Caddie Confidential: After walking away, golf pulled him back

The final regular season event of the 2021-2022 PGA TOUR schedule lands at Sedgefield Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, for the Wyndham Championship. RELATED: Expert Picks | Power Rankings The final 125 places on the FedExCup Playoffs Eligibility Points List will be determined after 72 holes this weekend. Those qualifying will head to TPC Southwind next week to kick off the FedExCup Playoffs in Memphis. Since this is regular season GRAND FINALE, time to debut the new look of this column. The focus moving forward will be on the players who play the best on this track. Need more details about the course? Read Rob Bolton’s Power Rankings. Need more details about the field and history of the event? Read Adam Stanley’s The First Look. The important statistics you have become accustomed to have not been forgotten. I’ll have another column this week focused on the key stats at Sedgefield. I’ll take a look at the crucial components of going low here and who on TOUR matches up well given their form this season. Also, don’t be afraid to reach out with suggestions/thoughts/ideas as this idea is always evolving! Sedgefield is a perfect course and Wyndham is a perfect event to debut this idea. Since 2008 Greensboro has turned to Donald Ross’ Sedgefield Country Club to host the final event of the PGA TOUR season. Kris Spence spruced the place up in 2007 before the TOUR arrived and the only other major change to the property was removing Bentgrass greens and replacing them with Champion Bermudagrass in 2012. The Par-70 layout features just two par fives and the famous back to front tilt of Donald Ross green complexes. Kevin Kisner won a six-man playoff last season and returns to defend his title. Let’s see if he gets a run in the top five horses for this course. Horses for Courses High Five Webb Simpson (BetMGM odds. Win: +2200, Top 5: +400, Top 10: +190, Top 20: -125, Top 40: -250) The Wake Forest Arnold Palmer Scholarship recipient picked up his first TOUR victory in Greensboro in 2011 and hasn’t looked back. His annually annuity has produced 12 paydays from 13 starts and nine have produced top 10 returns. The streak is currently at five and seven of his last eight visits. Outside of T72 in 2016 and T22 in defense in 2012 every other payday is T11 or better. In 50 rounds his scoring average is a scalding 66.66. Yes, his daughter is named Wyndham for a reason! Si Woo Kim (BetMGM odds. Win: +2500, Top 5: +450, Top 10: +200, Top 20: -125, Top 40: -250) The youngest winner (21) ran away to victory in 2016 on the back of setting the then course record of 60 in the second round. His five-stroke victory announced his arrival on TOUR as did his equaling of the tournament record at the time (-21). I’ll argue he set the course record after the change to Champion Bermuda and he did so by three shots, adding to his impressive totals. Kim was unable to defend his title after some niggling injuries and upon return in 2018 he missed the cut but that’s not surprising for a player ‘defending’ for the first time. He’s now rattled off 50-under par the last three seasons and picked up checks for solo fifth, T3 and P2. In 20 rounds he’s posted 65 or better eight times. Kevin Kisner (BetMGM odds. Win: +4000, Top 5: +750, Top 10: +350, Top 20: +170, Top 40: -150) The defending champion has never missed out on the weekend on his preferred surface of Bermuda at Sedgefield. His lucky number seven last season backed up his T3 from 2020 as he sits 33-under in the last two seasons. Big picture shows us he posted four top five finishes in his last five visits. I’ll point out this streak stretches back to 2014 so he’s not an annual arrival. Muscle memory is on point as 26 of 28 are rounds of par or better and 23 of 28 are in the red, including the last 15. Russell Henley (BetMGM odds. Win: +2200, Top 5: +450, Top 10: +200, Top 20: -125, Top 40: -225) Opened last year with 62 to throw down his marker after closing 63-65 in 2020 for T9. His lead ballooned to four shots at the halfway point and was three after 54 holes. Missing a four-footer at the last and signing for 71 cost him a spot in the six man playoff and resigned him to T7. There’s too many good things over the last two years to let one putt or one round cause any concern. Heck, he posted 12-under in 2019 (T31) to run his three-year total here to 42-under. Billy Horschel (BetMGM odds. Win: +2000, Top 5: +350, Top 10: +165, Top 20: -135, Top 40: -275) The veteran and former FedExCup champ hasn’t played since 2020 when he was runner up with an impressive 20-under 260. He’s now racked up four T11 or better in his last five visits to Sedgefield. Big Billy is also eight of nine in his career when it comes to cashing at the event with a career scoring average of 67.38 from 34 rounds. His last 23 rounds are par or better at Sedgefield at 66.83 and the last 12 of those… well that’s a tasty 65.83! Odds sourced on Tuesday, August 2nd at 2 p.m. ET. For live odds visit betmgm. Pipped at the Post Sungjae Im has a pair of top 10s and a T24 from three visits and yields a 66.42 scoring average. Denny McCarthy has never MC in four tries and his worst payday is T26. Posts a scoring average of 66.81. Rory Sabbatini returned after T8 in 2013 with T4 in 2017 and hasn’t left again. His last three years here are T10-MC-T6 and has posted a 63 and 64 in those top 10s. Adam Scott returned for the first time since 2015 and posted 64-65 to join the playoff where he finished P2. Harris English hasn’t missed in seven tries and carries a 67.50 on 28 rounds. Veteran Scott Piercy has cashed in his last seven visits. Richy Werenski and CT Pan have never gone home empty handed from four tries. Russell Knox has carried his cut streak to four straight while Tyler Duncan and Mark Hubbard are on three in a row. Other past champions in the field this week include 2020 winner Jim Herman who also has a T11 and T18 to his credit over six starts. The 2019 champion JT Poston, who became the first player since 1971 to WIN a tournament while being bogey free, has MC in three other trips after T50 on debut. Davis Love III became one of the oldest winners on TOUR with his 2015 victory here, his third at the event since his debut in 1986! Camilo Villegas, the 2014 title holder, returned for the first time since 2017 and posted T46 last year. Any winners before the change to Bermuda are NOT included.

