Playing Sedgefield CC

The Tour moves on to Sedgefield CC this week, host of the Wyndham Championship and the last tournament before the Fed Ex Cup playoffs begin. While last week's PGA Championship represented the last major of the PGA Tour season, for many of the players in the field this week, the Wyndham Championship plays like a mini major and Q-School all wrapped into one. This is the last chance for guys outside the top 125—in both points and earnings—to rightly claim their spot in the Fed Ex Cup playoffs, and more importantly, a full schedule and exemption status on tour for 2016. If you know anything about the old days of PGA Tour Q-School, you have a pretty good idea of just how important this one, four round tournament can be for so many players who dream of making a living on the PGA Tour.

With this in mind, I wanted to touch on why I feel this week is the last truly exploitable tournament of the season. If you were to peruse through PGATour.com's fantasy section, you will find a host of comments each week dedicated to the players who “suck" and “have no business being on the PGA Tour", which of course are the players who many of the commenters chose on their fantasy or DFS teams. The reason I bring this up is that, outside of golf being a sport with massive swings and enough variance to make Phil Ivey have a panic attack, it is very difficult to gauge the motivations of players on a week to week to basis. The general consensus seems to be that all golfers show up to the course on Thursday (actually Monday or Tuesday) with their war-paint on and ready to do battle, but in reality that is just not the case. That's not to say that players are throwing tournaments or missing cuts on purpose, but when you start to look at the schedule that many of these grinders keep, it becomes abundantly clear how easy it is for them to let their guard down a bit, hit some loose shoots, shoot a 75 and miss the cut on the number. As the saying goes, “There are no pictures on the scorecard", meaning players can arrive at similar scores in vastly different ways. Now take into account that one shot is the difference between making the cut, and making travel arrangements, and you begin to understand why motivation or lack thereof, is so important. My longwinded point is this; there are players in the field this week whose JOB is on the line. If you are going to pick a sleeper who offers salary relief, would you rather have the guy who's trying to get from 85 th to 40th in the Fed Ex Cup standings, or the guy who needs to make a top ten to secure the future of his family? I am going to go with the latter.

Now, to the course.