The 2019 Wyndham Championship: Inside the Course (Sedgefield Country Club Review)

The Wyndham Championship is the final tournament of the PGA Tour regular-season, and the last chance for players still scrambling for points to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs that begin next week at The Northern Trust. 

 

The tournament is played at Sedgefield Country Club, a classic Donald Ross course, which means this 7,127 yard, par-70 track is an excellent test of a player's full range of shot making skills. 

Fairways are narrow and some are semi-blind, but hitting the fairways alone won’t guarantee success.  Proper positioning off the tee is crucial for the best angles to make pins readily accessible. Generating repeated scoring opportunities will require coolheaded course management and a polished short game on approach and around the greens with 48 sand bunkers and 13 water hazards rambling throughout the terrain. 

 

Hard, fast, Bermudagrass putting surfaces are severely undulating and slope from back to front, with many falling off the edges into menacing collection areas that will create a serious threat for players who don’t bring a deft touch with their putting game. 

Noteworthy Holes 
Of the four, exemplary one-shotters at Sedgefield, the 245-yard, par-3 12th hole is the bruiser of the bunch.  A dramatic, two-tiered putting surface shrinks the target considerably, and anything short will roll back down the green all but eliminating any realistic hope for an up-and-down. 

 

Two bunkers stand guard on either side of the green where par is always a good score and the occasional birdie is great.

Eight of the 12 par-4s on the course measure between 400 and 450 yards and are going to offer up a lot of green-light birdie possibilities.  On the behemoth, 501-yard, par-4, No. 14 however, players will happy just to escape with par.  Historically the 14th plays as one of the most difficult holes on the course. 

 

No.14 doglegs left off the tee with a fairway bunker 275 yards out on the left to capture drives that fail to cut the corner.  This hole requires two long and precise shots into a green that's the largest on the course, but also the most difficult to putt on because of the treacherous slope from back right to front left. 

No. 15 is a reachable but dangerous par-5 measuring 545-yards, and is usually the more difficult of the two par-5s on the course.  A downhill tee shot must avoid a bunker, a creek, and tall, fescue grass all on the right side of the fairway that narrows the closer you get to green. 

 

On approach things don’t get any easier with two deep bunkers flanking a severely undulating green and a lake on the right of the putting surface making for potentially eye-popping ruination.  The 15th hole should be a birdie-fest but the possibility of disaster here is very real. 

The brutal, 507-yard, par-4, closing, No. 18 is a converted par-5 that's historically played as the most difficult hole on the course, and carnage can reach maximum levels here. 

 

A downhill tee shot to the crest of the fairway leaves players with an uphill long iron into an extremely undulating and elevated green.  Trouble on approach is compounded by four perilous bunkers that guard each corner of the putting surface, and finding any of them will leave a challenging up-and-down.