This is Wyndham Championship week, although it doesn’t seem like it.
It’s a shame there will be a very limited number of people out at Sedgefield Country Club, Aug. 13-16 for the tournament – certainly nowhere close to hundred thousand or so people who normally attend the tournament – because the 2020 Wyndham Championship has a great field of professional golfers.
Not only will there be no galleries of golf fans, the number of media allowed on the course is also extremely limited, which is not as much of a handicap to the media as it might seem. Most of the sports writers who cover golf spend a lot of their time in the Irwin Smallwood Media Center watching the television coverage of the tournament. Out on the course you can only watch one group at a time, but with cameras all over the course you can watch all the leaders on television.
It’s an impressive field that includes 16 of the top 50 players according to World Golf Rankings, 10 past Wyndham Champions, three of the top 10 in Wyndham Rewards ranking, six FedEx Cup champions and seven of the top 15 in FedEx points ranking for 2020.
The field this year includes: Web Simpson, Jordan Spieth, Patrick Reed, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose, Brandt Snedeker, Shane Lowry, Paul Casey, Sungjae Im, Brendon Todd, Lanto Griffin, Abraham Ancer, Sebastian Munoz, Zach Johnson, Graeme McDowell, Danny Willett, Jim Furyk, Charl Schwartzel, Lucas Glover, Bill Horschel and Bill Haas.
It also includes 2019 Wyndham Champion J.T. Poston and Davis Love, who won the Greensboro PGA tournament under various names in 1992, 2006 and 2015.
Carl Pettersson is semi-retired but is playing in the Wyndam. Pettersson currently lives in Raleigh is an alumni of Grimsley High School and NC State University and is the 2008 Wyndham Champion.
Pettersson is one of three former Atlantic Coast Conference players who will be playing this year along with Simpson, the 2011 Wyndham Champion who played for Wake Forest and Love who played at UNC-Chapel Hill.
As usual Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy aren’t coming. They’re too good for us.
I’m not coming either. So, really, who cares?