Pro-Ams offer unforgettable experiences

You're excited for the day. You’ll be doing something you love. But man, there sure are a lot of people watching you – and cameras clicking. Playing the historic Sedgefield Country Club is a thrill on any given day, but playing the Pro-Ams next to an actual PGA Tour player is on a whole other level.

The Wyndham Championship offers two Pro-Am experiences, the first presented by BB&T on Monday and the second on Wednesday benefiting the Louis DeJoy and Aldona Z. Wos Family Foundation. While you are treated like royalty with the Wyndham’s high-end customer entertainment, it is the closest feeling you will ever get to actually playing on the PGA Tour.

On the first tee, where you get to meet the tour player you are paired to play golf with the next 18 holes, nervousness sets in. “Wow, I am really about to play golf with this guy?” goes through your head while you take photos with him.

The PGA player is introduced by the starter to the surrounding crowd in the stands. After he hits his tee shot down the middle and receives applause, your anxiety really kicks in. Your name is announced next to tee off. You must hit a great shot down the middle in front of everyone like the Pro... but you’re shaking. Some people thrive under this pressure, but others find it difficult to just tee up their golf ball.

After the first drive, a sense of relief takes over as you begin to walk away from the crowd and really get to enjoy your day. It is so much fun as PGA Tour golfers are very personable and give you all of their time. The atmosphere gets more relaxed from hole to hole as vendors serve small bites of high-end dishes from their restaurants. Even though you’re burning calories walking the course with a caddie, your stomach remains full at all times.

The caddies fuel themselves for the additional energy needed to carry the golf bags but also get in on the golf action. The par 3 on #16 brings extra excitement as the caddies get their chance to win a free car displayed next to the tee box if they hit a hole-in-one.

After you make it through your day up to the elevated #18 green, everyone shakes hands with the spectators viewing from the luxury platforms. It’s an event where everyone wins, as more than half of the Pro-Am sponsorship goes to charity.

Back Nine Banter

The first year McConnell Golf hosted the Wyndham Championship in 2011, John McConnell was paired to play with Webb Simpson in the Pro-Am. Webb struggled throughout the day, landing in bunkers and missing putts. On the back nine John McConnell turned around and whispered to his sons, “There is no way this kid is going to make the cut.” Four days later Simpson captured his first PGA Tour win with McConnell, his new biggest fan, looking on.

One of McConnell’s favorite memories interacting with a pro came in 2015 when he played with Ollie Schniederjans in the Monday Pro-Am. He told the rookie that his low ball flight was perfect for the windy conditions in the Open Championship where Schniederjans finished in the top ten a month prior. Schniederjans confidently responded by saying, “My game is good anywhere,” as he struck the ball low over Sedgefield’s fairway.

That Wednesday, McConnell played with Tiger Woods, who asked him if anyone had hit the drive into the creek on #18, to which he said, “No.” Well, McConnell was sure sweating it when Tiger teed off on 18 that Saturday, tied with lead, as he came up just 15 yards short of the creek.

In 2017 Wyndham winner Henrik Stenson was also paired with the McConnells during that week’s Pro-Am.

Read More

The King's Affinity for Greensboro

The first ACC golf tournament was staged in 1954 at Old Town Club and was won by Arnold Palmer, who had re-entered Wake Forest after a three year hitch in the Coast Guard. Palmer had withdrawn from school, despondent about the death of his close friend and Wake teammate Buddy Worsham.

Worsham was responsible for Palmer being at Wake Forest. Worsham was a prized recruit and before entering school asked athletic director Jim Weaver if he could bring along a friend. Weaver wanted to know if that friend could play golf and Worsham assured the AD that Palmer could, indeed, play.

With Palmer and Worsham as the anchors, Wake Forest won three Southern Conference championships. Palmer won the ACC individual title in 1948 and 1949 and was the NCAA individual winner in 1950.

On October 14, 1950, Worsham and teammate Gene Scheer went to the Wake Forest homecoming dance in Durham after Palmer and Jim Flick turned them down, going to a movie instead. That night, a one-car wreck killed Worsham and Scheer.

Palmer left Wake Forest after the 1954 ACC Championship without graduating, heading instead to a career on the PGA
Tour. When he started having success as a professional, he endowed the Buddy Worsham Scholarship at Wake Forest in 1963. Years later, Palmer endowed another scholarship in his own name and went on to endow six more scholarships
at Wake. But the Worsham Scholarship remains the most prestigious.

The Greater Greensboro Open tournament became important to Palmer. He played it 13 times, even coming to Greensboro during the years the tournament was played the week before the Masters, when most big-name players skipped the event to get ready for Augusta.

