2022 Wyndham Championship Betting Picks Preview
Ron Klos
4 years ago
In the final PGA Tour event before the start of the FedExCup Playoffs, Sedgefield Country Club will play host to the Wyndham Championship. Located near Greensboro, North Carolina, Sedgefield has been a regular Tour stop since 2008. It is a Donald Ross-designed classical course with a storied history that was built during golf’s “Golden Age”.
The recently updated and preserved Sedgefield course provides a strategic challenge that is rarely found on Tour. It is a course where finding the contoured fairways carries real worth. While scoring has continued to be low over the years, the narrow, tree-lined fairways along with strategic routing and bunkering, and elevated tricky green complexes ensure that Sedgefield will continue to be a fair test of golf.
Similar to last week at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, this shorter course does feature an above-average number of wedges with the goal of getting the ball as close to the hole on approach. Dissimilar to last week, however, bombers off the tee do not have that much of an advantage, and many of them do not even bother to show up for this event.
With many of the world’s best choosing to rest up and prepare for the three-week FedExCup Playoffs on their own, we will see another field of mostly mid- to lower-tier players. Those that are not firmly inside the top 125 will be highly motivated this week. And those who are firmly in next week’s FedEx St. Jude field will be fighting for position.
Will Zalatoris and Billy Horschel are the only top-20 players in the Official World Golf Rankings in the field. Other notable names include Shane Lowry, Corey Conners, Sungjae Im, Tyrrell Hatton, and Russell Henley. With 156 golfers playing this week, the field will be cut to the top 65 and ties after Friday’s round.
Keys to Success
Year after year the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club has been one of the easiest events to both model and predict the type of player that will win. There is a very clear recipe for success on this course and it all starts with driving accuracy. While the rough doesn’t seem penal at only 2.5 inches, the simple fact that it is “Bermuda” is the reason why. Having played from Bermuda rough more times than I care to remember on courses in Texas, it tends to wrap around the ball causes all types of mishits and fliers and is very unpredictable. At Sedgefield the GIR rate from the fairway is the easiest on Tour at an astounding 85%. From the rough or fairway bunkers it drops down to 54%.