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The strange PGA Tour, limping gamely into summer without Tiger Woods, is one month from limping gamely into Greensboro.

Sedgefield Country Club is all quiet now, the stately clubhouse off Forsyth Drive stands sentinel over a tournament that is steadily growing, like the Bermuda grass beginning to flourish at the Donald Ross layout. The members get in rounds while they can. The course will close in a few weeks, and a legion of volunteers and tournament and tour officials will converge on Sedgefield to make the final preparations for our social event of the season.

The Wyndham Championship.

The most turbulent year in the tournament's history will end Aug. 14 when Brandt Snedeker returns to defend his 2007 title on a new golf course for a tourney with a future looking much brighter than a year ago when the 26-year-old from Tennessee kissed the Snead Cup and ended the event's run at Forest Oaks.

Now it moves to one of the state's revered tracks, a course with more history than any other in North Carolina, a course restored by Greensboro's Kris Spence, lengthened for the tour players and prepped for the long North Carolina summer. The tour will move from Illinois today, where the final round of the John Deere Classic will kick off a month that will include two majors -- the British Open and the PGA -- and then the first Wyndham to be played at Sedgefield since 1976.

The whispers at the course this week were of pristine conditions, long run-offs for the big hitters and members and guests alike nodding in agreement that Sedgefield is in perfect summer form and also that the tour players will bring her to her knees. That's the nature of summer golf, a sport we were never familiar with until the tour started moving the tournament around, in part to save it.

A spring date became a fall date, and a fall date became a summer date, and now everyone is holding his breath hoping events around the tour enable the Wyndham to move back to a more fitting date -- the spring.

Though at times it seemed like the old GGO was played in the dead of winter, the most lasting snapshots of the tournament first played in 1938 are of the greatest players in the game walking the tree-lined fairways, dogwoods blooming, cherry trees blowing flowers across the grass and Sam Snead himself walking up the final hill toward the Tudor mansion.

The greatest name in the game is missing now, and we're left with only the roars still in the air from Torrey Pines, a lesser field chasing the Deere Classic hardware and the entire sports world trying to fill the void after Woods' departure. Tennis and auto racing, baseball and the LPGA take on greater significance with sport's biggest name on the disabled list. And golf is grinding it out in the heat.

A lot of the best players plan to be here for the historic return to Sedgefield. Davis Love III has committed to play in the first tournament since its exit from the course he redesigned, helping save the tourney once before. Vijay Singh plans to play, having settled into his summer routine of playing nearly every week. The 10th-ranked player in the world is fighting his game. Drew Weaver, the High Point native who shocked the amateur world last year by winning the British Am, will play along with David Toms, Rocco Mediate and Snedeker.

Of course, commitments on the PGA Tour are gentlemen's agreements, and sometimes other things get in the way. Like winning. Or like competing in two majors in a month with the Ryder Cup and FedEx Cup awaiting.

From a distance, the Wyndham's position looks significant wedged up close against the majors and postseason drama. In truth, you don't want to get too close to the big ones. They tend to overshadow everything around them. Last year, it fought its way out of the shadows, attracting big crowds on the weekend as the 26-year-old Snedeker vaulted to his first career win and a remarkable move to ninth in the FedEx standings. In one day, the last at Forest Oaks, he proved the tournament did have significance and proved wrong all those who took the week off to rest.

The sport used to rest all the time. It was a sedate game that meandered about and prospered on the mythical figures it produced -- Snead and Hogan and Nelson, who won here; Palmer and Nicklaus, who didn't.

Now there's Woods and the longest summer without him. The sport cannot afford to rest now. More than ever, it needs its history to carry it through this uncertain time. Our old golf tournament went through the same thing in recent years, struggling to get through its darkest hours, relying on its history and its community to pull it through.

The sheep fescue is waving in the hot July wind, and the lush Bermuda is spreading like a carpet of green over the restored layout at Sedgefield. The old clubhouse sits atop the hill, just as it has for generations, just as it will for still another summer, still another golf tournament in this, golf's longest season.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com