Palmer always said he had an affinity for Greensboro and the GGO, drawn to Sedgefield because of the memories of his old friend and teammate, Worsham. And as if playing in the event was not enough to boost the fortunes and galleries of the GGO, he once called in a big favor and got his friend Bob Hope to come to Greensboro and play in the pro-am.

In 1965, Palmer agreed to attend the first Champions Dinner. While flying to town, he encountered bad weather preventing his landing in Greensboro. He could land in Charlotte but would need a ride to Greensboro. Jim Melvin, Greensboro’s mayor at the time, convinced the Highway Patrol to pick up Palmer at the Charlotte airport and race him to Greensboro. And race they did: They made it to the dinner in an astounding 45 minutes.

Palmer never won the GGO, coming close in 1972 when he had a two-shot lead with three holes to play. A triple-bogey
coming in thwarted his chances. But that hole on his resume doesn’t diminish what Palmer meant to Greensboro and the tournament now known as the Wyndham Championship.

Last August, the Wyndham installed a plaque dedicated to Palmer on the Wall of Champions behind the ninth green at Sedgefield. With his grandson, Sam Saunders, in attendance, the plaque was dedicated.

It reads: “Widely considered the most important figure in golf and one of the most influential players in Wyndham Championship history, Arnold Palmer had five top five finishes in 13 appearances at Sedgefield. In 1963, Palmer established the Buddy Worsham Memorial Scholarship at Wake Forest University in memory of his friend and teammate who died in a car accident while in school. Since that time, scholarship winners have been a consistent presence in the tournament field, always with great appreciation and admiration for Arnie.”

This plaque now serves as a permanent reminder of Palmer’s contributions. Now, there’s something tangible that will
remind people of his legacy every time they pass.

Read More

Read More

Read More

Wyndham Championship Tournament Director Mark Brazil has served at the helm of the event for 16 years, where he has overseen both a title sponsor change and a venue change. We caught up with Mark as final preparations were made for the 2017 Wyndham event.

JOHN MAGINNES: The Wyndham Championship’s 2012 winner is now a Masters Champion. How did that hit you?

Mark Brazil: I have been friends with Sergio for a long time. Like so many, I’ve been pulling for him to break through. As good a ball striker as he is, I felt he could win any major. But for him to do it at the Masters, where there is such a premium on putting, is incredible. So to have another one of our champions win a major just adds to the historical significance of our event.

JM: This is especially true, considering that talk about your defending champion Si Woo Kim and his Players Championship.

MB: Well, you look at what he did here last year. He won in such a dominating fashion with hardly any hiccups that it wasn’t as surprising to us. He has one of the best swings in golf. What was surprising about that win was that he has had back and wrist injuries, so we didn’t know that he was going to be a factor in the event at all. I loved what he said at the awards ceremony, where he referenced how he felt down the stretch at the Wyndham. Remember, this kid turned 22 this summer. We could be looking at a Hall of Fame career.

JM: It’s been nearly a decade since the Wyndham returned to Sedgefield. What do the players tell you now about the golf course?

MB: When we first came, they loved the design. The PGA Tour doesn’t see too many Donald Ross courses, so we had a hit with the course. But what has happened since then has kept them coming back. The condition of Sedgefield, the greens and the fairways are pristine year in and year out. The players know what to expect, and Sedgefield keeps delivering. The house is always in order.

JM: Tell us about the fan experience at the tournament this year.

MB: We are going to have a little differ ent experience this year. Margaritaville is not coming back, but we are going to have something different and exciting in that popular space. We are excited about unveiling it, although I can’t at this time. You’ll just have to check it out. We are creating a new location for the Polo merchandise tent. That is an area we are trying to improve. We love seeing Wyndham Championship shirts at golf courses all year long. And, of course, they are Polo.

JM: Anything else different that we might notice?

MB: There is going to be a different look

and feel. Still with a vacation theme, but a different spin. In a lot of ways, we leave the theme of the event up to Wyndham. We want them to feel true ownership of the event and the best way to do that is to give them authorship of the look and feel. And from that, we do our best to

create the best fan experience we can at the tournament. It doesn’t matter if you bought a $10 practice round ticket or a hospitality ticket — we want you to walk away feeling like you got great value and had a great time.

JM: For the second year in a row, the Wyndham Championship was named the most fan friendly event on the PGA Tour. How does that feel?

MB: The recognition is always nice. We continue to try to grow the event but maintain the principles that make the Wyndham Championship a unique experience on the PGA Tour.

Read More

Kris Spence is known as a “Donald Ross Restoration Specialist,” a title to which he smiles and is eager to point out that there are “a few of us.” And that is just how Kris is, ready to deflect attention away from himself. His efforts in that regard have been in vain. He has been praised and awarded for his work on some of Donald Ross’ great golf courses. Kris has been at the helm of the renovations and restorations at Greensboro CC, Forsyth CC, Cape Fear CC in Wilmington, and Sedgefield CC, host of the Wyndham Championship, to name a few. 

