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Second to Finau when gaining an impressive 10.5 strokes with his ball-striking alone and back at a course where only the putter kept him from contending for the third straight year last August, everything is in place for Im. His Masters second and Sanderson Farms play-off defeat have come on classical, tree-lined designs and, like Kim and KJ Choi before him, so often it's this style of course which provides a comforting familiarity for the Korean players. It's a great course for Im, who has won on a trickier but comparable par 70 in the Honda Classic, as well as a shootout for the Shriners that correlates well with this. His ball-striking here has been strikingly consistent, gaining seven-plus strokes every time, and he's said before that he's keen to emulate Si Woo Kim having watched on as his compatriot won this title six years ago. Providing he can bring that improvement with him to Sedgefield, where he's finished sixth, ninth and 24th in three visits, never shot an over-par round, tops the three-year scoring averages with 66.42 and the adjusted equivalent with 68.26, then he should be hard to keep out of the frame. Im's coach told him he needed to take the putter back more in line with the target and, returned to something far more familiar than those slow surfaces in Scotland, he putted as well as he had since the Masters, where he finished eighth. So bad was that display that he sent videos to his coach in the hope of finding a quick fix, and based on the 3M Open, where he was runner-up last time out, they have managed exactly that.
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He made the cut there but was by some distance the worst putter in the field, which is a shame as he struck the ball well enough to be challenging the top 10. Im has endured a frustrating summer at the highest level, first missing the PGA Championship due to Covid-19 and then missing the cut in the US Open, before one of the most hopeless putting performances you're ever likely to see at St Andrews.
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We'll come to some of the big-priced options in time but I'll start with the straightforward: SUNGJAE IM looks comfortably the most likely winner of a tournament he enjoys, and at 16/1 generally he rates a rock-solid each-way bet. Davis Love, Camilo Villegas, Jim Herman and Arjun Atwal were all extremely difficult to find, the latter winning as a Monday qualifier, and Roger Sloan would've been the latest shock champion had he won last year's six-way play-off. But those classy winners shouldn't mask another truth of this tournament: its propensity for upsets. That explains why Kevin Kisner was very much a fitting winner, why Webb Simpson made his breakthrough here, and why it increasingly looks like the venue of Brandt Snedeker's swan song.
DOWN IN BERMUDA GREEN KEY SERIES
Instead, this is more about finding fairways and setting up chances, typically with short irons across a series of stock par-fours. It's not difficult, but nor is it a place where the modern, powerful golfer can hit the club they most like to hit and power their way through 72 holes. Designed by Donald Ross, Sedgefield is the archetypal 'old-school' course tree-lined, short, twisting, and with greens sloping heavily from back to front. That remains true here in the Wyndham Championship, where as usual the very best players in the world are happy to step aside and prepare for the Playoffs, and while timing is the predominant factor, the course is another. Fields on this side of the Atlantic have been pretty weak for over a month now so while Tony Finau taking a thousand points from the FedEx Cup pot won't have helped, it's very difficult for anyone to argue that they've not had the opportunities needed to salvage their cards. Sedgefield Country Club is the established home of the final event of the regular season, and those bidding to avoid a trip to Korn Ferry Tour Finals can have no complaints – not even James Hahn.