PGA Tour to Return to Sedgefield Country Club
Mark Brazil, Executive Director of the Wyndham Championship Foundation, announced Wednesday evening the return of the Greater Greensboro Open to the Sedgefield Country Club for 2008. The Wyndham Championship Board of Directors, which is chaired by Bobby Long and includes past President of the Donald Ross Society Dunlop White III, has been working diligently to get the GGO to return.
The last Donald Ross designed golf course that was a stop on the PGA Tour was the Greater Greensboro Open played at the Sedgefield Country Club in 1976. From 1938 to 1961 the GGO was held on alternate years at Sedgefield Country Club and Starmont Forest Golf Club. From 1961 through 1976 Sedgefield was the only host.
Since 1976 the PGA Tour has not held a regular Tour event at a Ross design. There have been US Opens, PGA Championships, Tour Championships, a couple of Ryder Cups but Sedgefield had gone the way of Hope Valley, Holston Hills and many others as regular tour stops
Well, those days are over. 2008 will see the Greater Greensboro Open return to Sedgefield Country Club.
And the Membership, the Staff and the golf course are ready.
Sedgefield was designed by Donald Ross in 1925 and opened in 1926. In fact, Mr. Ross was originally hired to design 36 holes. The second eighteen was never built although the hole drawings still exist. The Club was lost by the membership during the Depression and had numerous owners until a new membership bought the property in 1967.
The Clubhouse is a local landmark known as the Sedgefield Inn built in 1925. When the membership bought the property in 1967 they also acquired the Inn and it served as a clubhouse and a hotel until 1992.
In the late 1990’s the Club commissioned a restoration and enlargement of the building. It is now a very impressive 48,000 square foot Tudor clubhouse capable of handling any and all functions commensurate to the Tournament.
To attract the tournament the membership knew that they could not offer the 1976 course. They were well aware that the 1926 Ross design was outdated for the equipment of today.
In 2006 the Club hired Kris Spence of Greensboro, NC to enlarge and restore the course. Spence did his due diligence and found drawings made by Ross in the late 40’s as well as a few aerial photographs from different eras.
Spence restored the putting surfaces to their original size and rebuilt every green and bunker to reflect the Ross style. He went to work with his chainsaw and removed hundreds of poorly positioned trees from the property. While he opened up the property he added around 400 yards of length to the course. Sedgefield now plays 7,230 yards at par of 71. The slope of the course is 141 and the rating 75.1.
Lee Trevino once said that Sedgefield was a course of eighteen par fours. Looking at the layout it can be safely said that that remains the case today. The par five holes are on the short side and reachable for most Tour players in two, but the four par threes are fraught with much danger for the misplayed shot.
Look for the Greater Greensboro Open, dates?, Sedgefield, like all of
the Ross Classics, will defend par at the greens.