It Takes A Village

by Brad King

 Aug 11, 2017 at 1:30 PM

Who feeds the players, caddies, families, and media during the Wyndham Championship? The McConnell Golf culinary team comes together to make it happen.

For Professional Golfers "Moving Day" typically falls on Saturday, after the tournament cut has been established and the field’s hottest players see how much ground they can gain heading into Sunday’s final round.

But for Sedgefield Country Club Executive Chef James Patterson (“JP” as he is known) and his culinary team, moving day during the Wyndham Championship occurs on Saturday before the tournament week even begins. That’s the day they move all the day-to-day items out of the kitchen — right down to emptying the walk-in freezers — to make room for the stampede of supplies they’ll be needing during the club’s biggest week of the year.

Unlike almost all other events on the PGA Tour, for the Wyndham Championship nearly every single item of food consumed on site comes from the Sedgefield kitchen. Patterson estimates his staff feeds approximately 5,000 people a day — players, caddies, families, hospitality suites, media — and this doesn’t even include spectators.

To pull it off, club staff swells from 12 employees to 60 during the tournament. Each executive chef from every McConnell Golf property comes to Sedgefield for the week to help, in addition to club managers such as Phillip Loney of Brook Valley Country Club.

“I like to see the comradery between all the properties”, says Loney, a four-year Wyndham veteran. “It’s good to see people are excited about it.”

Each chef is in charge of their own territory. For instance, Treyburn Country Club Executive Chef Pedro Villasana makes 3,000 sandwiches every day out of the Sedgefield Dye clubhouse. Culinary operations run nearly 24 hours each day, starting with the first group of the day arriving at 3:30am to prepare breakfast.

“I can’t be everywhere at once,” says Patterson. “These McConnell chefs are away from their home clubs. I’m so grateful for what they do. We haven’t found another PGA event that handles the volume of food that we do. It’s an amazing endeavor.”

Numerous players have told Patterson that the food during the Wyndham Championship is the best they enjoy on tour all year. Tracy Cottrell, a sauté cook at Sedgefield, returns to helm the omelet station for her seventh consecutive year. She’s become a familiar face over the years — having grown famous for her omelets, and the players, caddies, and families know her pretty well, too.

“Super fluffy,” says McConnell Golf Founder and CEO John McConnell. “You have to try one of her omelets.”

 

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Experience of a Lifetime

by Jessie Ammons

 Jul 05, 2016 at 9:36 PM

Members recount their most memorable Wyndham Championship moments

"At the Wyndham practice round last year, Tiger was on [Sedgefield Country Club] property but it was raining all afternoon. Word was spreading around the grounds that he was going to play a quick nine with Davis Love. My son heard that they were going out at 6 p.m. I raced over from my house and caught up with them on the first green. We watched the nine holes and then Tiger signed autographs until it got dark. It was great to see him be so appreciative towards the fans, especially the kids.

I was standing up by the Pro Shop when my son and a couple of his buddies went screaming by us... they said they were going to get a picture with Tiger Woods. I said good luck while thinking to myself, "Yeah right." Anyway, they got a picture that Tuesday night around 9 p.m. That’s Jack Boyer, Jace Harriss, and Jay Stiefel with Tiger Woods. It’s a moment they will remember forever.”

- David Boyer, Sedgefield Country Club

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The Fabled Finish

by Irwin Smallwood

 Jul 02, 2016 at 9:27 PM

A reflection on the 2013 Wyndham Championship playoff

As the August twilight was about to descend on the lush fairways of Sedgefield Country Club on a soggy Sunday afternoon in 2013, little did the faithful who had remained for the Wyndham Championship playoff realize: They were about to witness the writing of the first draft of history.

That Sunday conjured snapshots from the first four years of the golf tournament’s forebear, the Greater Greensboro Open, when then-fledgling professionals Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, and Byron Nelson jump-started their illustrious careers on the very same soil.

No one then dreamed that the trio would later rule the PGA Tour and wind up as hall-of- famers, just as precious few in the late summer of 2013 realized that they were seeing authentic stardom in the making.

One of the contenders in the 2013 sudden-death playoff was still a teenager; the other had just turned 23. Both had been two-time participants in Greensboro’s American Junior Golf Association tournament, recently renamed the Haas Family Invitational.

But what they produced was a finish that is bound to earn legendary status as the years speed by. Barely three years later, the then-teenager, Jordan Spieth, has been ranked No. 1 in the world and has won both the Masters and the U.S. Open. The man who beat him, Patrick Reed, is closing in on a top-10 world ranking. So what else was so great about that playoff? The shot. The shot.

Looking Back

But that’s getting a little ahead of the story of the Wyndham Championship playoffs.

Most of the 15 earlier ones had their moments to remember. Two of Snead’s eight GGO victories came in playoffs, and he let another slip away when Earl Stewart beat him and Art Wall; and Doug Ford did the same in one that lasted 19 holes.

In 1972, George Archer had already packed his clubs in his car for the trip to the Masters when Arnold Palmer triple-bogeyed away a two-shot lead with three holes to play, plopping Archer and Tommy Aaron into an unexpected overtime that Archer won with a par.

Along the way there were also such notable playoff winners as Julius Boros, Gene Littler, Sandy Lyle, Ryan Moore, and Rocco Mediate, and such not-so-notable winners as Bud Allin, Trevor Dodd, and Frank Nobilo, the latter now a Golf Channel analyst. But the shot is what they will still be writing about when the tournament turns 100 or so — that and the two young lions who appear destined to become hall-of-famers. Turns out there was more than a little drama before Reed and Spieth got to the decisive second hole of the playoff in 2013. The final round of regulation had pretty much belonged to them as Spieth bested Reed by a stroke, 65 to 66, in the wake of overnight rains and an early morning storm that delayed play for three hours. And then came the real stuff.

Play-By-Play

On the first extra hole, Sedgefield’s par- four 18th, Spieth drove into the woods on the left and had to play a safety shot back into the fairway. Meantime, Reed split the middle with a textbook tee ball, and after Spieth put his third on the green, a good 26 feet from the pin, Reed hit another perfect one, leaving him maybe seven feet for a possible winning birdie.

But not so fast. Spieth, whose heroics with the putter have since become legendary around the world, curled in the putt with a good two-foot break. Par. Reed, perhaps a bit shaken, missed his birdie try and off they went to the 10th tee.

This time it was Spieth who hit the perfect tee shot, right down the middle of the uphill par four, and Reed found the trouble. Big trouble, it first appeared. Out of bounds in the trees to the right, someone signaled. As Reed later recounted, he was in shock. “My heart sank,” he says, but then came a turn of events that in the end saved the day. “All of a sudden,” he says, “three or four other people started running out on the fairway and gave me the safe signal.” 

Cut to the chase. Though just 150 yards or so from the green and inbounds, his ball was, as they often say, in jail. There was no way he could reach the green, right? Wrong. With Spieth already on the green in two and within good (10 feet) birdie range, Reed smacked a three-quarter 7-iron under an overhanging tree limb, straight as a string, and it stopped seven feet below the hole.

The shot. Of a lifetime for Reed, as it turned out. Spieth was the one a bit spooked this time, and his birdie attempt lipped out. Reed’s was dead center for a shot that earned him his first PGA Tour victory, and a certain place for him and Spieth in the storied history of the venerable old tournament a hearty band of young businessmen dreamed up eight decades ago.

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