{"id":470,"date":"2020-08-12T12:41:25","date_gmt":"2020-08-12T16:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/?p=470"},"modified":"2022-04-01T10:22:40","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T14:22:40","slug":"2020-pga-championship-and-the-wyndham-preview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/2020-pga-championship-and-the-wyndham-preview\/","title":{"rendered":"2020 PGA Championship and The Wyndham Preview"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Sedgefield
Sedgefield Country Club, Greensboro NC (Donald Ross)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

PGA Championship Wrap-Up<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Last week saw a riveting finish to the PGA Tour’s first major of the year. Collin Morikawa fired off a blistering final round 64 to join Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy in winning the PGA Championship<\/a> at the tender age of 23. Morikawa was calm and collected throughout with a sold round tee to green, while displaying a silky-smooth putting stroke–but two magnificent shots carried the day. On the difficult 14th<\/sup> hole, facing a delicate uphill chip from a tight lie with little green to work with, where getting it up and down to save par under major championship pressure was no easy task\u2014he chipped in for birdie. And then on the reachable par four sixteenth hole, where many in the field were laying back with irons or hitting 3 wood to leave a short chip, he pulled out his driver and drove the green, shaping a gorgeous fade to about eight feet\u2014and then drilled the putt for eagle. With his two-shot victory over Paul Casey and Dustin Johnson, Morikawa moved all the way up to number 2 in the FedEx Cup standings, closing in on Justin Thomas, who retained his number 1 spot (for now). And with all of the excitement surrounding Morikawa\u2019s huge win, John Rahm\u2019s move to number 1 in the world rankings went almost unnoticed.  Brooks Koepka, the pre-tournament favorite and reigning PGA Champion, faded early on Sunday and finished well back with a final round 74. Koepka stirred up a bit of controversy on Saturday with a comment he made about 3rd<\/sup> round leader Dustin Johnson. When asked if he thought he could catch him and make it three in a row, Koepka pointed out that Johnson only had one major title under his belt, and said \u201cI like my chances.\u201d The comment raised more than a few eyebrows, and brought on a response from Rory McIlroy who said \u201c\u2026sort of hard to knock a guy that\u2019s got 21 wins on the PGA tour, which is three times what Brooks has.\u201d Tiger\u2019s performance was largely uninspiring, and his trusted putter seemed to let him down on every hole, finishing well back at 1 under par (T37). With the level of talent on the PGA Tour<\/a> right now, Woods will have to raise his game a couple of notches to compete as we head into the FedEx playoffs. And Morikawa wasn\u2019t the only youngster opening eyes at the PGA either, as Scottie Scheffler (Age 24, T4 at -10), Matthew Wolff (Age 21, T4 at -10) and long hitting Cameron Champ (Age 25, T10 at -8) all made a strong run at the championship. When you add so many fresh young faces to an already star-studded field, the next few months is guaranteed to be exciting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Wyndham Championship<\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Field<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The week following a major often doesn\u2019t include a particularly deep field, but with so much talent on the tour right now, in a truncated season, the Wyndham will include plenty of big names, with Brooks Koepka, Justin Rose, Jordan Spieth, Patrick Reed and PGA runner-up Paul Casey all teeing it up. It will be interesting to see how Koepka rebounds from his disappointing finish at the PGA, particularly in light of the remarks he made about Dustin Johnson. Don\u2019t be surprised if Brooks puts the hammer down with big a week at the Wyndham; and keep in mind that Paul Casey went out of his way to say that his wonderful play on Sunday at the PGA was helped by the class Koepka displayed while struggling with his own game in that final round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Event<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

First played in 1938 as the Greater Greensboro Open, The Wyndham Championship is one of the oldest events on the PGA tour. Currently held at the venerable Sedgefield Country Club<\/a> in Greensboro, NC, Sam Snead won the championship an astounding eight times. In addition to Snead, champions include legendary players such as Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Billy Casper, Gary Player, Raymond Floyd, Julius Boros, and Seve Ballesteros. J. T. Poston is the reigning champion, and he will be in the field this week to defend his title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Course<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Sedgefield Country Club, founded in 1925, is an original Donald Ross<\/a> design that was updated over the years by notable architects including Gene Hamm and Willard Byrd. In 2007 the course was lengthened to accommodate current equipment, and restored to the original Ross layout by Kris Spence<\/a>, acclaimed for classic course restorations including Memphis Country Club (Donald Ross), Forsyth Country Club (Tillinghast\/Ross), and Mimosa Hills Golf Club (Donald Ross).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find detailed course information here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The week following a major often doesn\u2019t include a particularly deep field, but with so much talent on the tour right now, in a truncated season, the Wyndham . . .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[295,368],"tags":[144,136,111,80,143,141,142],"class_list":["post-470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pga-championship-and-the-wyndham","category-2020-pga-championship-and-the-wyndham-preview","tag-collin-morikawa","tag-pga-championship","tag-pga-of-america","tag-pga-tour","tag-ronald-ross","tag-sedgefield-country-club","tag-wyndham-championship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1034,"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470\/revisions\/1034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/golfday.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}