Welcome to our weekly PGA Tour gambling-tips column, featuring picks from GOLF.com’s expert prognosticator Brady Kannon. A seasoned golf bettor and commentator, Kannon is a regular guest on SportsGrid, a syndicated audio network devoted to sports and sport betting. You can follow on Twitter at @LasVegasGolfer, and you can read his picks below for the Wyndham Championship, which gets underway Thursday in Greensboro, N.C.. Along with Kannon’s recommended plays, you’ll also see data from Chirp Golf, a mobile app that features both Free-To-Play and Daily Fantasy golf contests where you can win cash and prizes with each round and tournament.
The Wyndham Championship is the final regular-season tournament of the 2024 PGA Tour season. How it plays out will determine the top 70 players for the year in the FedEx Cup points standings. Those top 70 players then advance to the FedEx Cup Playoffs, beginning next week in Memphis, Tenn. — and they also lock up a Tour card for 2025. There’s a lot on the line this week in Greensboro, North Carolina.
There is also quite a bit of weather in the area as Hurricane Debby continues to hammer the Southeastern United States. Rain is expected in Greensboro Tuesday through Friday of this week, with the wind kicking up on Thursday. The current forecast is calling for a calm over the weekend but whatever the case may be, it seems certain that Sedgefield Country Club will be a wet and soft host course this week.
Sedgefield CC is a par-70 Donald Ross design that stretches to just over 7,100 yards. It was the original host course for this event for quite some time before the tournament moved to Forest Oaks Country Club in 1977. The Wyndham Championship returned to Sedgefield in 2008.
The course features small, fast, Bermudagrass greens with the typical Ross shaved run-off areas around the edges, making scrambling an important factor. Driving Accuracy trumps Driving Distance this week. Approach play is key and almost all of it will come from a window of 100-175 yards out. Dialing in those short irons and making putts will go a long way at this track. I also looked at Par 4 Scoring and specifically those that measure 400-450 yards as eight of the 12 fall into that bucket.
The tournament has been a bit of a birdie fest with the average winning score over the past eight editions being slightly better than 20 under par. Players may go even lower this year with the soft conditions but it will depend on how much wind hits the area too.
2024 Wyndham Championship odds: Former gold medalist is our long-shot pick
Course form, course history, and performance on the correlated courses are strong indicators at Sedgefield CC. Players that play well in this event tend to do so regularly and do so on the related golf courses as well. Sure, we’ve looked at the stats as we always do, but past success is a point of emphasis this week as well.
As for those comparable courses, I looked at TPC Sawgrass (Players Championship), TPC River Highlands (Travelers Championship), East Lake Golf Club (a Donald Ross design where they hold the Tour Championship), Harbour Town (RBC Heritage), and the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook, home to the Valspar Championship.
Despite our pick of Jon Rahm not getting home in Paris last week, it was a good run as we had three of our five selections finish inside the top 10.
We’re back to the traditional plays this week on an outright win and a top-20 finish.
Si Woo Kim (25-1)
Kim has been a monster at this course and those that compare, having won here in 2016 and finished top-5 three additional times. He’s also won at TPC Sawgrass and finished runner-up at Harbour Town. He has not had a huge year on Tour but he’s been awfully steady, having missed only one cut all season — and of the 20 events in which he has played, Kim has finished top 25 in half of them. He is excellent on approach, deadly accurate off the tee, scrambles well, and ranks 20th in this field for Hole Proximity from 150-175 yards over the last 36 rounds. It’s a nice price for a guy that has been such a horse for the course.
Brian Harman (30-1)
Very similar here as Harman has both a third and a sixth place finish at the Wyndham, five top-10 finishes at the Players Championship, (including runner-up earlier this season), seven top-10 finishes at TPC River Highlands, and five at the RBC Heritage. He’s an excellent putter, has a great short game, and over the last 36 rounds, he ranks second in this field on the Par 4s measuring 400-450 yards. Like Kim, Harman has been a model of consistency this year, missing only one cut on the season and finishing top 25 in 10 of 19 tournaments played. Now put him on a course that really suits his game and let’s see what happens.
Christiaan Bezuidenhout (35-1)
I feel like this guy is going to win soon. He’s a cut-making machine on all of the correlated courses, was ninth at the Valspar earlier this year and has back-to-back 13th-place finishes at TPC Sawgrass. He just finished top 20 on the world stage in Paris. Bezuidenhout owns one of the best short games in the world and he can dial in the wedges, ranking eighth in this field for Hole Proximity from 100-125 yards out over the last 36 rounds.
Thomas Detry (50-1)
Detry was a guy we were on last week at the Olympics and he was excellent, finishing ninth. Like Bezuidenhout, this is another player I feel is going to get his first PGA Tour win sometime soon and I want to be around when he does. He’s fantastic on and around the greens and he makes a bunch of birdies. Coming over from the DP World Tour, Detry is relatively new stateside. He played here for the first time last year and finished 21st. I believe he can go even better here this year and the price is very fair.
Seamus Power (90-1)
Here is a player that is right on the borderline of making or missing the FedEx Cup Playoffs, currently sitting 69th in the points — so Power is definitely aware of the fact that he needs to hold serve here and play well. He has in the past, making four out of five cuts in prior visits to Sedgefield. He’s made three of four cuts at the Players Championship and he’s made five of seven at the Travelers. Power has also finished as high as sixth and 12th at the RBC Heritage. Over the last 36 rounds, he ranks 15th in this field for SG: Approach and is especially strong with the shorter irons. I feel good about a top 20 finish for Power here this week, and if that’s the case, then he should have a chance to win it too.
Mac Meissner (100-1)
I’m going with one more long bomb to wrap up this week’s card. Meissner is a rookie and this will be his first trip to the Wyndham Championship but I like the way his skill sets seems to be a match for this course. Over the last 36 rounds, he is No. 1 in this field on the Par 4s measuring 400-450 yards and he is seventh in Hole Proximity from 150-175 yards. He’s very strong on approach and has a solid short game. He also has two top-20 finishes and a top 5 in his last four starts, and was 26th at the Valspar earlier this year. At 93rd in the FedEx Cup standings, he’ll need to make a move here, but hailing from South Carolina, he ought to be very comfortable on this type of course.
Who Chirp Golf players are picking this week
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