Closing in on a $15 million payday to one player, they head to Chicago this week for the BMW Championship, where the top 70 will try to survive one more cut-down to the top 30 who will meet in the Tour Championship in Atlanta the next week. Looking for some kind of winning form among the contenders, about all you can say is that there have been few shocks since the Tour resumed in June. Five events have been won by players in the top seven in the Hawley Ratings when they shut down after the Mar. 3 Palmer. Four others have been won by players in the top 50, and the only real outsiders who have won are Michael Thompson, who was 134th on Mar. 3 and won the 3M, and Jim Herman, who was 562nd on Mar. 3 and won the Wyndham. Let’s take a look at the top 10 picks this week.

• Jon Rahm. Rahm gets the nod as favorite based on steady play. He won the Memorial, finished in the top 20 at the PGA, and then last weekend after a so-so start climbed up the leaderboard every day to finish tied for sixth.
• Rory McIlroy. What can you say other than that the lights went off for McIlroy when the Tour shut down? He was fabulous during the winter but has been close only once (11th at the Travelers) since then. “If you need anyone to shoot even to 2-under for a week, I’m your man,” he wryly joked after the Northern Trust. Espn.com reported that McIlroy admitted something was wrong with his mindset. “This is going to sound really bad, but I feel like the last few weeks, I’ve just been going through the motions,” he said. Maybe memories of the $15 million he won in the Tour Championship last year will provide some spark.
• Webb Simpson. Won the Heritage. Missed two cuts this summer but had three other top-10s, including last week when he was in part of that tie with Rahm.
• Dustin Johnson. Johnson increased his career victory total to 22 with wins in the Travelers and Northern Trust, and it never looked easier than it did last weekend when he was 30-under and won by 11 strokes. He missed two cuts in a row in July, then was top-20 in the FedEx, second in the PGA, and won the Northern. Asked about being the Tour Championship winner, Johnson said, “It means a lot to all the guys out here. It definitely means a lot to me, and it’s something that I really want to be.”
• Justin Thomas. Won the WGC-FedEx but has been out of contention twice since then.
• Xander Schauffele. Has a nice streak of six events in a row in the top 25, including top-10s in the FedEx and PGA. Schauffele and all the names above are assured of advancing to the Tour Championship based on accumulated points.
• Adam Scott. Probably needs a top-10 to move on after only playing twice this summer; he made the top 25 in the PGA but was just above the cut line last week. Looking at it from another angle, he only played three times before the shut-down but won the Genesis.
• Patrick Cantlay. Probably needs a top-10 to move on. Has been steady but not spectacular this year with two top-10s and three top-20s, all before mid-July.
• Hideki Matsuyama. Likely to advance. Like Cantlay, played better in the winter. Snuck into the top 20 once in seven events this summer.
• Jason Day. Probably needs a top-five to move on. Had a great streak of four straight top-10s from the Workday to the PGA and then missed the cut in the Northern Trust.

There are some others who are playing impressive golf in recent outings. Tops on that list would be Scottie Scheffler, showing a strong upward trend with a mid-pack finish in the Memorial, a top-20 in the FedEx, and now consecutive top-10s against strong fields in the PGA and Northern Trust. Also under the radar are Alex Noren, Kevin Kisner, Ryan Palmer, and Harris English. All four of the latter players made the top 10 in the Northern Trust.

Host course Olympia Fields Country Club is about 25 miles south of Chicago’s Loop. The last time PGA Tour pros visited was for the 2003 U.S. Open; Olympia Fields also was the site of five Western Opens, the last in 1971. The highest finisher in the 2003 Open who is back this week is Tiger Woods, who was 20th then. The only others returning from that event are Paul Casey, Charles Howell, and Scott. Granted, one event is a small data set, but the statistics most strongly associated with scoring in the ‘03 Open were scrambling and driving accuracy. (Those 2003 stats were not used in any analysis on this website but scrambling and accuracy might suggest names like Kisner and Simpson.)