TEN THINGS is a collection of words that runs prior to each week’s PGA Tour event, mostly ABOUT that event. Reach out with your hottest takes on absolutely anything at [email protected]. We’ll publish the best emails here.
1. BACK IN MY DAY
Congratulations to the Wyndham Championship for being the first PGA Tour event to make me feel old (and by “congratulations,” I mean “how &*#%ing dare you”). I covered my first Wyndham Championship in 2014, and have been back, at least on Sunday, almost every year since. It’s right in my neck of the woods, just an hour away from Durham in Greensboro, N.C. (which you know is a good town because legendary whiny sourpuss Jim Boeheim doesn’t like it), and while the media center is dark and depressing, and the temperature on the course is often around 170 degrees Fahrenheit, the tournament itself packs a big punch for a “minor” tour event. It’s the last stop before the playoffs, and that always comes with a certain amount of drama. None of that has changed.
What’s changed is amount of drama going down. And that’s what makes me feel old. I have memories of hanging by the scoring area on Sundays with the tour’s Tom Alter as players filtered in hoping the numbers fell their way, and there was an absurd amount of action. Entire fates were being decided! You had the playoff cutoff, yes, but you also had cutoffs for keeping full tour status, for conditional status and Korn Ferry status. Entire careers were at stake, and it often came down to computer percentage points based on someone hitting a 70-foot bogey putt on 18 to knock someone else from T-32 to T-37 and costing them a tour card. It was, arguably, the most exciting five hours in the entire PGA tour season.
Now? Well, sonny boy, it ain’t what it used to be. The Fall Series offers a new lifeline to the marginal players, which is all well and good, but it means the Wyndham’s drama quotient is down to just the playoff race, and missing the playoffs isn’t a death sentence. I want death sentences! Instead, I have to work my way up to caring whether David Lipsky can finish fifth and get to play in Memphis. I tell you, it’s just not the same.
And yet, I’m still at 80 percent excitement capacity, and it’s because of…
2. THE FOUR PLAYOFF CONTENDERS TO CARE ABOUT
We don’t know the exact mechanism by which players will qualify for the Championship Series in 2028, but we do know 2027 is going to be a weird transition year where the Signature Events retain their smaller fields, which means that one way or another, it’s going to be pretty damn hard to make the Championship Series if you’re not in those Signature Events. Which means, in turn, that making the playoffs is probably more important this year than any other year. Here are the five really intriguing guys to watch at the Wyndham, with their current rank:
Jackson Koivun (70) – This is pretty much the biggest story of the week for me, because the playoffs get 35 percent less intriguing if he misses out. And if he can’t make the cut, he’ll almost definitely get leapfrogged. For now, though, he’s in on the number.
Keegan Bradley (72) – Bradley did what he needed to do at the Rocket, moving up four spots with a T-15 finish, but now he’s got to finish the job and take the next step toward getting the taste of the Ryder Cup debacle out of his mouth.
Jason Day (75) – Remember this guy? Well guess what, buddy, he still exists.
Brooks Koepka (86) – Now we’re in the realm of, “he better win, or at least come close, because 86th is very far down the list.” Let’s talk more about Brooks.
3. IS KOEPKA DOOMED?
Isn’t it interesting how Koepka went from the biggest story in golf in January, when he finagled his way back onto the tour, to pretty much a non-story seven months later? In part, it kinda/sorta proves that the playing punishment he received—you have to earn your way into any Signature Events—was more legitimate than people first thought. You have to play very well to get there, and despite one top-10 and five top-20 finishes, Koepka qualified for exactly zero of the eight Signature Events. Combine that with the fact that he was mostly invisible at the majors aside from a T-12 at the Masters, and Koepka finds himself in a bit of a tough spot.
Right now, he has no playoff eligibility, no line on next year’s Signature Events, and not much path to get there beyond playing wayyyy better than he has so far. Additionally, he just took two weeks off in Minnesota and Detroit, which calls into question how much he’s actually burning to get there.
All of which is to say (and as weird as it sounds), the Wyndham is looking like the most important tournament he’s played in a long time. He needs to gain 16 spots to get into the playoffs, and to give you a rough idea of what that might take, last week we saw Davis Thompson gain 12 spots from a similar position for a T-8 finish, while Matt Wallace gained 18 spots for T-5. In other words, it seems like a top-five showing is a minimum requirement, and that’s something he hasn’t done all year. And to top it all off, the last time he played at the Wyndham was in 2020, when he missed the cut. The omens aren’t great!
4. THE ONE-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF CAM YOUNG BECOMING ELITE
It’s kinda wild that the birth of Cam Young: Tournament Winner only dates back a year, right? I was there a year ago when he went full (Wynd)HAM on the field, starting out with an absurd 63-62 start and eventually winning by six shots over second place. It was the most emphatic way possible to end the “this guy might be a choking dog” narrative, and he followed it up in style by hitting the clutchest drive in the history of the Players Championship to win and dusting Scottie and everyone else by six shots at the Cadillac.
