After a one-week hiatus for the Olympics, the PGA Tour returns this week with the Wyndham Championship.
Only 70 players will make the FedExCup Playoffs this year, so there are many who need a strong finish this week to play in Memphis next week. Sungjae Im is the betting favorite at around 14-1 in a field that is wide open.
Our experts have previewed the tournament, breaking down the players they like and their favorite Wyndham Championship best bets at the bottom.
2024 Wyndham Championship: A Full Betting Preview
The Wyndham Championship Favorite We’re Backing
Matt Gannon: Shane Lowry +2500 (BetMGM)
Tony Sartori: Davis Thompson +3500 (FanDuel)
Spencer Aguiar: Sungjae Im +1600 (BetRivers)
Best Wyndham Championship Long Shot
Matt Gannon: Sam Ryder +27500 (bet365)
Tony Sartori: Jhonattan Vegas +6000 (FanDuel)
Spencer Aguiar: Eric Cole +7000 (FanDuel)
Player To Fade This Week
Matt Gannon: Billy Horschel
Tony Sartori: Sungjae Im
Spencer Aguiar: Akshay Bhatia
Our Experts’ Wyndham Championship Betting Strategy
Matt Gannon: Sedgefield Country Club is among the most straightforward courses to handicap.
Golfers who play from the fairway at a high rate and have spike ability with their wedges amd middle irons find success on this golf course.
Driving accuracy is truly the name of the game here, as we have some of the highest correlation between weekly driving accuracy and the top of the leaderboard of any course on Tour.
Although scoring is easier here, players will be in trouble if they’re missing their spots. The rough is thick, and looking at the weather forecast, it will be very wet this week. This will make it very hard for those competing to position themselves around these very slopy and difficult greens.
From there, golfers who can spike on approach can make a ton of birdies. There’s a ton of variance around this golf course, so look for accurate birdie-makers.
Tony Sartori: With the Olympics in the rear-view mirror — at least in terms of golf — we now look forward to this week’s Wyndham Championship. The Ross Course at Sedgefield Country Club hosts the Wyndham once again this season, which it has done annually since 2008.
Sedgefield Country Club is a par-70, 7,131-yard track designed by Donald Ross. In typical Ross fashion, this course rewards accuracy more than anything else, as players attempt to stick their approach shots close on these near-perfect greens.
Last season, five of the top six finishers here ranked 12th or higher among the field in greens-in-regulation percentage, the only statistic or metric in which such a trend occurred.
Furthermore, 23.8% of approach shots come from the 150-175 yard range, the largest distribution (by a wide margin) of any of the 25-yard range groupings.
Spencer Aguiar: Players have delivered a winning score of just around 20-under par over the past five iterations of this event.
That shows the property's general ease at its core. However, the more significant return from that expectation is how the venue performs as one of the 12 most predictable venues on tour yearly for rollover performance.
That’s something you can expect when the data starts shifting you into these buckets of similar production.
Eight par-4 holes stretch between 400-450 yards. We’re going to see a little over 83% of the approach shots occur from 125-plus yards, with shots from 125-175 yards increasing by over 8% compared to a standard PGA Tour stop.
All of those factors add to the narrative that this being an easy-to-project venue that forces players to show a specific skill if they want to climb the leaderboard.
Our Wyndham Championship Best Bets & Favorite Picks
Matt Gannon: Erik Van Rooyen Top South African +175 (DraftKings)
Van Rooyen is coming into this event after a nice finish at the Olympics, and he has been hitting the golf ball well.
EVR has gained five strokes or more on approach in two of his last three starts, and his driving accuracy is one of the best in a field like this.
His opponents here are Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Garrick Higgo.
Bez is the favorite, and I’m not sure why. Yeah, he’s a cut-maker and always grinds for 72 holes, but his recent form is nothing special. He withdrew and missed the cut in two of his last three events and has not hit the ball as well as EVR since March.
It’s not like his course history is great here either. He has never cracked the top-30 in this event.
Higgo isn’t great either. He hasn’t gained a full stroke in ball-striking since March and is generally a loser in that category. Plus, you want him on a golf course where driving distance — not accuracy — is important.
Tony Sartori: Justin Rose Top 10 +450 (DraftKings)
Rose is coming off his best performance of the season, a T2 finish at the Open Championship. He has contended well against stacked fields recently, also finishing T6 at the PGA Championship.
If he can fire off two top-10 finishes over his past three major championships, then he’s more than capable of doing so against this field at Sedgefield Country Club.
Rose has posted two top-10 finishes over his past four appearances at this venue, making +450 an extremely attractive number.
It makes sense that he typically plays well here, given that Rose ranks above the Tour average in greens-in-regulation percentage from the 150-175 yard range. He also plays particularly well on Ross designs, posting seven top-10 finishes over his past 12 events contested on such courses.
Spencer Aguiar: Eric Cole -105 over Justin Rose (FanDuel)
It is funny because Rose has played exceptionally well in bits and pieces over the course of the year. You don't have to look any further than his top-10 showings at the PGA Championship and Open Championship.
But the reasons I wanted exposure for Cole and against Rose are twofold.
For starters, the Rose conversation goes back to the market overcorrection piece I always discuss. One good showing in his last start ended a run that didn’t see him finish better than 68th place in any of his previous four appearances.
I know Rose's profile has been stellar at Donald Ross properties in the past, including two top-10 showings at Sedgefield in 10 attempts, but this is not the same golfer who produced those finishes in 2009 and 2021. In fact, Rose has barely teed it up at Ross properties over the past handful of seasons.
On the flip side, Cole and Ben Griffin are the two golfers who received the most significant boosts in my model when projecting the data for Sedgefield compared to a typical venue on tour.
I know the American's 2024 output has left a lot to be desired after being named Rookie of the Year in 2023, but this is shaping up to be an intriguing buy-low spot.
