Fantasy Golf Picks, Odds, and Predictions for the 2023 Wyndham Championship  

Wyndham Championship Fantasy Preview

July was a heady month for PGA TOUR maidens seeking their first win amongst the big boys, with Vincent Norrman and Akshay Bhatia taking full advantage.

And they were joined on Sunday by Lee Hodges, a talented sort yet to break his silverware duck on the PGA TOUR. Boy how he changed that at the 3M Open.

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The Alabaman won wire to wire in Minnesota, franking an opening 63 with rounds of 64 and 66. Final round nerves? Forget about it! Hodges made two eagles and three birdies as he extended his winning margin to seven shots.

Happy with his shiny new trophy, Hodges will also have been delighted to boost his rank in the FedEx Cup standings from 74 to 33 – in danger of missing out on the money-spinning finale to the season, he’s now likely to be in the mix for a place at the TOUR Championship.

But who will take their place in the final 70 that will contest the playoffs? After the Wyndham Championship this week, we’ll know for sure.

Last Event’s Fantasy Results

Last week was disappointing having just come off the Harman win. With Sungae missing the cut, we did’t have much to rely on.

Onward and upward! 

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2023 Wyndham Championship Field

It’s crunch time for Justin Thomas, who is in danger of not even qualifying for the FedEx Cup events. At 79 in the standings, he will perhaps need a top-40 finish at the very least to gatecrash the party.

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The same stands for Shane Lowry (76), Adam Scott (81) and Billy Horschel (116), although the likes of Sam Burns and Sungjae Im are rather more comfortably poised. Hideki Matsuyama, 55th in the standings, has work to do to make the TOUR Championship.

Past winners at Sedgefield CC like J.T. Poston and Si-Woo Kim will be hoping to double up, while course horses such as Webb Simpson will be aiming to improve upon a formline at this layout which has delivered seven top-10 finishes in his last nine visits.

This Week’s Course Preview

We’re into Donald Ross season – he designed Detroit GC, home of the Rocket Mortgage Classic held a few weeks ago, and East Lake, which will be on hosting duties for the TOUR Championship a few weeks from now.

Ross was also on hand in the creation of Sedgefield Country Club, the fairly claustrophobic home of the Wyndham Championship.

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It’s a somewhat tight, tree-lined parklands venue, and with just 7,131 yards for its Par 70 it’s certainly on the shorter side.

If that conjures images of players plotting and plodding their way around Sedgefield then you’re not far off the mark, although with minimal bunkering and water only really in play on six holes, it’s not as challenging as East Lake, for example.

The rough isn’t too foreboding either, and the only other real defense is the small size of the Bermuda greens, which also run at a fair old pace when the weather conditions allow.

Sedgefield is on the easy side of the classic parklands spectrum then, with eleven of its holes averaging under par in 2022. Unusually for a Par 70 track, there’s three Par 5s – unsurprisingly, these are the easiest on the real estate and play at a shade under 600 yards each, with the eighteenth hole a golden opportunity to make birdie or better.

Of the tougher holes, look out for those around the turn – nine, eleven, thirteen and fourteen all averaged over par last year, while the hardest hole on the real estate was the ninth; a 502-yard Par 4 that will, for most players, require a 225+ yard approach into a small green.

Weather Forecast for Greensboro, NC

If you’re heading to Greensboro to catch the action this week, be sure to pack your umbrella and wet weather gear….

Rain is forecast, to some or a lesser extent, across the four days of the Wyndham Championship, with ‘showers’ the watchword on Thursday, scattered showers on Friday and Saturday and the dreaded scattered thunderstorms on Sunday.

It’s going to be a warm and humid couple of days though, with temperatures reaching as high as 89 degrees by the weekend.

As far as the wind is concerned, it will remain at a manageable 8-9 mph throughout, according to the early predictions.

GREENSBORO WEATHER

Last Year’s Results from the Wyndham Championship

The prodigiously-talented Tom Kim earned a unique record that will never be taken away from him at last year’s Wyndham Championship: he was the first player born after the turn of the new millennium to win on the PGA TOUR. He even posted a snowman eight on his opening hole of the tournament!

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It was a remarkable victory at a venue where experienced campaigners have tended to thrive in the past, but Kim showed maturity beyond his years – breaking the back of his -20 winning score with rounds of 64 on the Friday and 61 on Sunday, which included six birdies and an eagle on an astonishing front nine.

Unsurprisingly, nobody else was able to match the Korean’s exploits, with Sungjae Im – the 54-hole leader – and John Huh settling for a share of second place on -15. 

Where to Play Fantasy Golf for the Wyndham Championship this Week

Here we go then: the final full field event of the season.

It’s the ideal opportunity to maximize your investment, and while you’ll want multiple lineups this week due to the various permutations of golf at Sedgefield CC, there’s ample opportunities to get involved.

• PGA $300k Drive the Green: At $5 a go you can enter a handful of lineups into this contest, and hopefully that risk-spreading approach will yield some of its biggest prizes – there’s $25k to the winner.

• PGA $70k Birdie: With 20 team multi-entry available here at $3 per turn,  you can get involved in a bid for the $6k top prize or any of the other notable cash prizes that are available.

This Week’s Fantasy Notes

Generally at venues where the requirement is to make a ton of birdies on Par 4 holes, ball-striking is the key to set up those putts.

But it’s interesting that all sorts of players have thrived in this environment, with a large number of plotters doing the business – Kevin Kisner, Jim Herman, Kevin Na, Billy Horschel and Webb Simpson all finishing first or second at Sedgefield. These are fairways and greens merchants; nothing fancy, just risk-free golf that keeps bogeys off the card and sets up mid to long-range birdie putts.

Three players ranked first for Driving Accuracy last year – two of them finishing T5, and a trio of players ranked next best for fairways found….amongst them was Tom Kim. There is definitely an edge for those with control off the tee this week.

It’s amazing too how many players repeatedly play well at Sedgefield, which also shows that course experience – i.e. knowing where to attack greens from, and which portions to hit – is generally vital….until Kim came along, at least.

This is an event with a typically high GIR count anyway, so Bermuda putting is also a vital weapon – Kim ranked first for putting but only 18th for ball-striking in 2022.

Correlating courses to consider include Colonial (home of the Charles Schwab Challenge), TPC Sawgrass (PLAYERS Championship) and other short, tight, tree-lined venues – Detroit GC and TPC River Highlands springing to mind.

Our Top 5 (and Top 2 Sleeper) Fantasy Picks and Odds to Win the Wyndham Championship   

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Fantasy Golf Predictions This Season (2023-2023)

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