2013 Wyndham Championship: Tee times, TV schedule for Thursday’s round

The final regular season event of the 2013 PGA Tour circuit takes place this week at the annual historic Greensboro stop for the Wyndham Championship. With many players trying to bolster their position in the FedExCup standings, or simply crack the top 125, the field is a bit deeper than you might expect for an event sandwiched in between the last major and the start of the playoffs. It’s also one of the Tour’s oldest and most historic stops, even if it’s diminished in stature over the years and isn’t held in a large metro area or on a cookie cutter TPC layout.

Sedgefield Country Club will once again host this year’s event, with that venue involved in the tournament off-and-on since its inception in 1933. Sedgefield has held the last five Wyndham Championships, taking the honors back from Forest Oaks in 2008. It’s a classic layout that provides a good ball-striker one last chance to sneak into the playoffs, or perhaps cement their status in the upper tier, guaranteeing invites deeper into the four-week postseason.

Five of the last six winners at this event are inside the top 52 players in the world, so it has recently produced a well-established name or someone on the way to bigger things as a champion. Brandt Snedeker, the 2007 champion, is the highest ranked player in the field this year at No. 7 in the world. Snedeker will be paired with the last two winners here, Sergio Garcia and Webb Simpson. That threesome will be the marquee group throughout the first two days, with both firmly set up for a postseason run later this month.

Golf Channel will have the coverage from Greensboro for the first two days this week, coming on the air an hour earlier than normal at 2 p.m. ET on Thursday. The broadcast is scheduled to run up to 6 p.m., with that Sergio-Snedeker-Simpson group likely getting much of the love from the cameras. They are off at 12:50 p.m. on No. 1. Playing one tee time ahead of them is Bill Haas, Jordan Spieth, and Zach Johnson -- three American heavyweights who could all be locked into this fall’s Presidents Cup team. It’s a pretty impressive field given the unenviable spot on the calendar. Here’s the complete tee sheet for Thursday’s opening round:

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