Blayne Barber wasn’t sure what he was going to be doing during the third week of April. The former Auburn University golfer was supposed to be in Leon, Guanajuato, Mexico, for the Web.com Tour’s El Bosque Mexico Championship, but the event was canceled due to the gas crisis affecting the area.
Then he got an email containing some good news — the Web.com Tour was replacing the trip to Mexico with a stop in Prattville.
“I was like, ‘This is perfect,’” said Barber, who still lives in Auburn. “It was very fortunate. Worked out great for me.”
The inaugural Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail Championship will be held on the Senator Course at Capitol Hill in Prattville during the week of April 15-21, with 156 players competing for a $550,000. It’s the Web.com Tour’s 11th partnership with the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail and first at Capitol Hill since a five-year stretch from 2001-05.
The preliminary field for the event, released Monday morning, features nine former PGA Tour winners, led by nine-time champion Stuart Appleby and eight-time winner Mike Weir. It also features 10 players who, like Barber, have ties to the state of Alabama.
Will Cannon is from Hoover, Tom Lovelady from Mountain Brook, Robby Shelton from Mobile and Willy Wilcox from Birmingham. Lovelady, Shelton, Jason Bohn, Lee Hodges and Dicky Pride played for the University of Alabama in college; and Cannon, Wilcox, Sam Love and Zack Sucher played at UAB. Even more players with local ties could make the field as alternates.
“It’s cool to kind of see that turnover of guys having success on the professional stage,” said Barber, who played two seasons with the Tigers from 2010-12.
They’re all working toward the same thing, which is earning a PGA Tour card. The Web.com is the proving ground for the highest level of professional golf in the United States. Eight players who won events during the 2017-18 PGA Tour Season (Ryan Armour, Austin Cook, Ted Potter, Brice Garnett, Andrew Landry, Aaron Wise, Troy Merritt and Andrew Putnam) played on the Web.com Tour in 2017, and three winners so far this season (Cameron Champ, Adam Long and Martin Trainer) played in 2018.
In all, there have been more than 500 PGA Tour victories claimed by former Web.com Tour players, including 23 major championships and eight PLAYERS Championships.
“The Web.com Tour just feels like more camaraderie, more of a family,” Barber said. “The PGA Tour is a big business and a lot going on and a lot of money is at stake. It’s more of a corporate feel in some regards, whereas the Web is just everyone strapping up their boots and going to work and doing it together. It’s great. I have a lot of good friends out there. It’s obviously something you don’t want to do year after year, so I think it’s a good place to go and get your PGA Tour card back, and I’m grateful for the opportunity and the challenge, and just kind of embracing it as that.”
The Web.com Tour awards 50 PGA Tour cards every year — 25 to the leading points-earners at the end of the 24-event regular season, and 25 more during the three-event Web.com Tour Finals in August and September.
Barber played his way up to the next level once already in 2014. He’s hoping to do it again this year, and the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail Championship in Prattville will be a part of that process.
“It’s been a good bit of perspective, and I have sort of just embraced it as a good challenge,” Barber said. “I’ve already gone through the Web, got my card, so there’s an element of knowing you can do something, having accomplished it in the past. There’s a level of comfort and ease with it. It can do one of two things, but it has kind of just lit a fire under me to keep working and improving.”
Here is the complete preliminary field:
- Mark Anderson
- Michael Arnaud
- Eric Axley
- Rafael Campos
- Zecheng Dou
- Michael Gligic
- Mark Hubbard
- Nelson Ledesma
- David Skinns
- Ben Taylor
- Harry Higgs
- Tyler McCumber
- Callum Tarren
- Danny Walker
- Kevin Dougherty
- Taylor Moore
- Willy Wilcox
- Steven Ihm
- Justin Hueber
- Rhein Gibson
- Robby Shelton
- Dan McCarthy
- Edward Loar
- Erik Compton
- Justin Lower
- Brett Drewitt
- Maverick McNealy
- Brad Hopfinger
- Christian Brand
- Brian Campbell
- Lanto Griffin
- Chase Seiffert
- Norman Xiong
- Doug Ghim
- Michael Gellerman
- Jimmy Stanger
- Oliver Bekker
- Kevin Lucas
- Vince India
- Oscar Fraustro
- Paul Haley II
- Austin Smotherman
- Michael Miller
- Brian Richey
- Matthew NeSmith
- Bryan Bigley
- Byron Meth
- Cody Blick
- Zach Wright
- Brandon Matthews
- Chad Ramey
- Vincent Whaley
- Drew Weaver
- Jamie Arnold
- Lee McCoy
- Todd Baek
- Greg Yates
- Steven Alker
- Chris Baker
- Steve LeBrun
- Joshua Creel
- Albin Choi
- Jordan Niebrugge
- Yechun Yuan
- Andres Gallegos
- Jason Bohn
- Carl Pettersson
- Daniel Summerhays
- Mike Weir
- Frank Lickliter II
- Paul Stankowski
- Scott Harrington
- Nicholas Thompson
- Jim Renner
- Cameron Percy
- Brett Stegmaier
- Andrew Novak
- Zack Sucher
- Martin Piller
- Tom Lovelady
- Derek Fathauer
- Rob Oppenheim
- Casey Wittenberg
- Zac Blair
- Wade Binfield
- Nicolas Echavarria
- Michael Hebert
- Charlie Saxon
- Ben Polland
- Lee Hodges
- Andrew Svoboda
- Blayne Barber
- Conrad Shindler
- Brock Mackenzie
- William Harrold
- Martin Flores
- Sam Love
- George Cunningham
- Joseph Winslow
- Ryan Brehm
- Marcelo Rozo
- Benjamín Alvarado
- Jonathan Randolph
- Corey Pereira
- Thomas Bass
- Jimmy Beck
- Ethan Tracy
- Matt Harmon
- Mark Blakefield
- Michael Buttacavoli
- Olin Browne, Jr.
- Dicky Pride
- Tag Ridings
- Tyson Alexander
- Nick Voke
- Dylan Meyer
- Parker McLachlin
- Stuart Appleby
- John Merrick
- D.H. Lee
- Patrick Sullivan
- Yuwa Kosaihira
- Luke Guthrie
- JD Dornes
- Jimmy Gunn
- Horacio León
- Rafael Becker
- Dawie van der Walt
- Brandon Crick
- Roland Thatcher
- Emmanuel Kountakis
- Jin Park 146
- Garrett Osborn
- Kevin Roy
- Seann Harlingten
- Armando Favela
- J.T. Griffin
- Richard H Lee
- Braden Thornberry
- Jeffrey Kang
- Ian Holt
- Dylan Wu
- Will Cannon
- Cooper Musselman
- Eric Steger
- Matthew Campbell
- Spencer Levin
- Trevor Sluman
- William Kropp
- Carter Jenkins
- Grant Hirschman
- Motin Yeung
- Ben Griffin
- Scott Wolfes
- Mark Anguiano
- Zack Fischer
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