Wyndham Championship: Can J.T. Poston Repeat? Plus Other Storylines In Greensboro

The PGA Tour jumps coasts this week moving from the Bay Area to the Piedmont Triad of North Carolina. The final event to cull the herd before the FedEx
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Cup Playoffs, the Wyndham Championship at Greensboro’s Sedgefield Country Club is do or die for players on the bubble—the contingent of golfers outside the top 125 in this year’s point standings along with those clinging to spots near the bottom.

Meanwhile top tier players have added incentive thanks to a $10 million regular season bonus pool. The Wyndham Rewards Top 10 is divvied out following this event with the regular season champion receiving a cool $2 million. While Justin Thomas, who is sitting out the tournament, has already locked down the No. 1 seed in the playoffs, the unsecured spots below him still have rich payouts with $1.5 million for the first runner-up on down to $500,000 for 10^th spot.  So, Webb Simpson (No. 3), Sungjae Im (No. 5), Patrick Reed (No. 6), and Brendon Todd (No. 9), who are all in the field, have extra monetary motivation to improve their standing. 

One of the relatively easier courses on tour, pros tend to put on a show and go real low at Sedgefield.   Last year J.T. Poston shot a 62 on Sunday to finish 22-under to tie the tournament’s scoring record. The home-stater from Hickory, North Carolina played bogey-free golf through all four rounds to become the first player since Lee Trevino in 1974 to win a 72-hole stroke-play PGA Tour event without a single square on his scorecard.   

“I think that was probably the best I’ve ever hit the golf ball in any tournament in my life. It sounds crazy, but it just felt easy,’” said Poston during yesterday’s press conference. Despite putting together a couple top ten finishes in June and having an obviously strong affinity for the course, Poston is being overlooked as a top tier contender with golf bettors more focused on the big names in the field.

“He might be a little underrated. I think past champions at events like this are solid plays. I don’t know if you’d call them sleepers per se but there is definitely value in a former champion playing this course,” said Chris Altruda, national sports betting expert for Pennbets.com.

Koepka Watch

Brooks Koepka, who had the swagger of a prize fighter ahead of the final round of the PGA Championships last week, tasted humble pie in the end shooting a bogey riddled 74 to finish T29. “I think Brooks has something to prove to himself. I don’t think he has anything to prove to anyone in the field or the public in general,” said Altruda.

“He needs the FedEx points so I think that will be a motivational factor for him. I don’t think he is going to light the world on fire with this tournament. Maybe there is a little bit more humility and he winds up being more consistent round-to-round, but he is a solid play. Until, last week he was the defending PGA Championship winner and when he steps on a golf course, you assume he will be in the hunt come Sunday.”

Fountain Of Youth

Sedgefield has a history of turning back the clock for golfers in the twilight of their careers. Sam Snead, two months ahead of his 53^rd birthday, won this event for the eighth time in 1965 making him the oldest golfer to win on tour, a high water mark that has stood the test of time.  In 2015 a 51-year-old Davis Love III, hardly a long bomber, still managed to eagle both par-5s on the Sunday and captured his third title in the event. Two years later DL3 seemed to have taken another sip of the fountain of youth shooting a bogey-free 64 in the first round and going on to finish the tournament T10. 

In his sayonara to his short-lived CBS
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broadcasting gig, Love remarked in a statement on Twitter that his “passion to play is still strong.” Perhaps the North Carolina native son, in a tournament that’s given the veteran’s golf swing a regenerative boost as powerful as the pool in the movie ‘Cocoon,’ has one more in him.

“I think Davis Love is a good pick in the Carolinas. There’s nothing wrong with taking him as a flyer for maybe a day one pick. As a curiosity pick it would be entertaining,” said Altruda.