Six players who either live in Georgia or played their college golf in the state were among the top 25 finishers on the Web.com Tour’s final regular season money list, and will be rookies on the PGA Tour for the 2016-17 season.
Four other Georgia residents finished in the top 75 on the money list and will compete in the Web.com Finals, a series of four tournaments beginning Sept. 8 that will determine 25 more members for the 2016-17 PGA Tour.
Those four will join as many as six PGA Tour members with Georgia ties who finished between 126 and 200 on the FedExCup points list and have lost their fully exempt status for the upcoming season, which begins Oct. 13 with the Frys.com Open.
Among the six were five members of the top 10, led by leading money winner Wesley Bryan of Augusta, who won three times to earn an immediate promotion to the PGA Tour with a few weeks left in the 2015-16 season. All six will be rookies on the PGA Tour for the 2016-17 season, with three of the six Web.com rookies this past season.
Bryan, a 2012 graduate of South Carolina, was best known as part of a trick shot duo of brothers who were popular on the internet before emerging as the Web.com Tour’s best player. He won three tournaments, tied for second once and had seven top-10s in just 13 starts, finishing almost $100,000 ahead of the money list runner-up with earnings of almost $450,000.
The key to Bryan’s success this season was his putting, as he ended up No. 1 on the Web.com in all three putting stats and was second in scoring average. He made four starts on the PGA Tour this year, with his best finish a tie for eighth in the John Deere.
Placing second behind Bryan was recent Georgia Tech golfer Richy Werenski, who scored a victory in Greenville, S.C., and was second three times, twice finishing just one shot behind the winner. Werenski was 79th as a Web.com rookie last year, and increased his earnings from $62,000 to almost $352,000 despite missing more cuts (10 of 19 vs. 6 of 20) this year. Those four finishes of first or second more than compensated for the 10 missed cuts.
Ollie Schniederjans, Werenski’s teammate at Georgia Tech for three seasons, placed sixth on the Web.com money list as a rookie, winning a playoff in Wichita after losing earlier in the year in a playoff in Colombia. Schniederjans, who grew up in Powder Springs and is living in Alpharetta, had five top-10 finishes, all of them coming in two stretches of four tournaments each when he played his best golf of the year.
Schniederjans has already made 14 PGA Tour starts the last two years, including a pair of strong showings as an amateur in the U.S. and British Opens in 2015.
Like Werenski, St. Simon’s Island resident Trey Mullinax showed tremendous improvement in his second Web.com season after going straight from college to the tour. He moved up from 60th to eighth on the money list, winning in Raleigh, and finished 12th or better five times. Mullinax, a member of two national championship teams at Alabama, led the tour in driving distance and was sixth in putting.
J.T. Poston, one of three St. Simon’s residents who earned a PGA Tour card, began the year with no status on the tour after concluding his college career at Western Carolina in 2015. He finished third in his second start of 2016 and added a pair of runner-up finishes as he vaulted up the money list, ending the year in 10th place. Poston led the tour in scoring average and placed sixth in the all-around statistical category.
Rick Lamb, who also has moved to St. Simon’s Island, had limited status on the tour for 2016, but as of July 4th, had made only two starts and missed the cut in both. He played his way into an event in the Lake Erie area in a Monday qualifier and won the tournament, but was still well outside the top 25 with two tournaments left in the regular season. The 2014 Tennessee graduate tied for third in Knoxville to move up 27th and tied for 19th in Portland, Ore., to finish the season at 24th. Lamb, who made seven Web.com starts in 2015, will be making his PGA Tour debut next month along with Poston.
The four Georgians who played on the Web.com Tour this year and will compete in the Web.com Finals include two veterans and two recent graduates from the state’s two most prominent college golf programs.
St. Simon’s resident Jonathan Byrd has five wins on the PGA Tour since his rookie season in 2002, but spent most of 2016 on the Web.com Tour, finishing 48th on the money list after a fast start. Byrd, who has struggled since undergoing wrist surgery in 2013, had top-5 finishes in two of his first three Web.com starts this year and three top 10s in his first five events. But he managed just three top 20s the rest of year, missing four of his last five cuts.
