Web.com Tour returns to Davidson’s River Run Thursday
What: Small Business Connection Championship at River Run
Where: River Run Country Club, Davidson
When: Golf Channel – Thursday-Friday, 12:30 p.m.; Saturday, 7 p.m.; Sunday, 2 p.m.
Purse: $1 million Winning Share: $180,000
Five players to watch
▪ Patton Kizzire: Alabama native won twice, led PGA Web.com Tour in regular-season earnings with $518,240 to earn PGA Tour card.
▪ Henrik Norlander: Shot 62 in final round to make up six-shot deficit, win last week’s Web.com Tour Finals opener in Fort Wayne, Ind.
▪ Harold Varner III: Gastonia native finished 25th in regular-season earnings to get PGA Tour card, needs a good finish to improve priority.
▪ Martin Piller: Another two-time winner, finished second in Web.com Tour earnings despite missing cut in 10 of 21 events.
▪ Dawie van der Walt: Won two tournaments, finished third in Web.com Tour earnings with $298,235 to earn PGA Tour card.
What's at stake this week?
▪ The top 25 money winners in the four Web.com Tour Finals events earn PGA Tour cards for 2016.
▪ The top 25 in regular-season earnings also earn PGA Tour cards, but they can improve their seeding priority over the next four events.
▪ The top 75 in regular-season earnings are also fully exempt for the 2016 Web.com Tour season, as are the next 25 in Finals earnings.
Worth mentioning
▪ Two former winners of the tournament, formerly the Chiquita Classic, are in the field: 2010 champion Tommy Gainey (played in Cincinnati, Ohio) and 2013 winner Andrew Svoboda, the first played at River Run.
▪ Kizzire, Piller and van der Walt are the only two-time winners on the Web.com Tour this season; 16 other players have one win.
▪ Piller and Rod Pampling are the only players to post wire-to-wire tournament victories on the Web.com Tour in 2015.
▪ South Korea’s D.H. Lee has finished in the money in 15 consecutive Web.com Tour events this season.
▪ PGA Tour veteran Dicky Pride is the oldest Web.com Tour event winner this season (46 years, 1 month, 15 days); South Korea’s Si Woo Kim is the youngest (20 years, 21 days).
By the numbers
126: Number of players entered in the Small Business Connection Championship at River Run.
22: Entrants in this weekend’s tournament who have won PGA Tour events; Stuart Appleby leads the list with nine wins.
1: Entrants who have wins in golf’s “majors” – Lucas Glover, the 2009 U.S. Open champion.
5: Entrants from the Carolinas – Varner, Darron Stiles (Pinehurst), Tommy Gainey (Bishopville, S.C.), and Matt Davidson and Kyle Thompson (Greenville, S.C.).
Notable tee times
No. 1 – 8:03 a.m.: Harold Varner III; Adam Long, Tim Wilkinson; 8:14 a.m.: Ricky Barnes, Steve Allan, Brian Davis; 12:25 p.m.: Tommy Gainey, Cody Gribble, Kevin Tway; 12:47 pm.: Jonathan Byrd, Kyle Stanley, Patton Kizzire; 1:42 p.m.: Aaron Baddeley, Martin Flores, Rhein Gibson
No. 10 – 8:58 a.m.: Derek Ernst; Julian Etulain, Mark Hubbard; 12:47 p.m.: Jhonattan Vegas, Brice Garnett, Billy Hurley III; 12:58 p.m.: Lucas Glover, Jorge Fernandez Valde, Tom Hoge; 2:15 p.m.: Stuart Appleby, John Mallinger.
Complete pairings at charlotteobserver.com
Bill Kiser
This story was originally published September 16, 2015 at 5:36 PM with the headline "Web.com Tour returns to Davidson’s River Run Thursday."