In an evolving golf landscape, Sedgefield Country Club remains the home of the Wyndham Championship, which remains the place where the PGA Tour's regular season concludes. That familiarity is part of the appeal, but there's a sense of heightened importance right now because where once the top 125 got you into the FedEx Cup Playoffs with a card for the following year, those groups are both split and reduced: just 100 get full status, just 70 make it to Southwind.
Kurt Kitayama's imperious weekend performance saw him leap from outside the 100 to the cusp of the top 50, which is another cut-off worth monitoring as these players earn starts in the lucrative Signature Events next year. Then there's the top 30, which comes with the biggest reward of all: a crack at the newly flattened TOUR Championship, plus gift-wrapped invitations to all four majors in 2026.
The PGA Tour's post-season remains flawed, something we'll hopefully see in the form of a hilarious outcome at East Lake in a month, but it's pretty compelling. Throw in the Ryder Cup, where the US team in particular still feels a long way from decided, and almost everything bar winning the actual majors is up for grabs over the coming weeks. First though, you've got to be in it to win it, and the Wyndham resolves all that.
Sedgefield is a short, classical par 70, designed by Donald Ross and featuring trademark back-to-front greens. It's tree-lined and accuracy has always trumped power here, with winners broadly divided into two categories: the putting gods like Brandt Snedeker, Kevin Kisner, JT Poston and Webb Simpson, and the old-style fairway-and-green machines like Sergio Garcia, Lucas Glover, Henrik Stenson and Aaron Rai.
MATT FITZPATRICK can fit both those descriptions when firing and the in-form Englishman, now certain of a Ryder Cup spot I would think, stands out as the man to beat and should be backed accordingly.
We were on the former US Open champion when he rediscovered his form in Detroit (T8), at another Ross-designed course, and it was a bit harsh not to get properly rewarded for that. He finished in a share of eighth, putting hopelessly, hitting it as well as he just about ever has, having been sent off a largely unconsidered 40/1 shot.
Since then, he's been fourth in the Scottish Open in deeper waters at a shorter price, then fourth in a major championship at 33/1, so we were on the right side of him in a weak tournament he might've won had he holed his share, one of the many frustrations of the last few months.
That also presents a dilemma of sorts as he's been promoted back up the betting, but after another outstanding, field-leading tee-to-green display at Portrush for by far his best Open result in a decade of trying, I feel bookmakers could've been much more defensive here.
The reason they perhaps haven't been is that Fitzpatrick hasn't been a Sedgefield regular, finishing mid-pack on his only try in 2018, at a time when he was out of form. Yet everything we know about him, right down to the fact that his form book is very similar to Rai's in many ways, tells us that Sedgefield is an excellent fit – not that there's anywhere he couldn't handle if his long-game remains as good as it has been.
Take a look at his correlating form, for example. Four players have won both here and over the South Carolina border at Harbour Town, and another 11 have a win at one of the two plus a top-five at the other. Fizpatrick has already won the RBC Heritage and would be adding his name to the list of dual champions should he do as hoped.
Five players have done the Sedgefield and Sawgrass double, and Fitzpatrick has been fifth in The PLAYERS there. Just one has done the Sedgefield and Southwind double, but that tougher and more hazardous par 70 does still crop up often when you analyse contenders at each tournament, and Fitzpatrick's record in Memphis shows fourth, fifth, and sixth.
Second to Rai at Fanling and later succeeding him as champion at The Renaissance, bang in-form again at last and with his long-game doing the heavy lifting where once it might've been his putter, Fitzpatrick fits the bill however you look at this and while the field is good, he stands out a mile from the front of the betting.
Regular readers will know I've missed a couple of obvious, shortlisted winners this season, not least Kitayama last week. Hopefully we can end this part of it by putting that right to some degree and, like Fitzpatrick, carrying some momentum into the FedEx Cup Playoffs.
One man hoping to join Fitzpatrick in them but with work to do is ADAM SCOTT, who is coming to a good course for his retrieval mission as we approach the end of a season which has only recently started to get going.
Granted, Scott was a big disappointment in the Open but prior to that he'd played well pretty much since the Masters, regularly showing promise in Signature Events, finishing 19th in the US PGA and, of course, contending for the US Open where he dropped away from the final group.
The most pleasing aspect of this run was his ball-striking, with both his driving and approach play numbers up considerably on the start of the year, and following a blip at Portrush he was back on track last week. Three solid rounds followed by a quiet finish weren't what he wanted from the 3M Open, but Scott was making his debut there and ranked 10th in strokes-gained ball-striking.
Novak was born in Raleigh, less than an hour and a half from here, just like former Wyndham champion Simpson. In fact this has been a really good event for local ties, with South Carolina duo Kisner and Glover following on from North Carolina's Poston. The very first winner here, Carl Pettersson, is a Swede who went to high school nearby, and last year's narrow runner-up Max Greyserman went to college at Duke, too.
For Novak then this is a home game and while it's one he's yet to fully take advantage of, not only will this be his first try as a PGA Tour winner, but he has shown much more promise than may first appear. Two years ago he opened with a 64 to lie fourth and was still 11th through 54 holes only to fade to 33rd, then last year he was 25th at halfway but again went backwards thereafter.
Bezuidenhout hasn't had the best of seasons given that it began so well with fourth place on his fourth start in Phoenix, but since a surprise 12th in the US Open he's generally shown promise, his only recent missed cuts coming via rare off-days with the putter.
And while it might seem odd to use approach play as the reason to side with him over McCarthy, who ranks higher for the season, the turnaround in Bezuidenhout's has been key to his improved form. Six times in his last nine starts he's been very good and in gaining 0.4 strokes per round since May, he's been much better than Denny at 0.1.
Kim is another who began the season encouragingly, finishing seventh at Pebble Beach, but he's without a top-10 finish since then and has generally found it hard to avoid one bad day wherever he plays.
We saw that again in the Open a couple of weeks ago, when he followed a promising 69 with a round of 76 which saw him miss the cut, but either side of it he's been 17th in the Scottish Open and 28th in the 3M Open, which both favoured long drivers.
Also ninth at Harbour Town and more recently third at Colonial, this is a good course for the one-time amateur star who was third here back in 2012, when trying to reel in Sergio Garcia. If there is a nagging concern it's that a shootout wouldn't necessarily be his choice, but I'd say the same for Rai and Glover and the propensity for approach play to shape leaderboards suggests it's a good fit.
Cauley's approach play figures took a hit in Scotland and Northern Ireland but he was inside the top 20 on the PGA Tour a month ago and, back under more familiar conditions, there won't be many in this field as likely as he is to produce the top 10 display we may well need to find the champion.
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