RADIO
Ian McNeill's free comprehensive course preview of Sedgefield Country Club for the 2025 Wyndham Championship. Ian examines the course, giving key metrics and trends to help make informed decisions on the PGA betting board.
It is officially do-or-die time on the PGA Tour. With the first round of the playoffs getting started next week in Memphis, the Wyndham Championship is the last chance players will have to accrue valuable FedEx Cup points and put their names into the ring in the three-week race to crown our 2025 TOUR Champion.
Tom Kim, Adam Scott, Max Homa, and the Hojgaard twins are just a few of the marquee names coming to Greensboro looking to point their way into a playoff birth, while young stars like Michael Thorbjornsen, Luke Clanton, and Pierceson Coody are in must-win territory if they want to extend their promising debut campaigns.
This piece will serve to break down every key trend and statistic I'm weighing to project a player's viability in the outright market and set our readers up to make the crucial decisions necessary on pre-week betting boards. Without further ado, here is my comprehensive scouting report on Sedgefield Country Club and the 2025 Wyndham Championship!
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The Golf Course
Sedgefield Country Club - Par 70; 7,127 yards
Past Champions
- 2023 - Lucas Glover (-20) over B. An and R. Henley
- 2022 - Tom Kim (-20) over S.J. Im and J. Huh
- 2021 - Kevin Kisner (-15) in six-man playoff (Grace, Kim, Scott, Na, Sloan)
- 2020 - Jim Herman (-21) over Billy Horschel
- 2019 - J.T. Poston (-22) over Webb Simpson
Sedgefield by the Numbers (Off-The-Tee):
- Average Fairway Width -- 29.4 yards; 8th narrowest on the PGA Tour
- Average Driving Distance -- 286.0 yards; 11th lowest on Tour
- Driving Accuracy -- 61.6%; 14th highest on Tour
- Missed Fairway Penalty -- 0.41; sixth highest on Tour
- Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee Difficulty: (+0.022); 8th easiest on Tour
Although Sedgefield will always hold a special place in this North Carolinian's heart, I wouldn’t call it a particularly distinctive course on the Tour rotation. Very much like the Harbour Town’s, Sea Island’s, and Wai’alae’s of the world, Sedgefield falls in the category of your classical, meat & potatoes, short, southeastern Bermudagrass Par 70. There aren’t a lot of nuances to be found in the routing, and the crossover on leaderboards is quite stark year over year.
Narrow fairways and forced layups will cause even the most confident drivers of the ball to lay back to designated landing areas, and with a whopping eight holes fitting into a 40-yard bucket (405-445 yards), you can expect a lot of similar yardages into these greens.
Sedgefield also features the first instance we’ve seen of Bermuda rough since the U.S. Open, and if you’ve ever played summer golf in the southeast, you’ll know just how treacherous it can get even at shorter lengths. The 2.5” cut at Sedgefield is more than enough to put doubt into the minds of these professionals, and on a layout that is particularly conducive to low scores, driving the ball off the fairway is the quickest way to go on the defense.
As such, driving distance is as mitigated around Sedgefield as it is at any other course on Tour, and over the last two years, nobody that ranked inside the Top 25 in Distance on the week managed to finish inside the Top 10 on the leaderboard. On the other hand, four of the top seven finishers on last year’s leaderboard also ranked inside the top 10 in Driving Accuracy for the week.
In my modeling, I’ll be looking not only at a player's overall ability to find fairways but also his driving proficiency around similar club-down tracks. If a player is consistently able to gain strokes off-the-tee at venues like Harbour Town, Innisbrook, or Wai’alae, I’m confident he can overcome any sort of off-the-tee test Sedgefield will throw his way.
Sedgefield by the Numbers (Approach):
- Green in Regulation Rate -- 73.7%; Third highest on the PGA Tour
- Strokes Gained: Approach Difficulty: (+0.071); Easiest on Tour
- Key Proximity Ranges:
- 150-175 yards (accounts for 26.8% of historical approach shots)
- 125-150 yards (18.6%)
- 175-200 yards (18.0%)
Although driving accuracy has been a historically key indicator, approach play remains the king of the two ball-striking stats when projecting success at Sedgefield. Winners over time have gained an average of 5.5 shots on approach over the four days (compared to just 2.5 off-the-tee), and only one player since 2017 (Brice Garnett, 2019), has managed to finish inside the Top 10 while losing strokes to the field with his iron play.
