Wyndham has always been a home game for Wake Forest golfers. One Deac needs this win
Arnold Palmer couldn’t win it, as hard as he tried, but Lanny Wadkins and Scott Hoch did.
And Webb Simpson. His first PGA Tour victory came in the 2011 Wyndham Championship at Greensboro’s Sedgefield Country Club, on the course that left Arnie in anguish nearly three decades before.
Through the years the Wyndham Championship has had different names — the Greater Greensboro Open, the Kmart GGO, Chrysler Classic of Greensboro among them. It has been played on different courses. It also has had longstanding ties with Wake Forest University, just a half-hour or so drive from Sedgefield.
Many a Wake Forest golfer, past and present, has tried to win the tournament. Only three have done it: Wadkins, Hoch and Simpson.
Will Zalatoris, the runner-up in the Masters this year, will try to become the fourth this week as the Wyndham begins Thursday at Sedgefield, although Simpson has become a perennial Wyndham contender.
Simpson, the 2012 U.S. Open champion, was born in Raleigh and starred at Broughton High before going to Wake Forest — on the Arnold Palmer scholarship. When he first broke through on the PGA Tour by winning the Wyndham in 2011, his father, the late Sam Simpson of Raleigh, was there to hand him the trophy on the 18th green.
“It was emotional,” Simpson said Wednesday. “It was a special moment all around.”
Simpson, 36, has lived in Charlotte for several years but the Wyndham Championship has always felt like a “home game” for him. Especially when Wake Forest fans show up to provide some “Go Deacs!” support from behind the ropes.
“This feels like another home tournament for me, growing up an hour and a half down the road,” Simpson said on a PGA Tour media call. “I love this golf course. I feel like my course (in Raleigh) growing up, Carolina Country Club, has some similarities. Us players talk about a golf course that fits our eye or a golf course that feels comfortable and I’ve always felt that way here, and said whatever form I have coming into the Wyndham I feel confident I can have a good week.
“I went to Wake Forest, a half-hour away. A lot of flashbacks happen this week. There’s a lot of nostalgia for me.”
Simpson and his wife, Dowd, named a daughter Wyndham Rose, so there’s also that.
Mark Brazil has been the Wyndham tournament director the past 20 years and an early sponsor exemption went to Bill Haas in 2002. That allowed Haas, then a 19-year-old sophomore at Wake Forest, to tee it up in his first PGA Tour event and compete against another former Wake all-American — his father, Jay, then a well-established tour player.
Brazil also gave Zalatoris a sponsor exemption three years ago when he was playing at Wake Forest and considered a star in the making.
“It just kind of made sense,” Brazil said. “It’s not that I’m trying to give Wake Forest kids spots, but we recognize that some of the best players in country, some of the best amateur players, are coming out of Wake Forest.
“I do think that there is a bond there that runs a little deeper than with other universities, but also for us, their bond goes a little deeper with us than it does with other PGA tournaments. We’re fortunate to have that relationship.”
Few wanted to win at Sedgefield more than Palmer. His college days were spent at the “old” Wake Forest campus in the town of Wake Forest but Palmer remained a major supporter, financially and otherwise, of the university and its golf program until his death in 2016.
In 1972, Palmer had a two-shot lead in the GGO with three holes to play, the masses swarming about him at Sedgefield. But at the par-3 16th — now the seventh hole with the nines reversed — his tee shot landed in a small creek branch to the left of the green.
No penalty drop for Palmer. He hitched up his pants and tried to play out of the creek, took triple-bogey and lost the tournament to George Archer. The disappointment was so great, so lasting, that Palmer could not bring himself to talk about it many years later when returning to Sedgefield.
Wadkins win overlooked
Then there was Wadkins. He cruised to victory in Greensboro a decade later, winning by five stokes, only to become a sports footnote, hardly causing a ripple.
Because of a Saturday rainout, the tournament had a Monday finish. That night, April 4, 1983, N.C. State completed its magical run to the NCAA basketball championship by beating Houston on the buzzer-beating dunk by Lorenzo Charles
No one was talking about Lanny Wadkins on Tuesday morning.
Wadkins won at Forest Oaks Country Club outside Greensboro. The tournament, first held at Sedgefield and Starmount Forest Country Club, moved to Forest Oaks in 1977 and stayed until 2008, when it returned to Sedgefield in a back-to-the-future kind of move.
Hoch, another Raleigh native and former Broughton star, was a part of coach Jesse Haddock’s Wake Forest juggernaut teams in the 1970s with Curtis Strange and Jay Haas that steamrolled the competition to win NCAA championships.
Hoch’s victory at Forest Oaks came in 2001, when he was 45. Solid from tee to green, he had some adventures on the greens but made enough putts to win
“At 45, the neurons between the brain and hands can cause a few glitches,” he joked at the time.
Neither Haas, father or son, could win in Greensboro; although, Bill, now 39, is back this year. Other former Deacons trying through the years include Strange, a two-time U.S. Open winner, Billy Andrade, Gary Hallberg and Jerry Haas, Jay’s younger brother and the Wake Forest golf coach since 1997.
Zalatoris, the 2017 ACC player of the year, opened eyes at the Masters this year before finishing a shot behind the winner, Hideki Matsuyama. He tied for eighth in the PGA Championship and was T-8 last week at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, playing despite a back injury suffered at the British Open.
Because of the PGA Tour’s pandemic-related rules for playing status, Zalatoris is deemed a “special temporary member” of the tour. He needs to win Greensboro to qualify for the tour’s FedEx Cup Playoffs that begin next week.
“He deserves to be in the playoffs,” Simpson said Wednesday. “It stinks that he won’t be unless he wins.”
Simpson not only won in Greensboro in 2011 but has come so close in recent years — in the past four Wyndhams, he has been no lower than third. He was three shots behind winner Jim Herman last year in tying for third.
“I feel definitely more confident on this golf course than about any golf course we play all year,” Simpson said. “I love the holes, I love the shot shapes.”
And those “Go Deacs!” cheers.
Wyndham Championship
▪ When: Thursday-Sunday, Sedgefield Country Club, Greensboro.
▪ Information: www.wyndhamchampionship.com.
This story was originally published August 11, 2021 at 11:41 AM with the headline "Wyndham has always been a home game for Wake Forest golfers. One Deac needs this win."