When you meet with Kris at his office in a nondescript office park near the airport in Greensboro, you may be in for a bit of a surprise. “We’ve been here for a couple of years. Maybe we ought to hang some pictures,” Kris says to me as we are walking out the door for lunch. 

There are two things interesting about that statement. The first is that Kris can be forgiven for his lack of interior decorating talents. His exterior decorating more than makes up for it. And second, Kris begins every story with the word “we,” even though when we left the office there wasn’t another soul there. 

Kris is a natural born storyteller and his story is unique at least in the context of the present day. He didn’t study landscape engineering in college like so many of his colleagues; he came from the golf course superintendent side of things. He started in the early 80s at Atlantic Athletic Club before he was hired by the owners of Forest Oaks CC, which was then host to the GGO (now the Wyndham Championship). “We hosted a PGA Tour event when I was only 23, which was cool. Later on we needed to rebuild some bunkers and a couple of greens and we kept it in-house and it turned out okay,” Kris says of his start in golf course architecture. 

That is when Kris says he “got the bug” for golf course design and construction and went to work with Jack Nicklaus’s group building and opening the Governor’s Club outside of Raleigh. From there he was hired by Greensboro CC, which at the time had 36 holes in need of renovation. At the Irving Park Course, a Donald Ross design, Kris said, “We started dabbling, moving a bunker here, taking out a bunker there that they didn’t like, and it just snowballed into a full-blown renovation.”

 From there, Kris left Greensboro CC and embarked on a career as a builder, designer, and golf course architect. His company can do everything from the master plan to the simplest renovation, and he says that is what has sustained them. It has also given him the opportunity to work with some of the biggest names in the business. 

When the subject of Sedgefield comes up, Kris gets a gleam in his eye. “Originally, we had two sets of plans that contradicted each other,” he says. He recalls a meeting at which the general manager just happened to mention that they had come across some old papers. Kris asked the manager to retrieve them. These documents turned out to be the final and definitive plans that Ross used to design Sedgefield. 

“Sedgefield was going to be a 36- hole facility with an equestrian area. Later they decided to scrap the second 18 and make it a neighborhood. For example the 11th hole was originally routed on top of the hill to the right where the houses are. When Ross moved the fairway down on the side of the hill, he created a fairway that leans one way and a shot that has to go the other way.” 

Kris recently finished a renovation of the Dogwood Course at Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst, and he continues to work throughout the country. When you look at the work that Kris Spence and his team have done over the past two decades, you have to be impressed. Not bad for a greenskeeper who started dabbling. Then again, Donald Ross got his start as a greenskeeper— and so did Old Tom Morris. That puts Kris in pretty good company — and maybe that’s the “we” he’s referring to.

John Maginnes is a former PGA player and host the popular Katrek & Maginess on Tap broadcast on the PGA Tour Satellite Radio Network

Read More

With short days and cold weather wintertime usually means retiring your clubs and hunkering down, but it can be a time of opportunity.

Time to Focus

“Winter is a great time to focus on certain changes that you postpone all spring and summer,” says Sedgefield Country Club Director of Fitness Sherri Tallant. “It does not have to be very time consuming, you don’t need hours in the gym or a lot of heavy weight lifting in order to get huge benefits.”

Tallant is not just a personal trainer but is TPI certified, which means she’s gained a deep understanding of how the body’s strengths and weaknesses affect a golfer’s swing. “In the spring and the summer, most of our members’ time should be spent playing golf,” she acknowledges. “But in the winter, don’t just put your clubs away and forget about your golf game until spring.” Tallant recommends going to the fitness center or any space outfitted with mirrors. “Just watch your golf swing,” she advises.

Tallant adds that cooler months are the best time to start working on your short game. “Putting and chipping tend to be the two things that get rusty the fastest,” she says. “Stick to practicing in the mirror and you’ll stay tee-time ready come spring.”

Be Flexible

Less time on the course also means more time to spend on stretching and strengthening. “In the off season, golfers should spend more time in the gym doing things like yoga classes,” Tallant says. Sedgefield offers a six-week yoga program that meets for an hour once weekly, and most of her members sign up for two back-to-back six-week sessions.

“Through yoga, you’re not necessarily making your muscles longer, but you’re keeping them from getting shorter, which they would do if you don’t use them,” Tallant explains. “Strength training and stretching lengthens that muscle right back out and helps with rotation, which speeds up your clubhead speed. It’s absolutely awesome for golfers to do in the off season.”

Read More