Sedgefield Country Club does not need much encouragement to give up low scores, and on a hot, muggy Thursday in Greensboro it obliged again. Beau Hossler made four birdies in a row on the front nine, holed out for eagle on the par-5 15th, and closed with two more birdies to sign for a 9-under 61, taking a three-shot clubhouse lead in the first round of the Wyndham Championship. It is the final event of the PGA Tour’s regular season, the week that decides who plays on into the FedExCup Playoffs and who does not, and Hossler’s round could not have arrived at a more useful moment for him.
“Didn’t feel my best with the driver, but iron play was probably the best of my career today,” Hossler said afterwards. He was more circumspect about Sedgefield’s greens than the scorecard suggested he needed to be. “Missed a couple of very makeable putts, but with that being said, this golf course, if you leave it five feet above the hole, it can be incredibly difficult. So proximity’s part of the battle, but a lot of it is the leave. These greens are quite severe and fast.”
Nine Years Without a Win
Hossler is 31, in his ninth season on Tour, and still searching for his first win. He arrived at Sedgefield ranked 122nd in the FedExCup standings, outside the top 70 that advance to the playoffs, despite a run of six consecutive made cuts. A big week, or ideally a victory, was close to essential. By the time he signed his card on Thursday evening, he had climbed to a projected 53rd.
He has been here before. Two years ago, also at Sedgefield, Hossler opened with a 60 before fading to a tie for twelfth, a reminder that a hot start at this course guarantees nothing by Sunday. He seemed aware of it himself. “As you know, there’s lots of players that this week’s performance does impact moving on or not or whatever,” he said. “Every week that we play out here has implications for future years. I think if you let that consume you, it’s a dangerous thing. So at the end of the day, it’s golf. I’m going to go try and play great golf and kind of see where the cards fall.”
A Summer That Keeps Finding New Ways to Go Low
Hossler’s 61 was not an outlier so much as the latest instalment. Last week at the Rocket Classic, Peter Malnati and Cameron Young each shot 61 on consecutive days before Rasmus Hojgaard matched them with a third straight 61 on moving day. A dozen days before that, Jackson Koivun shot a tournament-record 61 at the 3M Open, and Michael Kim went one better with a 59 that stands as the lowest round anywhere on Tour this season. Hossler’s round at Sedgefield was the fifteenth of 61 or better recorded on the PGA Tour this year, a tally that would have sounded implausible a decade ago and now barely raises an eyebrow by August.
Donald Ross’s course, opened in 1926 and restored by Kris Spence in 2007, is playing its part. Small, undulating, quick-running greens tend to punish anything loose, but they also reward the kind of iron play Hossler produced, and the width off the tee lets the Tour’s better ball-strikers attack pins that a firmer, narrower setup would guard more jealously.
Sharing the Chase
Hossler was not the only player to make hay. Matti Schmid and Denny McCarthy each carded 6-under 64s in the morning wave to share the early lead, and the numbers mattered as much as the birdies: Schmid jumped 29 places in the FedExCup projections to 38th, and McCarthy 41 places to 43rd, both moving from outside the top 70 to inside it in the space of one round. Davis Thompson reeled off five straight birdies through his back nine to join them at 6 under, fresh off top-ten finishes at the 3M Open and the Rocket Classic. A group at 5 under, including Jordan Smith, Tom Hoge and Billy Horschel, sat two shots further back.
There is a lot of golf left at Sedgefield, and a leaderboard that flatters good ball-striking has a way of shuffling itself by Sunday. But for one Thursday, at least, the board doing the sorting was not just the tournament’s, it was the FedExCup’s, and Hossler’s name sat at the top of both.