At that point, I thought for sure he’d win a major this year, and he came very close at the Open, where Ryan Fox seizing destiny with a 72nd-hole birdie is all that kept him out of a playoff. He’s a force of nature now—he’s basically the anti-Koepka of 2026, with his stock rising and rising—and it all started here. And yes, I do think he’s going to win this thing in a blowout again, although I’m fervently praying that we get a Young-Koivun Sunday duel.
5. RANKING THE SPONSOR’S EXEMPTIONS
Hip, dope, fly, sick – Blades Brown – We need a rival youth phenom for Koivun, and until Miles Russell graduates middle school, Blades is probably the guy. Although I’m starting to worry that he’s another Maverick McNealy, where his name is much cooler than his game.
Even hipper, doper, fly-er, sicker – Kihei Akina – Reigning Big 12 Freshman of the Year out of BYU, Hawaiian-born, now turned pro. (In fact, he’s older than Blades, but who’s counting?)
Local Schmokel – Ben Kohles – Went to school in Cary, N.C. Got nothing else for you.
Hope he hits himself in the head with a putter again – Zac Blair – A real story!
6. WHAT’S UP WITH SEDGFIELD CC?
The first thing I do with tour venues is to see where Joseph LaMagna put them in his rankings tiers, and this one gets “good test before equipment ruined it.” Not bad! I’ve always enjoyed Sedgefield, and especially the 18th hole, which is appropriately tough and weird for the site of a lot of Sunday drama. In fact, there are eight holes on the course that played over par last year, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s not a total birdie-fest, because it is: The winning score has been better than 20 under eight of the last ten years.
At the same time, a look at the winners shows you that anybody can thrive here—from bombing alphas like Cam Young to short-hitting pin-hunters like Kevin Kisner to brainy oldsters like Brandt Snedeker and Davis Love III to polite Britons like Aaron Rai to whatever you would call Tom Kim. That’s largely because there a lot of trees that punish wayward driving, so while it helps to be long, you can’t be long and wild. I assume a phalanx of frothing modern architects will be by any day to burn all the trees to the ground. In the meantime, here’s a nice aerial tour.
7. THE JORDAN SPIETH SADNESS INDEX (JSSI)
Is the nature of the world such that the players who came into their prime when we were younger, then faded away, remain forever as lurking threats in our minds, if nowhere else? I thought about this recently with Justin Thomas. He’s 22nd in the world, has had a couple solid finishes this year, but he’s done nothing to justify my bone-deep belief that he’s probably going to win a major very, very soon. Nevertheless, the thought is there, implanted in my head, like the flag the astronauts planted on the moon, still waving away even though we don’t go there anymore. Maybe holding onto these memories of greatness, even vicariously through the likes of JT, is some backward way of preserving our youth even as time carries us further and further away from those sweet days.
Anyway, the JSSI is a 45 out of 10 this week.
8. ONE NORMIE PICK, ONE WEIRD PICK
Normie pick is Cam Young for the repeat, and for the weird pick, I’ll go Mac Meissner, who finished second here last year, is fighting for his playoff life at 71st, and finished T-26 last week. If he pulls it off, it will put him in league other notable Meissners, like acting teacher Sanford Meissner, figure skating champ Kimmie Meissner, Eagles founding bassist Randy Meisner, the guy who played Slugworth in Willy Wonka, a girl I had a crush on in high school but never had the courage to talk to, and, unfortunately, a prominent Nazi named Otto.
9. THE ROGUE GOLF TAKE: I MUST CHIME IN ON CHARLEY
Do we need another Charley Hull take? No? Too bad, you’re getting it anyway! And here it is: My least favourite thing about the whole ordeal wasn’t the grim nature of the prank, but her defence of it. Specifically, the “he thought it was funny!” defence. Oh, did he, Charley? Did he? Or is he just saying that because you’re his boss and if he comes out and says, “actually, you know what? That was terrible!,” he might not work for you much longer. Truth is, we have no idea how he feels—you could be right that he thinks dangling a dream in front of him and then ripping it away is A+ humour—because he really can’t give any answer but the one you want to hear. That’s why you should only pull a prank like that if the other person has the power to end the relationship on the spot. Or hire a hit man.
[Cue the Internet’s dumbest cretins getting mad at me for being “woke.”]
10. THE ROGUE NON-GOLF TAKE: WEED WACKING IS MY NEW DRUG
I bought a weed wacker last year just before winter, which I had resisted for a long time because you can get most of our yard done with a standard push-mower. However, some rogue weedy spots were proving resistant, so I spent the cash, and what I have discovered this year is basically methamphetamine for a middle-aged man. I spent many years as a high-schooler weed-whacking every day as my summer job at a local golf course, and thus learned to hate it. But as an adult, when you don’t have to do it constantly, it’s so good and powerful. You become the dark lord of grass, dispensing death in great arcing swaths, and none may stand in your way. I’m getting so high on this that in my arrogance I will eventually try to cut down a tree and break it. It’s the best.
(By the way, the people who call it a “weedeater” are the same people who use the word “Coke” for every kind of soda, and should be sent straight to jail.)
