DFS Dish: Wyndham Championship

Sedgefield Country Club is a classical design, laid out by Donald Ross in the 1920s.

As we often see with older courses used on Tour, they put an emphasis on precision, not power.

The combination of tight fairways, doglegs, and tricky bermuda rough results in golfers pulling fewer drivers on the tee boxes at Sedgefield CC.

Looking at performance on similar courses is an easy way to find some Daily Fantasy Sports value, so let's give that peek.

Less-than-Driver Leaders

It never hurts to be long off the tee, but this week's host venue lowers the value of that skill set, more than the typical Tour stop.

Back in 2018, Keith Mitchell had to say at Sedgefield, "I've certainly hit my driver well, but I've hit a lot of 2-irons off these tees to just try to get it in the fairway. The rough's so gnarly out here that the fairway's a priority."

Henrik Stenson notoriously won this event while removing the big stick from his bag for the whole week, "Left the driver out. It's sitting in the locker. Got my strong 3-wood, 4-wood and driving iron that I normally use at The Open Championship."

The course asks you to get into position off the tee with a lot of the 280-yard landing zones still leaving you a mid-iron on approach.

Here are the top performers in adjusted strokes gained per round on less-than-driver courses, over the last two years:

Sam Burns

Hideki Matsuyama
Russell Henley
Justin Thomas
Sungjae Im
Shane Lowry
Adam Scott
Denny Mccarthy
Ben Griffin
Keith Mitchell
Eric Cole
Austin Eckroat
Christiaan Bezuidenhout
Byeong Hun An
Adam Svensson

We can also look at performance versus baseline to see who shows the largest increase in performance compared to their typical scores:

Carson Young

David Lingmerth
Hideki Matsuyama
Sam Burns
Austin Eckroat
Eric Cole
Byeong Hun An
Ben Griffin
Zac Blair
Will Gordon
Adam Svensson
Russell Henley
Davis Riley
Patton Kizzire
Ben Martin

Overlap List: names that show up on both lists include Sam Burns, Hideki Matsuyama, Russell Henley, Ben Griffin, Eric Cole, Austin Eckroat, Byeong Hun An, and Adam Svensson.

This list includes most of the best iron players in the field. It would make sense that when you take some importance away from driving distance, that iron play and short game gets a boost.

Go Low with Griffin

The PGA Tour rookie calls Sea Island home. Based on his social media sharing, he's fired at least two rounds of 59 there in the last year. That is another venue that features bermudagrass turf and allows you to club down on the tee box. With the Wyndham winners reaching 20-under or better in six of the last seven editions, I like to know that the golfers I pick have some capability of flirting with a sub-60 round. If you need a narrative for the play, then consider the FedExCup Playoffs motivational angle as he enters at 68th in the standings, just two spots inside of the bubble.

Burns to build playoff momentum

The LSU product is 19th in the FedExCup race. He doesn't need to be playing here for his Tour status or to make the playoffs. So, the fact that he's showing up tells us that he probably likes the course and wants to tune up his game heading into the postseason. Burns would definitely be in Tier 1 if you were bucketing this field into long-term class. Over the last two years, Burns has top-20 worthy performances in 87 percent of his events played on less-than-driver layouts which is easily best in the field (Henley and Matsuyama at 67 percent). Burns is a great high-upside option for fantasy gamers this week.