Wyndham Championship ⏤ Picks & Analysis

Fantasy Golf

Sedgefield Cc3

The race to the Fedex Cup playoffs culminates this week with the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, NC. The season-long points race (abbreviated this year by the COVID pause) finishes up with this event and the top 125 players in FedEx Cup points at the end of this event will advance to next week's Northern Trust at TPC Boston. A number of notable players are on the outside looking in--including some major champions like Shane Lowry, Sergio Garcia, Jason Dufner, Jimmy Walker, Jim Furyk and Henrik Stenson. Many of those names are competing this week as missing the playoffs means they spend the next three weeks on the couch and out of the action. Most of the other players on the bubble (including everyone from the 108th spot on the points list to the 145th slot) will be in the field as well.

J.T. Poston will defend the title he won by a shot last year over local favorite Webb Simpson. Poston put on an absolute clinic en route to the 2019 title here at a score of 22-under 258 that did not include a single bogey for the week. He only missed ten of the greens total (T1 for the week) and got up and down to save par each and every time. He only missed eleven fairways (T2 for the week) and left the field in his dust in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green. 

This week's venue (Sedgefield CC) should play a fair bit easier than last week's PGA Championship at TPC Harding Park. The golf course is not particularly long and the weather conditions are likely to create an environment ripe for scoring. The wind is not forecasted to get anywhere above single-digits in terms of velocity and there are (predictably) thunderstorms in the forecast all four of the tournament days. This is likely to create the kind of soft conditions under which these tour pros thrive.

Group A

Brooks Koepka is certainly the biggest name among those listed in Group A and he obviously deserves some consideration as the most accomplished player of the bunch. However, it is hard to ignore his poor performance last week over the weekend at the PGA Championship. His string of three straight bogies on Saturday put him behind the eight ball going into Sunday and when he needed a low one to get himself in the hunt for a third straight PGA title he fired a Sunday 74 that was by far the worst round of those around the lead. He's shown a ton of inconsistency this season and has seemed to struggle to put consecutive quality rounds together. He's known not to take regular events all that seriously and for that reason we're going to fade him this week.

Our pick in Group A is going to be last week's runner-up in Paul Casey. He's made ten of his twelve cuts this season and fired four rounds in the sixties last week. His 11-under par score of 269 came up just a pair of shots short of eventual champion Collin Morikawa and he played well here at Sedgefield CC last year (T13). He finished in the top-ten in Strokes Gained: Approach that week and his accurate driving and quality iron play should serve him in good stead this week.

Group B

While his struggles in recent years have been well-documented (even on this blog), we think that this event represents a decent chance to hop in on Jordan Spieth. There is no arguing that it's been a bumpy road for the young major champion of late, but he's shown spurts of form lately and there is some reason to believe that there may be greener pastures ahead. He posted a couple of rounds in the 60s at the PGA Championship last week (including a Sunday 67) and has made his last three cuts. He played well at the difficult Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club and it's only a matter of time before this decorated champion turns his game around.

Group C

Si Woo Kim has come on in recent weeks with a pair of top-twenty finishes including a T13 finish with four straight rounds in the 60s at last week's PGA Championship. He's made his last seven cuts which should keep his floor pretty high and he's had some success at the Wyndham Championship in the past. Last year, he fired rounds of 66-65-68-64 en route to a T5 finish at Sedgefield CC and the combination of his recent form, his high floor and his historical success at this golf course should make him a relatively low-risk choice from this group.

Group D

This group is more of a process of elimination type of pick as compared to someone who you feel is like to have a ton of success this week. Charles Howell III played well at the 3M Open but besides that great week has only been a 50/50 proposition on making the cut since the return from the COVID pause. Ryan Armour had a little bit of form going post-COVID, but he's now missed his last three cuts. Brandt Snedeker has been relatively consistent as far as making cuts, but he hasn't cracked the top-50 in a PGA TOUR event since the COVID reboot and his upside is relatively limited. We're going to go with Ryan Moore who was not in the field at the PGA Championship but did finish in the top-12 at both the Barracuda Championship and the 3M Open and has broken 70 in six of his last eight rounds.

Group E

This group features a number of young guns that have a bright future on the PGA TOUR. For us, the pick comes down to a battle between Sepp Straka and our choice of Maverick McNealy. While Maverick struggled at Muirfield Village (missing both cuts during the "Dublin Double"), he has made every other post-COVID cut thus far and has even posted a pair of top-tens at the Rocket Mortgage Classic and the Barracuda Championship. He seems to have the most success at courses that setup for birdies and it certainly looks like this week is shaping up to be one of those. Straka has shown a ton of upside as well but his performance on a week-to-week basis has been somewhat erratic and we think Maverick is a steadier hand.

Group F

This may well be the most important group in this set as there are likely a number of missed cuts to be found among these six players. The group includes mostly aging veterans with a pair of the options (Furyk and Love III) firmly located in Champions Tour territory. That having been said, Love III won at this very golf course at the age of 51 back in 2015 over a surging Tiger Woods. The win made him the third-oldest PGA TOUR winner ever and we have to think he's got some good vibes at this golf course. Nevertheless, we're going to take a flyer on Zach Johnson. He nearly led after the first round of last week's PGA Championship (don't ask how the rest of the week went) and posted a T11 finish at the Travelers Championship just a few weeks ago. If his putter can wake up--he should be a good candidate for a made cut and that's all you are looking for out of your selection in this group.


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