Wyndham Championship underway after ‘Herculean’ recovery from Tropical Storm Debby

GREENSBORO, N.C. – In Friday’s early daylight at the Wyndham Championship, after Tropical Storm Debby had accelerated northward and out of range, three crucial figures gathered in a brightly lit house adjacent to Sedgefield Country Club – chief referee Ken Tackett, competitions agronomist Bland Cooper (coffee in hand), and senior meteorologist Stewart Williams.

Relatively speaking, the Wyndham Championship got lucky as the storm moved through the area, limiting potential rainfall of 7 inches to (just) 5.05 inches overall. It meant play could start well before noon local time, with a 72-hole Sunday finish still in the realm of possibility.

Yet as chatter turned toward that mind-bending scenario (considering the bleak outlook two days prior), a word of caution was advised.

“We need to get through today,” Tackett said, with emphasis on “today.”

The Wyndham Championship got underway at 9:50 a.m. ET Friday, with the FedExCup Regular Season finale at Sedgefield Country Club tracking toward 72 holes of competition to finalize the 70-player FedExCup Playoffs starting field – even with a pesky shower that hit shortly after that crucial morning meeting. The drama will build throughout the next four rounds as players strive to finish on the right side of the bubble, advance to next week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, Tennessee, and maintain hopes of finishing inside the top 50 after Memphis to qualify for the BMW Championship and, crucially, next year’s Signature Events. Barring a slight chance of thunderstorms Friday afternoon, the competition – not the weather – will take center stage this weekend in North Carolina.

It took a “Herculean feat,” as Tackett correctly foreshadowed Thursday, to get there.

The Sedgefield Country Club agronomy staff, plus roughly 60 volunteers, was hard at work from the crack of dawn Friday to prepare the course for TOUR competition, after Tropical Storm Debby moved through overnight Wednesday and for a large part of Thursday – which required Thursday competition to be fully postponed. There was a slight sense of consternation early in the week, as the region had been hit with a wet July (roughly 9 inches of rain), that had softened the Donald Ross-designed Sedgefield to begin with. The hilly, tree-lined venue features several creeks that wind their way through the property and low areas that are receptive to flooding – veteran caddie Aaron Flener, who loops for 2019 Wyndham winner and local favorite J.T. Poston, shared images Thursday afternoon on X of puddled areas on the front nine. Early Friday morning, plenty of work remained – on the teeing areas, fairways and greens.

“These are older greens … (superintendent) Chad Cromer and his staff do a phenomenal job managing these things and getting them in wonderful condition for us, but there are some areas over time, just through normal attrition, that have developed, little bowls, little containment areas that hold water and don’t drain very quickly … they will puddle quickly,” Cooper said early Friday.

“If you’ve had 5 inches of rain, I don’t care how much drainage you have, you’re going to be wet,” Cooper continued as he surveyed the first fairway early Friday. “One of the things we’re looking for, in order to get the golf course playable, is to see in our landing zones and closely mown areas, if a player encounters temporary water, do we have a place where we can move them equitably? In other words, if a guy drives it down here 120 yards away and his nearest point is 180 yards, then that’s not very equitable.

“I’d say at the present time, this fairway’s probably not playable,” he concluded as his feet squished though the fairway. “But since we aren’t playing golf for 3 hours and 20 minutes, as long as we don’t get any considerable rain, we should be fine by that time.”

The task wasn’t easy by any means. But through a combination of leaf-blower vacuuming, careful mowing, bunker-raking and various other techniques, the course steadily dried out to a playable level. Mother Nature offered a favor – previously forecasted heavy rains Friday morning stayed away – and the FedExCup Regular Season finale got underway.

Sedgefield is playable. The goal now is to keep it playable.

“We just need to get lucky this afternoon,” Williams told his counterparts in the pre-dawn hours, regarding the chance for afternoon electricity.

Hopefully the sole source of electricity will be the leaderboard.

PGA TOUR’s Alec Yoder and Mike Wolfe contributed to this report