Sedgefield Key Fantasy Stats

Wyndham Championship

August 13th – 16th, 2020

Sedgefield Country Club

Greensboro, NC

Par: 70 / Yardage: 7,127

Purse: $6.4 million

with $1,152,000 to the winner

Defending Champion:
J.T. Poston

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 2020.
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. Just like last week at the PGA Championship, hitting fairways and greens is important 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 2017 winner Henrik Stenson. Last year’s winner J.T. Poston is a short hitter, coming into this week he is T-165th in driving distance. But when he is playing well he hits it straight. Another important aspect of driving for the long hitters, 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. This year it has been rainy, last week Hurricane Isaias sideswiped Greensboro but the area did get some rain with over 3 inches in the last week so the rough will be thicker and the fairways will be soft.
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 lots of putts are made, by 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 Collin Morikawa was able to hit 51 of 72 greens which rank T-7th and scramble well getting it up and down 15 of the 21 greens he missed to rank 12th and putt well ranking 1st in Strokes Gained Putting. All of this added up to Morikawa making 18 birdies the best of the week. The same will have to happen this week for someone to win. One thing about Sedgefield, it’s a fun course to play and yes it’s challenging. But it’s also not going to be taxing like TPC Harding Park was last week when it played to a scoring average of 70.755, three-quarters of a shot over par. Last year Sedgefield played to a 68.175 average, almost two shots below par as it was the 41st (out of 49) hardest course on the PGA Tour (which meant that 8 courses played easier on). The bad news for players, after a week of playing with sweaters and temperatures in the 60s and nice conditions, this week it’s back to hot, humid conditions with temperatures in the mid-80s and 60% chance of thunderstorms each day.

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. Last year’s winner J.T. Poston was 1st in Strokes Gained Tee-to-Green, as he was T-2nd in Driving Accuracy and T-1st in Greens in Regulation. 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. Last year Sedgefield ranked 44th in Scrambling and our winner Poston proved to be the stud of the week as he was a perfect 10 for 10 as he ranked 1st in scrambling. Our next stat is Strokes Gained Putting which is important, last year Sedgefield was 17th in putting average while Poston was 13th in Strokes Gained Putting, so to play well it’s important to putting well on this course. Last we have birdies, last year 1,880 birdies were made, only three other courses on the PGA Tour last year 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 144 of 156 players from this year’s field with stats from 2020:

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