Player Pool: Wyndham Championship
The golfers for our last regular season event
Sedgefield Country Club plays host to the Wyndham Championship in our final full field regular season event. It is a shorter “less than driver” track that requires accuracy to find the narrow fairways that await our golfers. Fairway finders have substantially better opportunities at birdie by over 30% (based on greens in regulation data) than those that miss the fairway. It is heavily tree lined with smaller, but challenging, Bermuda rough. It does provide plenty of opportunities to score, however, and produces low scores. The greens will present one of the toughest challenges, at close to 13 on the stimpmeter and plenty undulating terrain as is typical at Donald Ross courses. Distance is a non-factor at Sedgefield - Tom Kim is last years champion, for instance, and he is not a long hitter.
I am not shocked to see Henley at the top of the board based on his accuracy and the fact he always has solid fancy stats. I think it’s really going to come down to how many clicks is he going to get. The first initial number I’ve seen (which is admittedly very wonky!!) indicates he might be the lowest of the top 5 guys. IF that is the case, may want to be overweight on him as he sits just outside of the top 30 in the FedEx ranking and there are not many golfers in the field ahead of him — a really strong showing could all but cement him a spot in East Lake. The motivation is there.
Super into Alex Smalley. His playoff spot isn’t in danger, but he can do a lot to improve his current 47th place ranking. An above average accuracy player, he’s also 43rd in my trend table, but gaining in every category sans one - which isn’t all that important here at Sedgefield.
Hideki might be the chalk du jour, but we’ll have to wait on click percentage numbers or monitor the sites you use for those.
In theory this is an incredible course for Si Woo — incredibly accurate, great ball striker. Terrible putter - will that hold him back? Also, he’s 17th in FedEx standings. Feels like it would take an act of god to knock him out of a spot at East Lake — how motivated will he be?
Aaron Rai might be mega chalk as well, but again - what a terrific course for him. Super, super accurate and great approach player. 61st in the FedEx standings, so only “guaranteed” next week unless he puts on a show here — which he might.
We’ll touch more on Denny McCarthy in Model Musing’s and Toph’s Thoughts, but we like him a lot.
Giddy up - Sungjae Im. I honestly am not super concerned where his percentage comes in, especially if he’s direct leverage off of Hideki. Sungjae has insane course history here. He’s played the last four events and starting from last year through the last four events - T2, T24, T9, T6. Sedgefield is a very predictive course as well. Not only that - Sungjae fits my theory I’ve been working on on midrange player pool golfers with high trend table fits (Sungjae is 22nd in full field trend) meaning they’re finding their game at the right time and are braced for a big finish. Sungjae this week is equivalent to my ramblings on Brian Harman at The Open and Keith Mitchell last week (T5 finish). Completely in on the Korean prince. Shoutout Sungjae Army.
Chez is hyper accurate, but doesn’t have the best course history here. I still think he’s in play, but I’d be adjusting my exposure depending on how many clicks he gets. Can he get his putter going is the main question.
As always with Gary Woodland - incredible golfer, can’t putt worth a lick. He’s only played this course once in the past five years and was cut. Take it for what it’s worth, but I’m likely not chasing him. (Congrats to Gary Woodland on winning).
Martin Laird is going to be an interesting case. He’s number one in my trend table by a mile, sub $7K and has made three of his last four cuts. Repeating myself for the thousandth time, but gauge his click percentage, especially after coming off of a second place last week. Plus accuracy player with a solid tee to green game. Has made 2/4 cuts here in the past five tournaments, but when you’re wading in the sub $7K waters, this is the kind of volatility you’ll get.
If you’ve read me before, you know I am not one to put too much stock into weather. Wind is really the main thing I’ll look at and even then, unless it’s extreme or sustained, it’s not worth much if anything at all. I will say that both Thursday and Friday, the sustained winds aren’t too bad, but predicting some heavy gusting. I don’t think there’s an advantage either way, but if forced, I’d say early Thursday/late Friday wave. The bigger news would be if there is a delay of any sort. I’m not expecting it, but stranger things have happened.
We’ll have Model Musings and Toph’s Thoughts coming your way later today.