BMW Championship: Leishman in Control

Marc Leishman heads into the final round with a 5-shot lead and is the odds on favorite at -250.

Leads this big are pretty rare, but in the recent tour history, -250 for a five-shot lead would be pretty good value.

This course does lend itself to a big comeback if Leishman does stall out, however. There is a 59 out there. We saw it in 2013 from Jim Furyk. I'm not going to add anything here, though. With Justin Rose, Patrick Cantlay and Charley Hoffman all in the top five after three rounds, I'm just going to hope two of them can hold those spots and make a small profit on the week.

Saturday's matchups went 1-2 for a loss of one unit. Gary Woodland beat Hudson Swafford, but the Jordan Spieth/Justin Thomas parlay and Jason Dufner over Rory McIlroy play fell short.

I have four more matchups I'm on heading into the final round.

First, I'll be going against McIlroy again with Zach Johnson at +140. McIlroy didn't play well Saturday, losing a half stroke to the field. It was just that Dufner played worse. So I'll go back to that well again.

The next two plays are fades on some hot putters. I'll take Pat Perez over Webb Simspon at +115. Simpson had one of the hottest putting rounds of the season Saturday, gaining 5.4 shots on the field. Simpson is normally a bad putter by tour standards, so it's hard to imagine him backing that up. The other is Cameron Smith over Stewart Cink at -115. Cink is a better putter than Simpson, but has still been struggling with the some other parts of the game. Smith is third this week in strokes gained: approach, and I expect him to keep getting a lot of looks for birdie.

The final play is Charley Hoffman -140 over Ryan Moore. No one has hit the ball better than Hoffman this week. He's led the field tee-to-green in two of the three rounds, but has lost four strokes with putter. Hoffman isn't a great putter, slightly above tour average, but right now, he's 68th of the 69 players in the field. I'm looking for him to get back closer to his average.

Joshua has spent the last five years writing about sports and the last 10 years betting them, mostly on golf. He's one of approximately five people who will watch the PGA over the NFL in November. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaPerry22

Photo: © Thomas J. Russo-USA TODAY Sports

Be part of the Action

Download the Sports Action app at the App Store or Google Play