At this point, it might as well be called the Webb-ham Championship.
Sure, Webb Simpson only has one Wyndham Championship win back in 2011, but he hasn’t left his home state’s tournament empty-handed for more than a decade.
Simpson’s highlight at Sedgefield came in his third year on the PGA Tour. The Wake Forest grad used plenty of local fanfare to lift him to his first career win.
Simpson posted 66-65-64-67 to prevail by three strokes over George McNeil, four over Tommy Gainey and five over a group tied for fourth place.
A good run of form in his early days as a pro finally paid off. It was a launching pad for Simpson to win a FedEx Cup Playoffs event a couple weeks later. Another year goes by and he’s a U.S. Open champion at Olympic Club.
Simpson grew up in Raleigh and resides in Charlotte, where he’s a member at Quail Hollow. Sedgefield also feels like home.
He missed the cut in his Wyndham Championship debut in 2009. Since then, Simpson owns a whopping 11 straight made cuts. Ten of those are top-22s and nine were inside the top 11,
The only worry about Simpson this week is his ability to close the door here in recent years. Since 2017, his results have shown third, tied second, second and tied third.
It was hard to blame him for last year’s miss as he fired 66-66-65-65. Jim Herman played out of his mind on Sunday and holed everything down the stretch to win.
Same for 2019 where there was no Sunday collapse, either. Steady Simpson went even lower with 64-65-65-65. It took a Sunday 62 and 72 holes of bogey-free golf by J.T. Poston to edge Simpson by one. Poston was the first player to make no bogeys or worse and win a 72-hole stroke play event since Lee Trevino in 1974. Poston also matched Henrik Stenson’s (2017) tournament record aggregate score of 258.
Simpson played the role of chaser in 2017 when rounds of 66-68-66 weren’t quite enough to lay the foundation for a Sunday 62 to get him all the way back. An opening 59 allowed Brandt Snedeker to roll to a three-shot victory over Simpson and C.T. Pan.
Simpson’s last round not in the 60s at Sedgefield was in 2016 when he finished T-72nd. Keep in mind, that was the first year after the anchored putter ban was in effect and Webb’s game was in the wilderness.
He’s come out the other side about as good as ever and still has some prime years left in his 30s.
Simpson snapped a rare string of two missed cuts earlier this summer by posting T-19th at The Open. He followed with T-15th at the no-cut WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational where he closed with a 64.
Simpson is beginning to get squeezed out of some of the PGA Tour’s beefier ballparks. A classic Donald Ross design that rewards approach play and putting will play into Simpson’s hands for as long he’s out on tour.
“I feel like golf course designers, modern day designers who design the big courses, they can all get a lesson from the Donald Ross,” Simpson was quoted by ASAP Sports in 2013. “Come to Sedgefield, going to a lot of land in Hawaii, going to Hilton Head, these shorter, tighter courses have so much more character and I think that’s what I mean so we just don’t get a chance the play these courses much and you really got to think your away around Sedgefield. You can hit driver or you can hit 3-iron on a lot of holes.”