Golf best bets: Jack Dougherty's outright picks for the BMW Championship

Are you not entertained?! Hideki Matsuyama (+3300) got the job done at the FedEx St. Jude Championship to cash our third straight outright winner in professional golf. We've now cashed tickets of +400, +1400, +4000 and +3300 in the last three weeks. The best part? We still have two more weeks of the FedEx Cup Playoffs to keep this train rolling.

The top 50 players in the FedEx Cup standings head to the Colorado mountains this week for the BMW Championship at beautiful Castle Pines Golf Club. At a whopping 8,130 yards, this Jack Nicklaus design will set the record for the longest golf course in PGA Tour history, but it won't play nearly that long due to the high elevation. Every player will be able to bomb it down these firm, fast fairways, so we're focusing more on total driving, mid-iron play and experience calculating distances at high elevations with our three outright bets for the BMW Championship.

Viktor Hovland (+1800 FanDuel )

What a wacky season it's been for Hovland. After winning the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship to close out last season, the 26-year-old didn't finish better than T19 this year until the PGA Championship in May. Hovland then slipped into another slump with missed cuts at the U.S. Open and the British Open, but something finally clicked last week at TPC Southwind.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Hovland found his game again and finished T2 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. He ranked fourth in the field in strokes gained on approach, fifth in strokes gained from off the tee and 12th in strokes gained from putting. His chipping was an issue once again, but it shouldn't be this week. Castle Pines features thick Kentucky Bluegrass rough around the greens, which is exactly how Valhalla Golf Club is set up.

Why is that relevant? Well, Valhalla is another Nicklaus design, and it just happens to be the only venue where Hovland gained strokes with his chipping this season.

Patrick Cantlay (+2200 FD )

With no course history to go off this week, we have to find different ways to fit players to Castle Pines. What we do know is that Cantlay absolutely loves the BMW Championship. Here's how the American has fared in his last five starts at this tournament: T15, win, win, T12, solo second. Not too shabby.

Cantlay is riding a nice run of form into this week, as he has three top-12 finishes and two top-fives in his last four starts. He's gained strokes on approach in six straight starts and is coming off his best off-the-tee week of the season at TPC Southwind. He's also a proven performer on golf courses at high elevation. In five starts at TPC Summerlin, which sits nearly 3,000 feet above sea level, Cantlay has a win and three runner-up finishes.

Akshay Bhatia (+6500 FD )

Speaking of players who perform well on mountain golf courses at elevation, Bhatia won the Barracuda Championship at Tahoe Mountain Club last season. That just proves he knows how to dial in his distances when the thin air causes golf balls to fly farther than usual.

Bhatia is also coming off a T12 finish at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in which he put up his third-best putting week of the season. That was an encouraging performance coming off two missed cuts and a T64 in his previous three starts. We know Bhatia is going to pepper fairways off the tee, which will be crucial at Castle Pines with water hazards and trees waiting to penalize wayward drives. If Bhatia can have one of his spike weeks with his irons, the youngster is live to win this thing.