Sedgefield Key Fantasy Stats

Wyndham Championship

August 16th – 19th, 2018

Sedgefield Country Club

Greensboro, NC

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,127

Purse: $6 million

with $1,080,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
Henrik Stenson

by Sal Johnson

Founder, Chief Data Officer, GOLFstats

E-mail me at:
sal@golfstats.com

This is based on the most vital stats from Sedgefield C.C., based on data from last year’s Wyndham Championship and using data from all the players in the field with stats from 2018.
For the third week in a row, the tour plays a course that driving it straight matters a lot, the key to playing well at Sedgefield is to hit it straight and position your drives for the shot into the green. A look at the list of champions at the Wyndham since the event went back to Sedgefield in 2008 shows that the list of winners are guys that either hit is short and straight, or in the case of hitting it long players like Webb Simpson, Sergio Garcia, Patrick Reed, Si Woo Kim and last year’s winner Henrik Stenson that also can hit it straight and long. Another important aspect of driving, the holes that dogleg need players to lay it up to avoid going through the fairway and it’s always best to be in the fairways. The course is tree line and that is more of a hazard than the rough which is not as penal as it could be.
Like any other great Donald Ross course, the greens are tough, first in hitting them if you miss them it’s a hard up and down. The greens are also pretty flat and lot’s of putts are made, but good and bad putters. So it’s a course that favors short hitters, those that do scramble well and average putters. Last week was a perfect example, winner Brooks Koepka was able to scramble ok getting it up and down 14 of the 18 greens he missed to rank T-2nd and putt great and yes he did make a lot of birdies.

So in looking at our four categories, we see how much driving and getting the ball on the green makes a difference. So we pick Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green because at Sedgefield putting the ball in play off the tee is very important, probably one of the most important items on this Donald Ross course. Then getting the ball on the greens is important and we all know how hard it is to hit a Donald Ross green. That is why next up is scrambling because the greens are hard to hit when you miss the green you have to get it up and down to win. After that putting average is important, last year Sedgefield was T-11th in putting average so it’s important to play well to putt well on this course We are going to take it a step further and use the strokes gained-putting stat for our third category. Last we have birdies, last year 1,825 birdies were made, only one other course, Glen Abbey for the RBC Canadian Open saw more birdies made. So we are using the Birdie average for our final category.

*Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green: Looks at the combination of length off the tee and accuracy, then getting the ball on the green so it determines who is best at all of these items.

*Scrambler: Who gets it up and down after missing a green.

*Strokes Gained-Putting: Look who picks up the most strokes on the greens.

*Birdie average: Players who average the most birdies made per round.

Here are the 125 of 156 players from this year’s field with stats from 2018:

Click any column title in the table header to sort columns.