BMW Championship 2015: Tee times, pairings for Thursday’s round

After a week away, the PGA Tour returns Thursday morning for the start of the third leg of the FedExCup. The BMW Championship is back in the Chicagoland area again, where the event has been most often played during its short history. The venue is Conway Farms in Lake Forest, which is hosting its second BMW and PGA Tour event. The track is relatively new, opening in 1991, and was completely untested on the Tour level when the BMW swung up here in 2013.

The third leg of the four-leg FedExCup features only the remaining top 70 in the points standings. The original 125 qualifiers were winnowed down to 70 over two pre-Labor Day events and 40 more will be chopped this week before the season finale in Atlanta. With just 70 players in the field (no one turned this down or withdrew like the previous two playoff events), there is no need for a cut at the 36-hole midpoint. It’s not quite the 30 players in next week’s exclusive field, but 70 is a limited number that gives the Tour a ton of flexibility when it comes to scheduling the tee sheet for the first two rounds.

The Tour could easily send everyone off in twosomes and all on one tee, but they will utilize the typical split-tee format and put them in groups of three on Thursday. This is the format at almost every stop on Thursday and Friday, but there’s usually 130 to 150 players in those fields jamming the tee sheet. With the small number here, tee times won’t start until after Noon back in the east. The entire field is condensed into two hours, so everyone will play at least a portion of their round during the afternoon Golf Channel coverage window (starting at 3 p.m. ET).

The marquee group goes off at 12:53 p.m. ET and features the top three players in the FedExCup standings. Tee times are always sorted according to the standings during these four playoff events, but this trio is particularly juicy given the transitional summer we just had. Jordan Spieth, Jason Day, and Rickie Fowler will play the first 36 holes together in Chicago. Bubba was in Rickie’s spot for the first two postseason events, but Fowler’s win in Boston moves him into the headline group.

Spieth’s dominant lead in the standings that he built up over an entire incredible season was gone after just one event, Day’s win at The Barclays. Even after two straight missed cuts, however, Spieth can be in the driver’s seat heading into the finale with an improved showing at Conway Farms. The week off may have been just what he needed -- we’ll find out early on Thursday afternoon. Here’s the full tee sheet for the opening round of the BMW: