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Joe Idone's @TourPicks Exclusive Course Preview and Breakdown for the 2024 Wyndham Championship. He offers a comprehensive preview and concentrated analysis for Sedgefield Country Club using historical data and current trends to prep for PGA DFS lineups.
You have come to the right place for everything you need to know about Sedgefield Country Club and the Wyndham Championship. It's one of my favorite events on the PGA Tour and the single tournament in which I have historically won the most money in DFS and betting. The Donald Ross gem has an excellent way of finding ways to challenge Tour pros despite not being the most intimidating layout, and has proven to be one of the more predictive tournaments in terms of setup on the PGA Tour schedule all year.
Anyone who has elected to tee it up this week is doing so for a good reason. Many are big names in search of adding some last-minute FedEx Cup points and others have just come to love Sedgefield and the results that it consistently produces. We'll take everything into account and will try to provide the best course breakdown we possible can in an effort to help you prepare your lineups and betting cards for the Wyndham Championship.
I wanted to use this piece to hopefully highlight a few different angles and elements that may be less spoken about to provide some value in this course preview. I'm hopeful that you can utilize this to get your research started with a proper understanding of how the golf course should affect which player attributes are the most important for success. In this course preview, we'll delve into some of the distinctive features that make Sedgefield CC unique and one of my favorite courses in the PGA Tour rotation.
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An Introduction to Sedgefield Country Club
The rolling landscape and exceptional weather in Greensboro, North Carolina, created the perfect scene for the great Donald Ross to design another one of his amazing early 1900's golf courses. He built Sedgefield Country Club in 1925 and the course still stands the test of time as a prestigious venue capable of challenging PGA Tour players 125 years later. His vision was rooted in taking proper advantage of the natural topography in this region of North Carolina, utilizing the rolling hills and different types of grass to be challenging and visually appealing.
Ross's style has never been boxed in. He grew up in Scotland, worked at St. Andrew's before coming to America, and he truly believed in building harmoniously with the land. Pinehurst, located not too far away, is renowned as his best piece of work and that course is drastically different than anything you will see at Sedgefield. It speaks volumes of his architectural brilliance that he didn't just create golf courses in a lab and drop them on any given property. He took what was already there and weaved a golf course into the dirt.
Because the piece of property was somewhat limited, the course features a narrowness to both the fairways and approaches that emphasize precision and shot-making. The greens are multi-tiered to provide numerous pin locations and take advantage of some severe run-offs which are in tune with the elevation movement. Sedgefield has been through a number of facelifts over time, but the most significant work took place in 2007 when Kris Spence led a project with the intention of returning the course to Ross's original specs.
Sedgefield has played the host role of the Wyndham Championship annually since 2008. The club has produced a great list of winners with varying skill sets. The tournament features one of the great variables that is hard for some other stops to replicate; consequence. If you miss your spot, there are consequences. The results also deeply matter, as this has been the final tournament in the lead-up to the FedEx Cup Playoffs and will ultimately decide the fate of numerous players trying to play into the playoffs. There is real drama every year, and 2023 was no exception.
Justin Thomas had this pitch shot on No. 18 to get into the Top 70 of the FedEx Cup Standings.
Now, he waits. He’ll need some help to get into the @PGATOUR playoffs for the 9th straight season. pic.twitter.com/kESvm7YcpA
— Jeff Eisenband (@JeffEisenband) August 6, 2023
Scorecard:
Course Specs
Sedgefield Country Club can be best described as a positional golf course that requires smart decision-making and precision from tee to green. If you play the course how it is intending to be played, you will be rewarded with opportunity. At only 7,131 yards, it is certainly not a driver-heavy bomb and gouge golf course. The course is often described as narrow which I agree with, but it is narrow in a different way than most. There is some room and forgiveness to the fairways, but the visual line on your approach shots into the greens is narrow with little margin for error.
