It is a round that could not have come at a better time for Joel Dahmen. Entering the 2025 Wyndham Championship at No. 101 in the FedEx Cup standings, the one-time PGA Tour winner shot out the gates Thursday at Sedgefield Country Club to take the first-round lead in the PGA Tour’s regular season finale.
Carding a 9-under 61 to tie the lowest round of his career, Dahmen jumped to the top of the leaderboard for a one-stroke lead over Alex Noren heading into Friday’s second round.
“I don’t know if you ever see 61 coming, but I saw good golf coming,” Dahmen said. “I went 45-ish holes last week without a bogey to start the tournament, played really well in Truckee at the Barracuda besides kind of a weak Saturday. If you take like four holes away last week, it was kind of going to be a top-5. Trending as we like to say in golf, we’re always trending, right, but we’re actually trending, which is nice.”
With his place atop the leaderboard after the initial refrain, Dahmen is projected to jump from outside the top 100 to inside the top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings. While the projection is nice, the affable right hander understands there is plenty of work to do between now and the finish line given his precarious position in season-long race.
Dahmen entered the week in need of at least a two-way tie for second-place to climb inside the top 70. He will do well to accomplish just that, but a win would take a lot of the calculations out of the equation and secure him of a tee time at next week’s St. Jude Championship.
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“I mean, I’ve had like three top-2s in my career,” Dahmen said. “I don’t know, four of ’em maybe? I mean, it’s not even a thing, right? Yeah, great to make the Playoffs, that would be unbelievable, give me a lot of time off this fall. We’ve got a baby coming so that would take some pressure off of that. The Playoffs are a bonus for me. I’m just going to go out and try to play good golf, and I guess if I play really well, then I get to play another week.”
While Dahmen dances with a potential playoff push, his pursuers are those who look to push closer to the second week of the postseason. Defending champion Aaron Rai continued his love affair with the Donald Ross design on Thursday as he carded eight birdies against one bogey for an opening 63.
He was matched at that number by former PGA Tour Rookie of the Year Cameron Young, who finished his round with six birdies in his final seven holes. Young still searches for his first PGA Tour victory and would be the 1,000th unique winner in the league’s history should he go onto win.
Meanwhile, 13-time winner Jordan Spieth pushed his name onto the first page of the leaderboard with a 65 of his own. No. 50 in the FedEx Cup standings, Spieth came to Greensboro, North Carolina looking to improve his standing and solidify his spot in the BMW Championship in two weeks’ time.
The leader
1. Joel Dahmen (-9)
The caddie carousel of 2025 hit Dahmen’s camp this past month when he parted ways with his longtime bagman and good friend Geno Bonnalie after a decade-long partnership. Needing to take more ownership of his game, Dahmen has since put together some better results, including a top 20 at the Barracuda Championship.
With how well Dahmen struck the ball on Thursday, it would not have mattered who was on the bag. He gained over three strokes with his scoring clubs with eight of his 10 birdies coming from inside 15 feet. A couple of bonus long-distance connections from 23 feet on No. 2 and 50 feet on No. 7 made up the other two circles on his scorecard.
“Man, I love Geno. We still text almost daily,” Dahmen said. “He’s doing well. Yeah, I mean, I miss him but sometimes the hardest — you have to do something hard to — look, it wasn’t an easy decision. I won’t say I’m not happy about it but like it’s hard. He’s my best friend, he’s still my best friend.
“But I had to change something with me. It was more about me. It was my mentality, it was what I was doing and I need to take ownership of what I was doing. I was not doing a good job of that. So a way for me to do it is as simple as just playing golf on my own a little bit. So yeah, I love him, I miss him. I think we’ll see him out here again soon.”
Other contenders
2. Alex Noren (-8)
T3. Aaron Rai, Cameron Young, Nico Echavarria, Mark Hubbard (-7)
7. Sungjae Im (-6)
T8. Jordan Spieth, Chandler Phillips, Adam Scott, Lee Hodges, Matt Wallace, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Noah Goodwin, Matteo Manassero, Paul Peterson, Mac Meissner, Ricky Castillo (-5)
Spieth came into the week confident his play was better than the results indicated, and on Thursday he took a step towards matching the two. Piecing together a round that could of gotten out of hand with how he struck the golf ball at various stages, the three-time major champion battled back from an early birdie to position himself for his first true contention run of 2025.
Spieth leaned heavily on the putter in the middle portion of his round with conversions from 12 feet, 50 feet, 12 feet, 16 feet and 17 feet in a eight-hole stretch. Righting the ship from there, he made four birdies in his final five holes including makes from 14 and 16 feet to end. While the putter was popping off, Spieth will need the rest of his game to start carrying its weight moving forward.
“I mean everything was OK,” Spieth said. “I didn’t drive the ball particularly well until the last five or six holes. Same with my iron play, was really the last seven holes or so. So I was kind of just a little bit off to start. I didn’t have a great warmup this morning and it kind of translated, but it was nice to hang in there, get some breaks on the greens and be a couple under while I wasn’t really, really feeling very good about my game. Then I started to kind of get in a nice rhythm to finish and hopefully carry that into the rest of the week.”
Projected FedEx Cup bubble
|
Christiaan Bezuidenhout |
66 |
74 |
T8 |
-5 |
|
Emiliano Grillo |
67 |
66 |
T38 |
-3 |
|
Erik van Rooyen |
68 |
64 |
T141 |
+3 |
|
Cam Davis |
69 |
67 |
T59 |
-2 |
|
Patrick Rodgers |
70 |
68 |
T110 |
E |
|
Chris Kirk |
71 |
73 |
T19 |
-4 |
|
Byeong Hun An |
72 |
69 |
T64 |
-2 |
|
Matti Schmid |
73 |
70 |
T92 |
-1 |
|
Keith Mitchell |
74 |
72 |
T64 |
-2 |
|
Nicolai Højgaard |
75 |
71 |
T130 |
+2 |
2025 Wyndham Championship updated odds and picks
Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook
- Aaron Rai: 7-1
- Alex Noren: 8-1
- Joel Dahmen: 12-1
- Cameron Young: 12-1
- Nico Echavarria: 16-1
- Jordan Spieth: 18-1
- Mark Hubbard: 22-1
- Robert MacIntyre: 28-1
There are some names at the top of the leaderboard, but none that strike too much fear with 54 holes to go. Instead, let’s look at Bezuidenhout, who stands only four strokes off Dahmen’s pace after hitting 11 of 14 fairways and 16 of 18 greens in regulation. Normally a great putter, the South African should start moving up the leaderboard if that club starts to cooperate. He is priced at 30-1, while Max Homa at 60-1 may be a fun dart throw as well at 4 under.
This news was originally published on this post .
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