TRUCKEE, California — Gary Woodland knows how to win at elevation and with an unusual scoring system. This week, he has an added incentive to stay in the playoff race.
Woodland, who won the Barracuda Championship in 2013 when the PGA Tour stop was at Montreux Golf & Country Club, is at Old Greenwood near Truckee this week.
The Barracuda starts Thursday, with limited spectators allowed, after none were allowed last year.
Woodland played nine holes Tuesday, then played all 18 in the pro-am on Wednesday.
“It’s nice to come back. Obviously some good memories here. It is a different golf course, but the area is just amazing,” Woodland said. “It’s definitely a different course than Montreux. Montreux allowed me to kind of bomb the golf ball a little bit and kind of hit it out there.”
He said Old Greenwood is a little tougher than Montreux and requires keeping the ball in the fairways because it is a bit narrower.
He added that winds are expected to increase this week, which will make it even more challenging.
Barracuda Championship: Odds, picks, predictions
The winner at the Barracuda picks up 300 points in the FedEx Cup standings. Woodland is currently 119th. The top 125 advance to the playoffs.
“I’m starting to trend in the right direction. Obviously, this is a big week for me,” Woodland said.
In addition to a win in the Barracuda, he has a runner-up finish in the event. He joked that the PGA Tour should use the Modified Stableford scoring system every week. At the Barracuda, a double eagle is worth 8 points, an eagle is worth 5, a birdie is 2 and a par is 0.
“Sometimes when you’re not playing great, you can kind of get defensive and be a little too conservative sometimes,” Woodland said. “It allows me to come out and attack and try to make a lot of birdies, which when you haven’t been playing well you probably haven’t been making many birdies. For me, I think it’s a change in mindset. Maybe we should have Stableford every week for me; that might be a good thing.”
Woodland, 37, is a four-time PGA Tour winner, including the 2019 U.S. Open.
He took last week off, to spend time with his wife and three children in Colorado. His twin daughters turned 2 on Sunday.
Woodland said he was preparing for this week and for the year-end push, but he did not bring golf clubs; rather, he got acclimated to the higher elevation he will play in at Old Greenwood.
“Knowing that this week’s a big week, next week’s a big week and then the playoffs start. So ideal would be to play five weeks in a row which I haven’t done in a long time,” he said. “That was two days of getaway and shut the brain down, knowing that I had a big stretch coming up, trying to be fresh coming in.”
There are three events left in the PGA Tour before the playoffs.
Defending champ is back
Barracuda defending champion Richy Werenski flew in late Tuesday. He said he likes the Modified Stableford scoring, as well as playing at high altitude.
“The par-5s are all get-able. So that’s huge. I mean, eagles are. … I think you kind of have to make a couple out here. It just helps so much,” Werenski said. “They’re really big. It makes it a lot easier. So you definitely want to take advantage of the par-5s if you can.”
Werenski, No. 114 in the FedEx standings, won with 39 points last year.
FedEx Cup push
The Barracuda is one of three events remaining in the 2020-21 PGA Tour regular season. The field includes three of the nine players who have qualified for the FedEx Cup Playoffs in every season (2007-present): Brandt Snedeker (No. 91), Matt Kuchar (No. 120) and Ryan Moore (No. 140), as well as 20 of the 25 players between Nos. 126-150 in the standings.
Tokyo to Truckee
Three Olympians are in the Barracuda following the Olympic men’s golf competition: Mito Pereira, Chile (T-4); Thomas Pieters, Belgium (T-16); and Rafael Campos, Puerto Rico (T-57).
First-win feeling
The last five winners of the Barracuda were first-time PGA Tour winners, the longest active streak on the Tour: (2020, Richy Werenski; 2019, Collin Morikawa; 2018, Andrew Putnam; 2017, Chris Stroud; 2016, Greg Chalmers).
On top
Collin Morikawa, who won the Barracuda in 2019, leads the FedEx Cup standings with 2,136 points, ahead of second-place Jordan Spieth with 2,072. Both are playing in the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational in Memphis this week.
The course
Nearly 10 acres of tees and fairways at Old Greenwood had to be either re-sodded or grown back in from seed since last year. The greens were saved by removing ice and snow throughout the winter. The No. 13 pro tee was rebuilt, which doubled the overall teeing surface. The course is located just below 6,000 feet.
How to watch
The Golf Channel will have live coverage Thursday and Friday from 1-3 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 3-6 p.m.