Sedgefield at 100: A Donald Ross Course Still Living Its History
Golfers putt beneath Sedgefield Country Club’s Tudor-style clubhouse in an archival image from the club’s early years. The Donald Ross course opened in 1926 and became one of the original homes of the Greater Greensboro Open, now the Wyndham Championship, when the event began in 1938. Photo courtesy of Sedgefield Country Club via Facebook
There is a difference between an old golf course and a historic one.
Age can be counted. History must be earned through the people who played there, the decisions made there and the moments that carried consequences beyond a scorecard. By that standard, Sedgefield Country Club has packed a remarkable amount into its first century.
The Greensboro, North Carolina, club opened in 1926 and celebrates its centennial throughout 2026. This week, it again welcomes the PGA Tour for the 87th Wyndham Championship, scheduled for Aug. 5-9. What the television audience sees will be a polished modern tournament venue. What lies underneath is a course that has helped tell the story of professional golf in the Piedmont Triad since the game first began developing deep roots there.
Where the story began
Sedgefield grew from an ambitious 1920s development vision southwest of Greensboro. The property’s planners wanted more than a residential community. They imagined a destination, with golf serving as one of its defining attractions.
Donald Ross was brought in to design the golf course. Plans reportedly called for two layouts, although only one was completed before economic conditions and the Great Depression ended the larger vision. The course that remained opened for play in 1926 and became the foundation upon which Sedgefield’s reputation would be built.
Ross did not need excessive length to ask difficult questions. Sedgefield’s challenge has always been found in angles, elevation changes, strategic positioning and putting surfaces that punish approaches arriving from the wrong place. The fairways may appear generous from the tee, but the next shot often reveals why location matters more than simple distance.
That is one reason Sedgefield continues to work as a tournament course. Modern players can overpower many older layouts. Sedgefield still requires them to consider where the ball must finish, not merely how far it can travel.
The club’s early identity was also strengthened by Tony Manero, its head golf professional. In 1936, Manero won the U.S. Open at Baltusrol after beginning the final round four strokes behind and closing with a 67. Two years before Greensboro launched its professional tournament, Sedgefield already had a national champion representing the club.
Greensboro builds a tournament tradition
The Greater Greensboro Open began in 1938 with Sedgefield and Starmount Forest Country Club sharing hosting responsibilities. During the tournament’s earliest years, competitors played two official rounds at each course. Sam Snead won the inaugural edition, beginning an association with Greensboro that would eventually produce eight victories.
The arrangement between the two clubs evolved over time, sometimes alternating venues and sometimes concentrating play at Starmount. By 1960, however, a bit of Snead humor helped alter the tournament’s course.
After winning at Starmount for the seventh time, Snead reportedly joked that club owner Edward Benjamin should spend some of his money improving the course. Benjamin did not find the remark amusing and banned Snead from Starmount. With the tournament’s most successful player no longer welcome at one of its host venues, Sedgefield became the event’s permanent home.
The anecdote is entertaining, but the transition mattered for practical reasons as well. Sedgefield had the room to accommodate growing galleries and the stature to give the tournament a stable identity. Greensboro’s PGA Tour event was becoming larger than an annual competition shared by two neighboring clubs. It was becoming part of the city’s public identity.
A moment larger than tournament golf
One of Sedgefield’s most consequential chapters came in 1961.
The Greensboro sit-ins had begun the previous year at the Woolworth’s lunch counter downtown. The Civil Rights Act remained three years away, and golf’s governing structures were still shaped by formal and informal racial barriers.
With the support of Sedgefield, tournament organizers invited Charlie Sifford to play in the Greater Greensboro Open. His appearance made him the first Black golfer to compete in a PGA Tour event in the South. Sifford did considerably more than appear. He opened with a 68, held the first-round lead and ultimately tied for fourth behind champion Mike Souchak, Snead and Billy Maxwell.
That week deserves a central place in any history of Sedgefield.
Courses often celebrate championships, famous shots and recognizable winners. Those things matter. Yet a venue’s full history also includes the moments when golf was forced to confront who had been welcomed, who had been excluded and whether the game was prepared to move forward.
Sifford’s performance made the argument where golfers ultimately make their strongest arguments: on the course.
Four years later, in 1965, Snead won the Greater Greensboro Open for the eighth time. At 52 years, 10 months and eight days, he became the oldest winner in PGA Tour history, a record that still stands. The first champion of the tournament had returned 27 years later and won again at Sedgefield.
Few venues can claim two historical moments as different, or as significant, as Sifford’s appearance in 1961 and Snead’s final victory in 1965.
The tournament leaves and comes home
Sedgefield remained the Greater Greensboro Open’s home through 1976. Al Geiberger won that final edition before the tournament moved to Forest Oaks Country Club, where it remained for 31 years.
For a generation of golf fans, Forest Oaks became the familiar setting. Sedgefield’s connection to the event remained part of its history, but no longer part of its annual present.
That changed after a $3 million restoration led by Donald Ross specialist Kris Spence. The 10-month project sought to recover Ross’ strategic features while adding the length and infrastructure necessary for contemporary tournament golf. In 2008, the newly named Wyndham Championship returned to Sedgefield. Carl Pettersson marked the homecoming by winning at 21 under par.
The return was more than a venue change. It restored continuity.
Professional golf in Greensboro could again be played where the tournament had begun, on the course associated with Snead, Sifford, Gary Player, Billy Casper, Gene Littler and Tom Weiskopf. The restoration allowed the tournament to recover its physical connection to its own past.
Further work followed. After McConnell Golf acquired Sedgefield in 2011, the club converted its bentgrass putting surfaces to heat-resistant Bermuda in 2012. The change was intended to produce firmer, more reliable conditions during the Carolina summer while allowing the green complexes to play closer to their intended architectural character.
The history Sedgefield still carries
Sedgefield is not preserved by keeping it untouched.
Golf courses are living landscapes. Grass changes. Trees grow. Equipment advances. Maintenance practices improve. Tournament demands increase. Preservation, particularly with course architecture, is often the work of deciding what must be restored, what must be adapted and what must never be lost.
Sedgefield has survived those decisions better than most.
Brandt Snedeker’s opening-round 59 in 2018 proved that a century-old course could still become the setting for something the PGA Tour had rarely seen. The score was thoroughly modern, but the challenge remained rooted in Ross’ old principles. Find the correct angle. Control the approach. Respect the green.
That is what makes Sedgefield’s centennial worth more than a ceremonial number.
The course has hosted the game across vastly different eras, from hickory’s fading years and Snead’s rhythmic swing to TrackMan, 190-mph ball speeds and the FedExCup. It has been part of a city’s tournament tradition, a significant step in professional golf’s integration and one of the more meaningful homecomings on the modern PGA Tour schedule.
When the Wyndham Championship begins again this week, Sedgefield will not serve as a historical backdrop.
It will do what it has done since 1926.
It will ask the next generation of golfers to solve the same land in a new way.