The First Look: Barbasol Championship

The Barbasol Championship gets underway this week in Kentucky and will sport a field comprised of players from both the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour.

FIELD NOTES: Past Barbasol champions Jim Herman, Grayson Murray, and Aaron Baddeley are teeing it up at Keene Trace Golf Club in Nicholasville, Kentucky… Matti Schmid, a German who won last year’s Henry Cotton Award as the DP World Tour’s Rookie of the Year, returns to familiar territory. He played college golf at the University of Louisville. His amateur career included back-to-back wins in the European Amateur and low amateur honors in last year’s Open Championship. … Local legend Josh Teater, a Kentucky native who is from about 40 minutes away from Keene Trace, is in the field on a sponsor exemption. Teater, the pride of Morehead State, is one of several golfers who have Kentucky ties – whether it be high school or otherwise – in the field… There will be 50 places available for DP World Tour members to kick it over to Kentucky. Those places go to the top 50 available players from the DP World Tour category ranking to a floor of Category 17… Chase Hanna, an All-American in 2016 at Kansas, will make his PGA TOUR debut. He’s currently ranked 35th on the DP World Tour… If Taylor Pendrith didn’t have bad luck, he’d have no luck at all. After notching a solid T13 at THE PLAYERS Championship it was discovered he had broken his rib. Pendrith was ramping up to return at the John Deere Classic last week but tested positive for COVID-19 and was forced to withdraw. He’s set to (finally) make his return at Keene Trace. … Other DP World Tour representatives include Lucas Bjerregaard, who famously upset Tiger Woods in the quarterfinals of the 2019 World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play; Oliver Wilson, a member of the European Team that played in the 2008 Ryder Cup in Kentucky; George Coetzee, who has won 10 times worldwide and is a former top-50 player in the world, and Julian Suri, a Floridian who played at Duke before winning on both the European Challenge Tour and DP World Tour.

FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 300 FedExCup points.

COURSE: Keene Trace Golf Club (Champions), 7,328 yards, par 72. The 1987 Arthur Hills layout will host the PGA TOUR for the fourth time. Located just south of Lexington, Kentucky, Keene Trace is one of the top-ranked courses in the state. Laid out through the rolling hills of central Kentucky, the drama of Keene Trace hits its apex on the par-4 finisher, a dramatic closer that’s built around the edge of a lake. Seventy-six bunkers will challenge some of the TOUR’s best, while big greens could leave lengthy lag putts for players who aren’t precise with their iron play.

STORYLINES: The winner of the Barbasol Championship, if he is not already qualified, will earn the final spot in The Open Championship… Past FedExCup champions Brandt Snedeker and Bill Haas will tee it up, and keep an eye out for the international star power that has come across the pond to play the PGA TOUR this week… With only four weeks left in the PGA TOUR’s season after the Barbasol Championship, this is a key time for guys on the FedExCup bubble earn some valuable FedExCup points. Max McGreevy is one of those golfers – he sat 126th on the FedExCup standings, just one point behind No. 125, entering the Deere.

72-HOLE RECORD: 262, Jim Herman (2019)

18-HOLE RECORD: 61, Kelly Kraft (3rd round, 2019)

LAST TIME: Seamus Power captured his first PGA TOUR title in a six-hole playoff. Poston was in the driver’s seat through most of Sunday’s finale in Kentucky until he made a double bogey on the par-5 15th and followed that up with a three-putt bogey on the very next hole. Power shot a 5-under 67 in the final round to Poston’s 2-under 70. The pair played No. 18 four times and No. 9 twice in the playoff, but Poston launched his drive on the sixth extra hole into the water and couldn’t scramble to match Power’s par. Anirban Lahiri and Sam Ryder shot the rounds of the day Sunday, 7-under 65, and fell just one shot short of the playoff. They finished tied for third. Six golfers finished tied for fifth including Mito Pereira in just his third TOUR start since earning PGA TOUR status via a Three-Win Promotion on the Korn Ferry Tour. Power now sits comfortably in the top 50 in the world after ranking outside the top 400 as late as May 2021.

HOW TO FOLLOW

Television: Thursday-Saturday, 4 p.m.-7 p.m. ET (Golf Channel). Sunday, 3 p.m.-6 p.m. (Golf Channel).