The final week of the regular PGA Tour season is upon us as players head to Sedgefield Country Club in North Carolina for the Wyndham Championship.
Only players in the top 70 of the FedExCup standings at the end of the week will qualify for the play-offs and secure their PGA Tour cards for next season so there’s plenty still to play for.
Despite being won by Cameron Young last year in what was his first, and long overdue, PGA Tour victory, Sedgefield is very much a course for the most accurate hitters.
Designed by Donald Ross, Sedgefield is more of a strategic test than many PGA Tour venues, with distance rendered virtually irrelevant off the tee and if you’re not finding the right spots in the fairways, you’re going to struggle to access birdie locations on Ross’s signature sloping greens.
A shorter course, the average approach shot distance comes from around 161 yards, and even that’s juiced up by a couple of 200+ yard par-3s, meaning lots of wedges and short irons will be in use.
The two par-5s on the par-70 layout are less than 550 yards and play more like difficult par-4s and players must take advantage of those, but the par-4 scoring will likely be where the tournament is won and lost, with Young joint-first for par-4 scoring last year.
While the rough isn’t massively penal, Bermudagrass is notoriously difficult to play out of, and with a winning score likely around 20-under-par, players will need to carve out as many birdie chances as possible and take advantage on the tricky Bermudagrass greens.
Young returns to Sedgefield to defend the title he won so impressively last year and tops our Power Rankings. But who makes up the rest of the top five? Find out below.
5 - Ryan Gerard
Ryan Gerard sat 39th on the FedExCup standings this time last year and made it as far as the BMW Championship. After a superb 2026, he now sits 16th and must surely have one eye on East Lake.
Gerard started the season in superb fashion with a pair of runner-up finishes at the Sony Open and the American Express before finishing T11 at the Farmers Insurance Open. Gerard had a little bit of a lull throughout the spring before bouncing back impressively in recent weeks.
Gerard was T10 at the Charles Schwab Challenge before falling to JT Poston in a play-off at the Memorial Tournament. The 26-year-old was outstanding that week and will likely win a PGA Tour event in the future while playing worse than he did at Muirfield Village.
A solid driver and an excellent iron player, Sedgefield should suit Gerard down to the ground. The previous putting woes that held him back last season seem to be behind him, but if there is a concern, it’s that his results on Bermudagrass – a surface not to everyone’s liking – are very hit and miss, perhaps going someway to explaining his pair of missed cuts at the Wyndham Championship.
Still, coming off the back of a T9 at The Open and a T8 at the Donald Ross-designed Detroit Golf Club, Gerard can expect a career best at Sedgefield.
4 - Ben Griffin
After a breakout 2025 season, 2026 has gone about as well as many would have expected for Ben Griffin: two major top-20s, a third at the Cadillac Championship and a T10 at the Travelers Championship.
Griffin made the Tour Championship last season and there’s no reason to believe he won’t be there again this time around, given the events left on his schedule.
Griffin arrived at last year’s Wyndham Championship more than a month removed from his last made cut, having failed to make the weekend at the John Deere Classic and The Open, yet shot four rounds in the 60s to finish T11.
Griffin has thrived at these shorter setups since making it onto the PGA Tour; he was fourth on debut here in 2022 and T7 in 2024; he won last year’s Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial and followed that up with a T3 this year; his last three finishes at Pebble Beach read T14, T37, T10 and he’s T8-T15 on his two RSM Classic appearances.
After a poor week with the driver led to a missed cut at the Rocket Classic, Griffin will need to tighten things up off the tee. But do that, and he can be confident of another good week at Sedgefield.
3 - Jackson Koivun
It was perhaps not unexpected to see Jackson Koivun have an off week in the aftermath of his outstanding win at the 3M Open. Koivun holed everything that week and some regression was not unsurprising, but his ball-striking remained remarkably good.
Koivun gained 2.99 strokes ball-striking at the 3M Open and gained 1.46 ball-striking (ranking 13th) at the Rocket Classic.
Koivun was T11 at the low-scoring John Deere Classic on debut there last year and followed that up with a T5 at the Wyndham Championship – both of these finishes coming as an amateur, remember.
While the 21-year-old can shift it off the tee, he’s more accuracy than distance, and with that, combined with his strong iron play and putting, Koivun is an exciting prospect once again this week.
2 - Patrick Cantlay
In 2021, Patrick Cantlay won four times, including the BMW Championship and Tour Championship in back-to-back weeks to wrap up the PGA Tour Player of the Year. In 2022, he’d win the Zurich Classic and another BMW Championship. It remains the most recent year in which Cantlay won a PGA Tour event.
The change to the PGA Tour schedule with eight Signature Events per year combined with the form of Scottie Scheffler means it’s harder for top players to win; the likes of Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Cantlay have all found wins harder to come by in recent years.
Cantlay found himself in the mix at the Rocket Classic last week and was T2 on Saturday afternoon but a poor end to his round left him with a bit too much to do. Nevertheless, his decision to lay up on the drivable eighth on Sunday when desperately needing birdies does beg the question: how desperate is Cantlay to win?
The mental aspect of Cantlay’s game aside, the 34-year-old has a habit of rocking up at shorter venues and taking them apart. Cantlay won at TPC Summerlin, which calls for plenty of wedges, while he has countless top-10s and top-20s at the likes of Harbour Town, Pebble Beach, River Highlands.
Cantlay can be excused his poor performances at the PGA Championship, US Open and Scottish Open, but he does have a T14 at River Highlands, a T8 at Harbour Town, a T7 at Innisbrook and a T13 at Pebble Beach to his name this year, suggesting he’s still more than capable of performing at these sorts of venues.
In theory, Sedgefield should play into Cantlay’s strengths and he’s one to watch this week.
1 - Cameron Young
A poor opening round at the Rocket Classic suggested Cameron Young might have too much to do. An outstanding second round saw Young surge into the lead where he started looking very hard to stop.
Suddenly the putts stopped dropping on Saturday and a poor weekend saw Young fall into a tie for eighth.
Nevertheless, Young will be content with his performance after his runner-up effort at The Open put an end to a bit of a summer slump, in which the 29-year-old failed to record a top-25 in four outings. Young now ranks second in the field for SG: T2G across the last eight events and third for SG: APP as per Golf Betting System.
Defending champion Young recorded his first PGA Tour victory at Sedgefield last year, and he’s driving the ball and striking his irons better now than he was then.
With form figures of T22-1 at Sedgefield, don’t rule out Young going back-to-back.
