Still Black Desert Championship to most bettors, officially renamed the Bank of Utah Championship for 2025 after a new title sponsorship. The course hasn't changed: lava-field terrain, 7,000-square-foot bentgrass greens, and two straight editions won at 22-under or lower by first-time PGA Tour champions. This is a birdie-fest with one real trap, exposed black lava rock lining nearly every fairway, and this page is built to separate the players who can go low from the ones who can go low and stay out of the rock.
Black Desert Resort plays to a par of 71 at 7,421 yards, verified against both pgatour.com's current tournament page and the event's Wikipedia tournament record. Tom Weiskopf and Phil Smith built the course in 2023 through an ancient lava field in Ivins, Utah, at roughly 3,000 to 3,100 feet of elevation, land that plays shorter than its scorecard number in the thin desert air. The hole distribution is unusual for a Tour stop: 11 par 4s, four par 3s, and just three par 5s.
What decides the leaderboard: wide bentgrass fairways and flat, 7,000-square-foot greens make this one of the more gettable setups on Tour, Data Golf has it ranked the 9th-easiest course across its first two years, averaging -1.56 strokes to par per round. The two editions played so far were won at 23-under and 22-under. That means approach precision and putting separate the field more than raw distance does, while driving accuracy matters less for scoring than for simply staying out of the lava rock lining the corridors.
No full model workbook was run for this event this week, so these are directional weights built from Black Desert's physical profile (wide fairways, flat greens, altitude-shortened yardage) and public strokes-gained data, not a proprietary regression output. With winning scores of -23 and -22 in the two prior editions, the model treats this as an approach-and-putting course first, with driving accuracy mattering more for hazard avoidance than for scoring access.
Stat profile only, no odds or pick tiers here, that's below the gate in Section 06. These are the three players whose current strokes-gained trend best matches what Black Desert rewards.
| Player | Stat Profile | Why It Fits |
|---|---|---|
| Jackson Koivun | 6th in field, SG: App (L20 rds) | Gained approach strokes in all four rounds at the Biltmore Championship; enters off an undefeated Presidents Cup debut |
| Billy Horschel | +0.68 SG: App/rd (L36 rds) | Gained strokes on approach in 9 of his last 10 starts; led the field in birdies in his 2025 start at this course |
| Jackson Suber | SG: App gained, 7 of L8 rds | Gained approach strokes in all four rounds at Biltmore and seven of his last eight overall, plus back-to-back top-25s |
Every past week's analysis stays live as its own standalone page. Results tracked publicly at strokesedge.com/picks.html.
Not financial advice. Gamble responsibly.
Past performance does not guarantee future results.