The Wyndham Championship marks the end of the regular season on the PGA TOUR. After this event, the top 70 players and ties will move on to next week at the WGC St. Jude Classic, while anyone else with eligibility, outside of the top 70, will have to fight it out in the fall series – where the top 125 players at the end of that run will get full playing status for 2025.
That makes this week massive for players currently on the top 70 bubble (and for those outside the top 125). A big week here can set players up for 2025 and potentially a run into the top 30 at East Lake where more perks await.
This week's field is devoid of most of the top players, but we do have some big names to note. Jordan Spieth, who is only 63rd in the FedEx Cup right now, is headlining, while names like Shane Lowry, Sungjae Im, and Brian Harman are all set to play.
The setup this week is likely to be set on #easymode as Sedgefield is a shorter Donald Ross-designed par 70 that technology has mostly made inadequate and only challenges players when wind or extreme heat comes into play.
As such, we’ll see a ton of birdies and eagles made this week and the winning score likely reach 20-under par or better. As of writing, there is also a ton of rain in the forecast with this event, with an over 50% chance of precipitation on the first two days. It’s likely the course will play extremely soggy and we may even see lift clean and place rules in effect – which would give the pros the ability to be hyper-aggressive with their approaches.
Today I’ll go over the course and also spotlight one player for betting. Then, on Wednesday, I’ll go over the rest of the bets.
Let’s dive in and get our Wyndham Championship week started!
Wyndham Championship 2024 Course Preview
- Sedgefield Country Club – Greensboro, NC
- Par: 70, 7,131 yards
- Greens: Bermuda
- Fairways: Bermuda
- Rough: Bermuda
- Design: Donald Ross (1926); Redesign Kris Spence (2007)
- Defending Champion: Lucas Glover (-20)
Sedgefield Country Club is an older Donald Ross-designed venue that has hosted the Wyndham Championship for much of its 80+ year existence.
At just over 7,100 yards, Sedgefield isn’t going to intimidate players with length. The venue has two par 5s, which are both great eagle chances this week, that come in under 550 yards. Additionally, while there aren't any traditional “drivable par 4s”, the course does have nine par 4s that measure between 370-450 yards in length, with only three that measure over 450 yards.
With so many shorter par 4s, players will need to play for position off the tee and will also need to be sharp with their shorter irons, hence why this course sets up so well for veterans as power tends to get de-emphasized and short iron accuracy becomes hyper important. This setup is why 51-year-old Davis Love III was able to win this event back in 2015 and why we’ve seen four 40+-year-old winners of this event over the last decade after then-43-year-old Lucas Glover won at Sedgefield last season.
Glover led the field in driving accuracy last season (82%) and 10 of the past 12 winners of this event have now finished inside the top 15 for driving accuracy for the week of their win.
The other big area to note for stats is approaches. Glover gained 9.1 strokes on approach alone and the top three finishers all gained over 4.0 strokes on approach for the week. With a course where green in regulation percentage tends to be high (5-6% above the average), around the green play tends not to be a huge area of concern. Last season, seven of the top 11 finishes, including winner Lucas Glover, gained less than a stroke ATG.
Aug 6, 2023; Greensboro, North Carolina, USA; Lucas Glover tips his hat to the crowd after winning the Wyndham Championship golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: David Yeazell-USA TODAY Sports
Sedgefield isn’t TPC Sawgrass, but there is some water in play down the stretch. That being said, of all the PGA venues, it likely has the most in common with Waialae Country, another technical Par 70 where great approaches and driving accuracy trump power.
For trends, it’s clear that winners have tended to come in showcasing confidence with their irons. Five of six winners of the Wyndham gained over 4.0 strokes on approach in at least one of their previous four starts before winning this event.
So how should we approach Sedgefield CC for betting?