Players do not club down off the tee because they don't think that there is enough room to hit the fairway. They club down because the consequence for missing the fairway is massive and won't allow them the chance to have an angle into the green. It's all about the second shot. Players hitting from the fairway also hit the greens in regulation at an 80% rate. If you miss the fairway, the greens in regulation rate historically drop below 55%. That's the data, and there is enough of it over the years that the players understand this deeply as well.
There are only two par 5s on the card, one on each side. Last year they played to a scoring average of 4.42, making them some of the easiest on Tour, and are reachable in two shots for most players in the field. The par 3's are also very easy at Sedgefield, ranking inside the Top-8 in easiest par 3's over the last 10 years. The par 4's are where Sedgefield bites back, challenging players because the small greens and tight angles make them extremely difficult to scramble if you are out of position.
Sedgefield Country Club features Bermuda grass throughout the golf course. The greens and surrounding chipping areas tend to be super grainy this time of year in the late summer causes players fits who are not familiar with Bermuda. Nearly two-thirds of all approach shots come from within 175 yards historically and DataGolf has Sedgefield as one of the most predictive courses year over year on the PGA Tour schedule. Course history and knowledge are used to create a proper plan for players and caddies. Knowing where you can't miss it is arguably more important than knowing where to hit it.
The #WyndhamChamp field is set! 🏆https://t.co/kGJglWrQKL pic.twitter.com/mafimzK06n
— Wyndham Championship (@WyndhamChamp) August 2, 2024
Statistical Considerations
First things first, do not shy away from Course History at the Wyndham Championship. I have laid out the reasons why it is important, and I can speak personally to the effects of not being cautioned away from playing chalk at this event. I had my biggest DFS win ever at this event and had the two highest-owned players of the week in my lineup. I was still able to beat 91,000 other people. Horses for courses are real at Sedgefield CC.
This is a big-time Driving Accuracy week and Good Drives Gained. I talked about the dramatic difference in Greens in Regulation rates from those players hitting approach shots from the fairway vs. the rough and it cannot be overstated enough. Scrambling is extremely difficult and the more infrequently that you have get up and down for par, the better. Finding players that hit the fairway the most often is a good place to start your stat models.
Sedgefield Country Club does a great job of demanding precision with your short irons and wedges. As you will see in the DataGolf chart below, there is a high percentage of approach shots coming from within 175 yards. I'm factoring in heavily SG: Approach 100-175 yards and looking specifically at the splits between that data on shots coming from the fairway vs. the rough. Start by understanding a players driving tendencies, and you can use that to forecast whether or not you think they will be more likely to be playing from the fairway or the rough. That should give you a better understanding of the data points that are most important on a per player basis.
Lastly, I am inputting the following stats which will make up a smaller, but important percentage of my stat model. Scramling stats from the rough, SG: Around the Greens (Bermuda), long term Bermuda Putting, and Par 4 Birdie or Better rates. This should all give you a good place to start with your stat modeling. As always, pay attention to the weather and ownership popularity as the week progresses before making any final decisions. Here's to another fun sweat this weekend!
Ahh that refreshing late summer 97% humidity as you stepped outside this morning can only mean one thing…
It’s Wyndham Week. Got lucky here once while renovating a bathroom live on Twitter. Good times 🎲🎲
Will victory lap 🏁 this til’ death pic.twitter.com/9FHWINbrdY
— Joe I (@TourPicks) August 1, 2022
Approach Shot Distribution (Datagolf)
RadarPlot (Sedgefield CC) vs. Avg. PGA Tour Course
Top 10 Best Adjusted Player Course Fits for the Wyndham Championship:
- Aaron Rai
- Sungjae Im
- Davis Thompson
- Patrick Fishburn
- Robert MacIntyre
- Mac Meissner
- Sam Stevens
- Victor Perez
- Christiaan Bezuidenhout
- Chan Kim
Good luck and enjoy the 2024 Wyndham Championship!