As I mentioned earlier, Sedgefield’s uniformity within its routing and its insistence to play to certain points make it a dream when projecting the approach yardages these players will have into the greens. Nearly 30% of historical approach shots have come within a 25-yard range (150-175), and a whopping 63% of all approaches have come from 125-200 yards.
These proximity ranges are far and away my most important metrics when establishing long-term baselines, but if you’re looking for a few more recent data points, I find quite a bit of crossover between TPC Deer Run and TPC River Highlands in terms of the emphasis they place on short-iron play and driving accuracy.
Sedgefield by the Numbers (Around the Greens):
- Scrambling Percentage -- 57.7%; 0.2% above Tour Average
- Sand Save Difficulty -- (+0.024); 11th easiest on Tour
- Up-and-Down Difficulty (Fairway) -- (-0.037); Fifth toughest on Tour
- Up-and-Down Difficulty (Rough) -- (-0.066); Second toughest on Tour
- SG: Around the Green Difficulty: (-0.037); Fifth toughest on Tour
One of Sedgefield's most difficult pound-for-pound attributes comes in the form of its around the green complexes. Similar to the penalty we spoke about off-the-tee, the rough around the greens at Sedgefield ranks as the second most difficult on Tour to scramble from (trailing only Muirfield Village), and its tightly mown Bermuda fairway surrounds ranked as either the hardest or second hardest sets of fairways to chip off for six straight years from 2015-2020.
Despite this difficulty, however, short-game acumen has not been a particularly common through-line for either past champions or top 10 finishers. In 2023, Lucas Glover lost 0.2 strokes around the greens in his two-shot victory, and last year, only one top-ten finisher (Max Greyserman) ranked inside the top 25 for the week with his short game.
If anything, this demanding set of greenside surrounds places an even larger emphasis on ball striking, as the penalty for missing greens at Sedgefield is magnified exponentially when compared to its fellow set of summertime birdie parties on the PGA Tour. By the numbers, top-five finishers have gained just one-fourth of their total strokes around the greens when compared with their irons and their putters. With GIR rates projected to sit well into the 80% ranges for the field's top ball-strikers, players who are routinely forced to scramble for par will likely find themselves well behind the eight ball no matter how high their ARG baselines sit.
Sedgefield by the Numbers (Putting):
- Average Green Size: 6,000 sq. feet
- Agronomy -- Champion Bermudagrass
- Stimpmeter: 12.5+
- 3-Putt Percentage: 3.8% (0.8% above Tour Average)
- Strokes Gained: Putting Difficulty: (-0.007); eighth toughest on Tour
Onto the greens, which I believe are far and away Sedgefield’s greatest defense against the world’s best. While not as severe as the famous turtle-backs we’ll see at Pinehurst next year, Sedgefield’s greens do typically run at a 12-13 on the Stimpmeter and feature a fair amount of undulation when compared with your traditional PGA Birdie fest. In fact, only Augusta National, St. Andrews, and Quail Hollow conceded fewer made putts of over 15 feet during the 2022 PGA Tour season.
With as benign as Sedgefield’s layout is from tee to green, putting is one of my key differentiators this week and I’m weighing it as highly as I have all season. Along with driving accuracy and wedge play, Bermuda putting is one of the main through-lines you’ll see on the past champions list. If I can’t trust you to routinely make putts on fast, undulated Bermuda greens, it’s a big strike against your prospects in my eyes.
Key Stats Roundup (in order of importance):
- Short & middle-iron play (specifically focused on proximity/strokes gained splits from 125-200 yards)
- Driving Accuracy/Total Driving -- particularly on other positional tracks with a high missed-fairway penalty (TPC River Highlands, TPC Deere Run, TPC Sawgrass, East Lake, TPC Southwind, etc.)
