"In case you haven't noticed, Mr. Ross isn't building any more courses"

Thanks to reader Trevor for this Robert Bell story on the debate breaking out over the Greensboro course of the future and the possibility of moving to Donald Ross's Sedgefield. You know, the one that no one famous will play because it's scheduled the week before the playoffs starting.

"That would be cool, that would be really cool," said tour player Rocco Mediate, who slipped away from Forest Oaks during last year's tournament in Greensboro to play a round at Sedgefield.

Mediate said many tour players who annually skip Greensboro's tour stop would reconsider if the tournament moved to Sedgefield's Donald Ross course.

"In case you haven't noticed, Mr. Ross isn't building any more courses," Mediate said. "Getting an old course like Sedgefield as a regular stop would be a brilliant move, and I think players would respond to that."

Five years ago, the Greensboro Jaycees signed a 20-year agreement to play the tournament at Forest Oaks through 2022. But sources at Sedgefield and Forest Oaks say Greensboro businessman Bobby Long, director of the charitable foundation that runs the Wyndham, is negotiating a buyout with the Japanese company that owns Forest Oaks.

And... 

Jerry Kelly said Sedgefield would do for the Wyndham what Quail Hollow Club has done for the Wachovia.

"There's a reason (27) of the world's top 30 golfers are here and it's not the courtesy cars," the tour player said, referring to the Mercedes automobiles.

Does that mean it could become the seventh major?

Many players have not embraced fellow tour player Davis Love III's 2003 redesign of Forest Oaks.

Robert Gamez said Love took out all the curves of Forest Oaks.

"It was always one of the best courses we played, but now you don't have to maneuver the ball at all," Gamez said. "Just hit it straight and hard and don't worry about working the ball. Sedgefield is different. It makes you have to think."

Kelly said Love "tried to make Forest Oaks a little more Pinehurst-ish. I just don't know if the land and routing was there to turn it into what he wanted."

And this from the ever jovial Charles Warren, who I would expect to say something like this:

"Just being a Ross course doesn't make it a good course," Warren said. "It's hard to find a lot of (Pinehurst) No. 2s around the country. I'd like to see it stay" at Forest Oaks. "They always seem to get good crowds, and the atmosphere is always high."