Ideally, from a stat perspective, we’d want our golfer to have the following:
- Elite approaches and great short to mid-iron proximity
- Players who create birdie chances (birdie opportunities) at an elite rate and have shown the ability to compete around similar “easy” par 70s
- Good off-the-tee accuracy; good results on similar technical setups
Combining and weighing most of these stats into a model that targeted the last 24 rounds this week (heavier on approach and putting) gave me the following players as my top 10:
- Brian Harman
- Shane Lowry
- Chan Kim
- Sungjae Im
- Luke Clanton
- Ben Silverman
- Aaron Rai
- Joel Dahmen
- Keith Mitchell
- Jhonattan Vegas
The Wyndham Championship has seen winning scores of 20-under par or better in four of the last five seasons. Here are the top 10 players in the field in strokes gained total stats on easy scoring Par 70’s under 7,200 yards.
- Keegan Bradley
- Adam Svensson
- Mackenzie Hughes
- Chesson Hadley
- Brian Harman
- Alex Smalley
- Nick Taylor
- Ryan Moore
- Hayden Buckley
- Daniel Berger
Power this week can be advantageous, but players still tend to gain the most on approach at this venue as the need for closer approaches is vital on this easier venue. Here are the top 10 players in this field in Strokes Gained Approach stats over the last 24 rounds.
- Keith Mitchell
- Ben Griffin
- Doug Ghim
- Brian Harman
- J.J. Spaun
- Matt Wallace
- Chan Kim
- Luke Clanton
- Aaron Rai
- Jhonattan Vegas
Betting Facts and Stats for the 2024 Wyndham Championship
Below are the previous odds (week of) of the past five Wyndham Championship winners. A couple of notes about these odds below:
- Jim Herman won in 2020 (the year of the Covid stoppage). His +50000 pre-event odds represent some of the biggest preevent odds that have cashed on the PGA TOUR over the last decade.
- Lucas Glover didn’t play the Open and missed the cut at the 3M Open in his previous start, but was gaining a ton of strokes on approach coming in.
- Tom Kim was playing great coming into this event in 2022 and was the only one of the last five winners who was playing this course/event for the first time in his career.
- This event has seen some other younger, first-time winners in the past as Patrick Reed (2013) and Si Woo Kim (2016) were both under 25 years of age when they won at Sedgefield.
Below are the previous 5 winners of the Wyndham Championship and their pre-event odds from the beginning of the week of the event.
Name | Year | Betting odds |
| Lucas Glover | 2023 | +8000 |
| Tom Kim | 2022 | +3500 |
| Kevin Kisner | 2021 | +3300 |
| Jim Herman | 2020 | +50000 |
| JT Poston | 2019 | +12500 |
(Odds courtesy of SportsOddsHistory.)
Early Bet for the 2024 Wyndham Championship
Nicolai Højgaard Each-Way 1/4 Top 5 (+5000;bet365)
In 2021, we saw Abraham Ancer finish T14 at the Olympics and use that momentum to grab his first-ever career PGA TOUR win just a week later at the WGC FedEx St. Jude. Hojgaard’s young (so fatigue likely won’t be a huge factor) and has shown the ability to string together big finishes in the past, landing a T2 at the Nedbank Challenge, and a win at the DP World Championship at the end of the European Tour playoffs last December.
Højgaard – who finished solo 7th in Paris – only sits 80th in the FedEx Cup standings, so it will take a huge effort for him to move into the top 70. However, the Dane is a great young player whose talent level is reminiscent of some past winners of this event, Tom Kim (2022) and Si Woo Kim (2016); players who managed to book their first-ever PGA wins at Sedgefield.
At 23, Højgaard is already somewhat of an experienced winner (3x European Tour wins) and a player who has shown an affinity for shootouts, having seen two of his three professional wins come when the winning score exceeded 21-under.
He also booked a solo runner-up finish on the PGA back in January at the Farmers and has been gaining multiple strokes on approach nearly every week, including a +6.5 approach effort at the Scottish Open two starts ago. He also gained over 3.0 strokes tee to green per round on the field in Paris.
His putter needs to wake up but he did gain 6.7 strokes putting at Sedgefield CC last season, on his way to a T14 finish, and is hitting the ball far better now than he was at this point last season.
Højgaard has gone off as low as +1600 in a PGA event this season (Corales, March) so at +5000, we are still getting some decent value off his peak form from early in 2024 making him an easy outright and top-five bet for me in this weaker field.