- Bermudagrass Putting
- History around Sedgefield
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End of the Season Totals: @rotoballer @BettorGolfPod
2017 +54.26 Units
2018 +55.88 Units
2019 +27.743 Units
2020 + 37.015 Units
2021 + 68.846 Units
2022 +67.485 UnitsTotal Winnings: +311.229 Units
Total Outright Wins Since 2017: 36
H2H Totals Inside Thread… https://t.co/pNQrSK1rFE
— Spencer Aguiar (@TeeOffSports) December 12, 2022
The Sunday Shortlist
Before the odds come out on Monday morning, here are two to three names I’ve identified as significant targets upon my initial research.
Hideki Matsuyama
Birdie number seven of the day for Hideki Matsuyama. pic.twitter.com/b5BfvbCDfL
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 20, 2025
Given his status in the game and a recent results sheet that includes a top 20 in a Major, it's difficult to believe we're seeing Hideki Matsuyama priced above 30-1 at the Wyndham Championship.
In fact, there's data to suggest Hideki comes in with even more confidence than a T16 finish would normally indicate. After starting his week at Royal Portrush with a three-over 74, the Japanese No. 1 logged weekend rounds of 69-68-66 to close out his week in Northern Ireland. His surge up the leaderboard may have never threatened Scottie Scheffler's charge to the Open title, but Matsuyama displayed the sort of classic ball-striking form we'd look when projecting him forward.
Over the final three rounds, Hideki gained over four strokes between his driving and approach play -- and when profiling his fit at the Wyndham this week, that kind of momentum can not go understated. Matsuyama tops this field in virtually every key approach category when filtered for my key range of 125-200 yards, and only the world's most elite iron players (Scottie Scheffler, Sepp Straka, etc.), can count themselves as piers to Hideki with a short/middle iron in hand.
Over the last 12 months:
- 97th percentile in Strokes Gained per shot from 150-200 yards
- 97th percentile in Proximity to the hole (150-200 yards)
- 96th percentile Green in Regulation %
- 92nd percentile in Good Shot % (8.1% of shots inside 8 ft)
- 98th percentile in Poor Shot Avoidance
Now, Hideki's elite approach profile has historically come at the expense of his putting. However, over the last 12-18 months, there has been a seismic shift in his statistical baseline on the greens. Matsuyama has gained strokes putting in seven of his last eight starts, and logged the best putting performance of his career (+8.2), on the similarly quick Bermudagrass greens of TPC Southwind.
With the irons locked in and the putter showing sustained signs of life, it's difficult to explain the disrespect on outright odds boards. I'll gladly scoop up 33-1 and run on far away the most heralded ball-striker in this field.
Bud Cauley
One of the best shots of the day at the first! 🏌️♂️
Bud Cauley went on to make the tap-in birdie. pic.twitter.com/0EYfdtMH4w
— U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 12, 2025
It’s possible the best of Bud Cauley’s resurgent 2025 season is already behind him. But despite a rather lackluster recent form sheet, I remain confident in his profile heading into the Wyndham Championship. Cauley ranks not only as one of the field’s most reliable drivers of the ball (he’s gained on the field in accuracy in six of his last seven starts), but also as one of its most prolific short-iron players.
Over his last 36 rounds, Bud ranks inside the top 15 in each of my key approach metrics—Strokes Gained: Approach, Weighted Proximity, and Birdie Chances Created. Zooming out to the last 12 months, he also ranks in the top 10% on the PGA Tour in Good Shot Percentage across my three key distance ranges.
The ball-striking has long been a known commodity for the Alabama alum, but what’s most intriguing about his projection this week comes on the greens. A Daytona Beach native and SEC product, bermudagrass has always been Bud’s preferred putting surface. But it’s on the Donald Ross greens of Sedgefield where he’s found his most sustained success.
In nine career starts at the Wyndham, Cauley has posted three of the 11 best putting performances of his entire career: +8.0 in 2016, +5.4 in 2020, and +5.1 in 2012. Those three spike weeks on the greens led to finishes of 10th, 15th, and 3rd, respectively—and in none of those seasons did Cauley flash the kind of tee-to-green form we’ve seen from him in 2025.
Already displaying top-six upside on similarly positional layouts in Sawgrass, Innisbrook, and Colonial this season, 80-1 feels like an incredibly long price given Bud's history around Sedgefield. There aren't many guys this far down the odds board with a clearer path to contention.
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