Woodstock’s Anders Albertson, Schniederjans’ teammate for all four seasons at Georgia Tech, placed third in an early-season event in Brazil, but had just two other top 20s and missed 12 of 20 cuts in his first full season as a pro. Even if he fails to finish in the top 25 on the Web.com Finals money list, he will be exempt for the 2017 Web.com Tour.
Like Byrd, Blake Adams’ PGA Tour career has been derailed after surgery, in his case for hip replacement. Adams enjoyed three solid seasons on the PGA Tour from 2010-12 and played off a medical extension after seeing limited action in 2013 and ’14. He played primarily on the Web.com Tour this year, tying for second in the Dominican Republic and adding a tie for sixth to finish 62nd in earnings despite missing 10 of 15 cuts.
Adams is an Eatonton native who played at Georgia Southern and is serving as a volunteer assistant for the current Georgia Southern golf team. Adams earned his shot on the PGA Tour by placing third on the Web.com Tour in 2009, enjoying one of the best seasons in tour history by a non-winner.
Recent UGA golfer Keith Mitchell played well late in the season to finish 70th on the money list, scoring his only two top 10s during that stretch. Mitchell, who has joined the sizeable list of tour players living on St. Simon’s Island, was sixth on the tour in driving distance as a rookie and ranked fourth in total driving.
Atlanta resident Casey Wittenberg came up about $2,000 short of a top-75 finish, ending up 76th with $61,600. Wittenberg has played on the Web.com Tour seven of the last nine years, leading the tour in earnings in 2012 to play his way onto the PGA Tour for a second time. Wittenberg tied for second in Chicago in mid-July, but did not have a finish better than 50th after that to fall out of the top 75. He will have limited status on the tour next year.
Veteran Reid Edstrom, who grew up in metro Atlanta, did not have a finish better than 25th before ending the season with a career-best tie for fourth in Portland to advance from 139 to 91 on the money list. Edstrom, who has spent four seasons on the tour – the first in 2008 — played in college at Auburn and has settled there.
Drew Weaver, the 2007 British Amateur champion, was a top-10 player on the Canadian Tour last year and was 97th as a Web.com rookie in 2016. He led the tour in greens in regulation, and was ninth in fairways hit, but made just 11 starts, making the cut in eight with three top-25 finishes. Weaver resided in Atlanta before moving to St. Simon’s.
Among those finishing outside the top 100 on the money list were Savannah’s Mark Silvers (102), former UGA golfer Bryden Macpherson (115), former Georgia Tech golfer Kyle Scott (135), Atlanta’s Adam Mitchell, who played at Georgia (146), and Snellville’s Jonathan Fricke, who played at Georgia State (154). They will all have to return to qualifying school to regain their status.
Six players with Georgia ties will join Byrd, Albertson, Adams and Keith Mitchell in the Web.com Finals. They include ex-Clayton State golfer Will Wilcox (138 in the FedExCup standings), who did not play in the final month of the PGA Tour season; St. Simon’s residents Michael Thompson (145) and Scott Langley (167); and a trio of former Georgia collegians – Chesson Hadley of Georgia Tech (159), Henrik Norlander of Augusta State (164) and Erik Compton of Georgia (173).
Wilcox and Thompson are guaranteed limited status for next year by finishing in the top 150, with former Georgia Tech golfer Stewart Cink (147) of Duluth in that same category, although he will have the option of retaining his exempt status thanks to his standing on the all-time money list.
The four Web.com Finals events will be played in Cleveland, Boise, Columbus (Ohio) and Jacksonville, with the top 25 money winners (not including the top 25 from the Web.com regular season) earning their PGA Tour cards for 2016-17. The 50 PGA Tour qualifiers will be ranked by their earnings from the Finals.