Daily Fantasy Golf Course Primer: Wyndham Championship

The PGA Tour regular season comes to a close this week with the Wyndham Championship, and the new $10 million prize pool for the top 10 regular season finishers should create some extra drama in what is often an anticlimactic end of season event. The top finisher is locked in after Brooks Koepka took down the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, but there are still some golfers in the money already or on the outside looking in that could lock in some extra cash with a strong performance this week.

Sedgefield Country Club is the venue, a 7,127-yard par 70 track in Greensboro, North Carolina. The annual host of the regular season finale, Sedgefield offers one last shot for many in the field to earn a spot in the FedEx Cup Playoffs and get a crack at that additional prize money. The extra cash is nice, but the majority of the world's top players will enjoy the week off and gear up for the first leg of the playoff next week. With the compressed schedule, it's unlikely we'll see anyone skipping any playoff events this year so this is their last chance for rest before the now-three event stretch to determine who hoists the FedEx Cup.

Those in attendance will find a receptive course that has seen the winner crack 20-under par in 3 consecutive years. Very few hazards await, meaning the field can grip it and rip it without fear of big numbers. Sedgefield allowed the sixth most birdies last year, and among full-field events had one of the lowest bogey counts.

With rain potentially in the forecast all week, Sedgefield should play soft and could be prone to some delays in the action. Be sure to check the forecast prior to locking in your DFS lineups to see if any wave looks to have an advantage.

Let's dig into the course and see what stats we can use to build our daily fantasy lineups this week.

Course and Tournament Info

Course: Sedgefield Country Club
Par: 70
Distance: 7,127 yards
Tees/Fairways/Rough: Bermudagrass
Greens: Champions Bermuda

Sedgefield is notable for yielding some of the longest average driving distance and highest green in regulation (GIR) percentages on the entire Tour, but you'd be tying one hand behind your back if you focused strictly on ballstrikers this week. Some of the best form here comes from short game specialists. The defending champion, Brandt Snedeker, was 122nd in the field in driving distance in the 2018 season with an average drive length of 293.1 yards. At his winning week at the Wyndham, Sneds was 25th in the field and averaged 315.4 yards per drive.

Suffice it to say, everyone lets it rip here and targets the greens, so while gaining on the field will still be important, it will likely be in smaller doses than the average event and converting chances on the green will be paramount to success.

For course comparisons, Quail Hollow and Harbour Town come to mind immediately as Carolina courses, but those two courses are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of what it takes to contend at each, and they are routinely two of most difficult courses on Tour, while Sedgefield plays as one of the easiest. On the easier side, TPC Deere Run and TPC Summerlin both rank highly in both driving distance and GIR percentage and play on the easy side, but each features bentgrass greens rather than the bermuda seen at Sedgefield.

Waialae Country Club is a par 70 with bermudagrass greens and has easy-to-hit greens, and while its distance rank comes largely from the elevation it still pairs well as a companion to Sedgefield.

Key Stats

These stats will be key to success in the Wyndham Championship at Sedgefield Country Coub.

Don't get it twisted -- ballstriking and approach play are still essential this week. With so many golfers hitting the greens, the advantage might be mitigated some but it is still an advantage. The three top approach gainers finished inside the top 10 last year, including eventual winner Snedeker.

As covered above, birdies are the name of the game here -- over the past four years, Sedgefield has ranked sixth, second, fourth, and sixth in total birdies made.

Eight of the holes fall between 400 and 450 yards, with the only three par 4s over 450 yards playing as the three hardest holes on the course. The gameplan for most golfers will be to tread water on those holes and crush the easy par 5s and the short par 4s.

Given some of the names who have had success here, we must account for putting this week with extra emphasis. You can be elite with either your irons or your putter if you want to contend at the Wyndham, and if you're firing in one area you'd better be able to keep your head above water in the other.

Course History Studs

Webb Simpson is a North Carolina native who has always performed well in his home state, including both Quail Hollow and Sedgefield. He's a better fit for this event and has made hay in the past -- he has four top-six finishes in the last five years.

In addition to last year's win, Snedeker has a T3 in 2016 and a T5 in 2014 to his name at this event.

Hideki Matsuyama is certainly not someone who comes to mind when we think of putting, but he is one of the best approach players in the world and has finishes of T11 (2018) and T3 (2016) to his name. He lost strokes putting in both of those tournaments so if he putts at field average he is a lock to contend. Both Simpson and Matsuyama can sneak into the Wyndham Rewards Top 10 money with a high finish

Ryan Armour has back to back top 10s, as he's finished T8 and T4 the last two years.

Mike Rodden is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Mike Rodden also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username mike_rodden. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his personal views, he may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his personal account. The views expressed in his articles are the author's alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.