GREENSBORO, N.C. – Four-time Major winner Ernie Els and 2018 United States Ryder Cup captain Jim Furyk will play the 2017 Wyndham Championship, the tournament announced today. The 78th annual Wyndham Championship is set for Aug. 14-20, 2017 at Sedgefield Country Club.
These players join Andrew “Beef” Johnston, three-time Wyndham winner Davis Love III, 2011 Wyndham winner Webb Simpson, defending champion Si Woo Kim, former FedExCup champions Bill Haas and Billy Horschel, former world No. 1 Luke Donald and Major championship winners Jason Dufner and Graeme McDowell in the field.
Els is a four-time major winner having won the U.S. Open in 1994 and ’97 and the Open Championship in 2002 and ’12, and when he tees it up in next week’s PGA Championship, he will play his 100th Major championship. Els has 19 PGA TOUR wins and 47 international victories. He has played in eight President’s Cup matches, nine Dunhill Cup matches and five World Cup matches. A native of South Africa, Els is a member of the 2011 World Golf Hall of Fame class.
Els will make his seventh Wyndham Championship appearance including each of the last four; his best result here came in 1997 when he finished tied for seventh. He established the Els for Autism Foundation in spring 2009, with son, Ben, who is autistic, the driving force behind the mission. Six years later, he opened the first components of The Els Center of Excellence, based in Jupiter, Fla., to serve local, national and international autism communities and be a game-changing resource in the field.
Furyk, who will lead the United States team at the Ryder Cup in Paris next year, has played in the Ryder Cup nine times and the Presidents Cup seven times. He has 17 PGA TOUR victories to his credit including the 2003 U.S. Open; he will make his 14th Wyndham Championship appearance later this month; last year, he fired three rounds in the 60s and was tied for third with 18 holes to play, but on Sunday, he shot an even-par 70 and finished tied for 10th. He finished second in 1998 for his best finish here.
Furyk’s best finish of the 2017 season came in the RSM Classic where he tied for sixth. That finish guaranteed him at least one PGA TOUR top-10 finish every year since 1994. The University of Arizona alumnus has reached the FedExCup playoffs in each of the last 10 seasons. In 2016, he received the Payne Stewart Award presented annually to a professional golfer who best exemplifies Stewart’s steadfast values of character, charity and sportsmanship.
