit the PGA’s official site.

The purse for the 2011 BMW Championship is $8 million, with the winner taking home $1.44 million. In addition to money, points for the FedEx Cup standings are at stake, which is important because only the top 30 players in the FedEx Cup point standings will be invited to next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, GA. The golfer who ranks first in the FedEx Cup standings at the conclusion of the Tour Championship will earn a $10 million bonus.

The Golf Channel will provide live coverage of the 2011 BMW Championship on Thursday and Friday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m (CDT), and the PGA’s official site will provide a live stream from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. On Saturday, The Golf Channel will have live coverage from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., at which point NBC will start airing until 2:30 p.m. On Sunday, The Golf Channel will start coverage from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., with NBC picking up the final four hours starting at 1 p.m.

For more on the BMW Championship, check out Waggle Room.