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Henrik Stenson, who at 45 has played in five Ryder Cups, was selected by European captain Padraig Harrington as the fifth and final vice captain.

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SYDNEY, Australia – The trademark smile and quick-witted humor has never left former PGA TOUR player Jarrod Lyle, even though he’s certainly had reason to let them slip. Three times in his life Lyle has been struck down by acute myeloid leukemia, interrupting a promising golf career. As a 19-year-old, he was given less than a 20 percent chance of survival. He beat the odds and went on to make his way to the PGA TOUR. The cancer returned after he finished fourth at the 2012 Genesis Open, the best finish of his career. He was once again given grim odds. Lyle won again and returned to the PGA TOUR to try again. Unable to reclaim his TOUR card, Lyle returned to his native Australia to play his home tour, dabble in some commentary and take up a business selling golf apparel. He’d basically given the sticks away.  Then the leukemia returned again this year. Once again, Lyle fought his way into remission, but the battle is far from over. Next week, he faces a new battle for his life. He will gamble on stem cell therapy and have a haploidentical transplant with the help of his younger brother, Leighton. Unable to find a full bone marrow match for a transplant. he will instead go with a 50 percent match and hope for the best. He’s been given a 25 percent chance of success and told it’s basically his last hope of a cure. This week, he will watch the Australian Open in Sydney from a merchandise tent for his Lyle Apparel brand and also join the host broadcaster for some commentary. Next week, he will enter hell again. “It will be the hardest chemotherapy I have ever had to have. They want to get rid of my bone marrow,â€� Lyle told PGATOUR.com while five-year-old daughter Lucy threw feathers in the air and blissfully played nearby. “They are going to kill me from the inside out. They want to get my bone marrow to the point it is gone, and it’s never going to grow back.â€� He will enter a Melbourne hospital on November 29. Over five days, he’ll undergo two types of chemo, including one extremely toxic on the liver. He then has a day without any treatment before his brother’s cells are pumped in. The next two days might be the worst of all. “Those two days are likely to be very bad days for me. My body will recognize Leighton’s cells and will fight them,â€� Lyle explains. “My doctor said he is confident we can get it to work. If he didn’t believe it could work, we wouldn’t be doing it. But to hear the odds, and knowing it’s my last chance, it wasn’t the easiest conversation to have or information to hear.â€� With wife Briony steadfast by his side and daughters Lusi (5) and Gemma (18 months) foremost in his thoughts he is once again steeled to fight. “I know I am pushing stuff up a very steep hill. It opened our eyes that we are still struggling but there are a whole lot of things I still want to do in life and I have to keep fighting as much as I can to make that happen,â€� he said. “It’s kind of like I am filling up my positive bottle of energy now that I can use when things aren’t going well. I will have things to draw on and use and try to help me get through it all.â€� Despite exhaustion at times, Lyle has made huge efforts of late to take his daughters to the park, the beach, the playground and anywhere else he can to plant great memories in their heads. He craves the normalcy. And being at The Australian this week has him once again contemplating what would be a third comeback for the ages. He found himself wandering inside the ropes, ignoring the regulation crosswalks. “All things being equal, if I could play one more event, I’d be happy,â€� he said. “I don’t know how my body is going to turn out after this. I don’t know how much damage the chemo will do. But if I can play one event, my heart is still there. “Being here this week, it’s hard to be on the other side of the ropes. I feel like I am still part of the playing fraternity. The support from all walks of life, from all over Australia and the world, there are a lot of people behind me. That always feels good.â€� Lyle is in the process of writing a book about his life experiences, one he hopes will help people get through similar challenges in life. The hope for all is he’s signing copies at the 2018 Australian Open.

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