The final tournament of this truncated regular PGA Tour season takes place this week when the Wyndham Championship forms the centre of attention. Usually players outside the top 125 in the FedEx Cup rankings are fretting about keeping their cards but with relegation off the tour scrapped this year due to Covid the only pressures are to get into the leading 125 to be able to tee it up in Boston next week.
JT Poston had no such worries last season and he won this tournament in style last year without making a single bogey. He is back and will be looking to head into the playoffs by keeping his title on his mantelpiece.
Recent Winners
2019 – JT Poston
2018 – Brandt Snedeker
2017 – Henrik Stenson
2016 – Si Woo Kim
2015 – Davis Love III
2014 – Camilo Villegas
2013 – Patrick Reed
2012 – Sergio Garcia
2011 – Webb Simpson
2010 – Arjun Atwal
The Course
We are back at Sedgefield Country Club this week. Once again the Donald Ross designed track is a par 70 which measures 7,131 yards now after a small lengthening of the 14th hole. This is a low scoring tournament so immediately you should be looking for players who are capable of playing golf on the front foot but not necessarily those who belt it miles as length isn’t really in play here as you can see from the list of past winners above.
Generally the recipe for success here is hit the fairway, hit the greens and hole some putts so we are looking for the accurate types who can get hot with the putting on medium paced greens. The rough isn’t particularly thick this week so although that will encourage the bigger hitters, this is a week for those who are accurate rather than long to take centre stage and build up to the opening playoff event next week in style.
The Field
When you consider that this tournament falls in between the first major of the season and the opening playoff event of the campaign, there is a pretty decent field on show here. Brooks Koepka is the headline name and he’ll be itching to get back to winning ways having let a big chance to retain his USPGA Championship title slip away last week. Former winner Webb Simpson and past Masters champion Patrick Reed also give the field some star quality.
Paul Casey was second best to Collin Morikawa last week but he’ll be looking to go one better here, while Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Rose complete a formidable English threesome going on the attack here. Regular PGA Tour stalwarts Billy Horschel, course record holder Brandt Snedeker, Ryan Moore, Kevin Kisner and Jordan Spieth all tee it up looking for a win which will boost their confidence ahead of next week as well.
Market Leaders
Webb Simpson is a 10/1 favourite to win the tournament this week. That is no surprise because his record here is up there with anything in the field. In fact it is better than that. He has a win and a couple of runner up finishes and must love coming to this course. You would suggest that he is the man to beat and it might be that whoever does beat him comes away as the winner, but at 10/1 he’s plenty short enough so I’m happy to give him a swerve here.
Brooks Koepka is a 12/1 shot and the very nature of the fact that despite there being no Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas or Dustin Johnson in the field he isn’t favourite says a lot about when he’s at right now. Koepka tees it up here needing a big week in the next three else he’ll be watching on when the Tour Championship comes along which is almost unheard of. As for this week, the pulling and prodding he took during the third round last week which was followed by a mess of a final round is more than enough to put me off backing him.
Patrick Reed is a man who should have won more than once around here given how well he fits the course. That his win came as long ago as 2013 is also a surprise but he could put that right here and is a 16/1 shot to do so. The only thing that would put you off the American is his driver can sometimes go completely cockeyed and this isn’t really the week for that. If he keeps it in play off the tee ‘Captain America’ should be very close on Sunday.
Tommy Fleetwood completes the quartet of players who are shorter than 20/1 this week. He is an 18/1 shot to build on an up and down USPGA Championship last week. He was good on Friday but did little more than hang around on the other days before tumbling down the leaderboard on Sunday. I don’t think Fleetwood is firing on all cylinders yet and so he is a pretty easy swerve here despite the quality of his long game. It is 20/1 bar.
Main Bets
I’m pretty locked in on my main bets this week whereas sometimes I have to um and aah over them. Brendon Todd is my first one. He has already won twice and has a perfect skillset for this tournament. As we saw last week he is relentless when it comes to hitting fairways and greens and there is a case to be made that he could easily have won the last two weeks. Length of the track and esteemed company probably went against him on both occasions but there is no worries about him winning as he has done that twice this season already. The fact he was prominent in Memphis and San Francisco is more of a positive than him fading is a negative so I’ll take him to come away with a third win for the season here.
The other main bet this week comes in the form of a former winner in Si Woo Kim, a player who shot three successive 68s at Harding Park last week to finish prominently on the leaderboard in an event which probably wasn’t to his liking. They always say that The Players Championship is a good form guide for this event and the Korean is a former winner of that title as well as this one. The concern is that he hasn’t had a week off since lockdown but due to injuries over the last couple of years he has had plenty of inactive time so that is only a minor worry. The fact his body has held together is a positive and with his form improving, his game in good shape, him returning to a track he enjoys and needing a big week to stay in the top 125 of the FedEx rankings, Kim is a main bet play this week.
Outsiders
Usually I restrict myself to three outsiders but this is a key week with players playing for the top 125 so I’ll take a fourth here. The first of them comes in the form of Jim Furyk, a man who needs a monster week to make it to Boston next week. It might just come here too on a course where his skills can be rewarded. Furyk won on the Champions Tour just two weeks ago so we know his game is in decent nick and his recent record here is very good. He has top 10s in his last three visits here and nobody on the PGA Tour hits more fairways and greens. Weeks where he can contend at this level are few and far between these days but this is one of them so I’ll take him accordingly.
Maverick McNealy put up a decent showing in the Barracuda Championship in the week of the WGC event in Memphis and at 80/1 he looks a big price for another good week. If McNealy needed inspiration from anywhere he only needs to look at his girlfriend Danielle Kang who is burning up the LPGA Tour at the minute. If that doesn’t bring out the best from him nothing will. McNealy is one of the best putters on the tour and he already has a couple of top 10s since the restart, one of which was at the Rocket Mortgage Classic which had a decent field. He’s a sleeper play here.
Kyle Stanley has the sort of tee to green game that has to contend here if he can hole some putts. He offered up something that should have given him some confidence at the 3M Open a few weeks ago and then shot +31 in stableford scoring at the Barracuda Championship where he finished T12 but was much deeper in contention than that after 54 holes. Stanley sits fourth in fairways hit and second in greens this season so statistically he is a beast if he can get that putter warm. He is 130 on the FedEx list coming in here so needs a big week to make it into next week. He’s a big price should that putter cooperate.
My final bet will be a man who showed some form early doors in the USPGA Championship last week before fading away in the form of the newly crowned Payne Stewart Award winner Zach Johnson. Johnson sets up well for this course and the fact he opened with a 66 at Harding Park last week, on a course which is way too long for him, offers up some encouragement that he can have the big week he needs to elevate himself from 129 in the rankings into the top 125. Johnson is a wizard putter and pretty good from tee to green. If the form of the early part of last week has boosted his confidence accordingly, he can run hot at a big price here.
Tips
Back B.Todd to win Wyndham Championship (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 36.00 with William Hill (1/5 1-8)
PLACED – Back S-W. Kim to win Wyndham Championship (e/w) for a 1/10 stake at 36.00 with William Hill (1/5 1-8)
Back J.Furyk to win Wyndham Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 71.00 with William Hill (1/5 1-8)
Back M.McNealy to win Wyndham Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 81.00 with William Hill (1/5 1-8)
PLACED – Back Z.Johnson to win Wyndham Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 126.00 with William Hill (1/5 1-8)
Back them here:
Back K.Stanley to win Wyndham Championship (e/w) for a 0.5/10 stake at 101.00 with Betfred (1/5 1-7)
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