Two Georgians were among the 25 players who earned PGA Tour cards for the 2014-15 season from the recent Web.com Tour Finals.
Milton resident Heath Slocum and recent UGA golfer Hudson Swafford, part of the large contingent of tour players living on St. Simons Island, placed 16th and 19th respectively on the list of players who were competing for the 25 available spots.
They will be joined by 25 players who had already earned PGA Tours for the upcoming season by finishing in the top 25 on the Web.com Tour’s regular season money list.
Of the 12 golfers with Georgia ties who competed in the Web.com Finals, 10 failed to earn PGA Tour cards for 2014-15, with several just missing.
Alpharetta’s Roberto Castro, who qualified for the 2013 Tour Championship at East Lake, missed by less than $32, but will retain limited PGA Tour status for the 2014-15 status after finishing 135th on the FedExCup points list this past season.
Augusta’s Vaughn Taylor came up less than $2,650 short and will be back on the Web.com Tour in 2015 after placing 28th on the Finals money list among those not already exempt for the 2014-15 PGA Tour. Recent Clayton State golfer Will Wilcox was 32nd, but like Castro will have limited PGA Tour status after finishing 142nd in the FedExCup standings.
Both Slocum and Swafford finished in the top 150 in the FedExCup standings, improving their status with their play in the Finals. Of the 50 players who earned tour cards via the Web.com Tour finals, Slocum will start the 2014-15 33rd on the priority list with Swafford 39th. Players who began the 2013-14 season in similar positions got into a few events early in the schedule, but some of the Fall PGA Tour events have added spots to the field for the new season.
Slocum has four wins in his 13 seasons on the PGA Tour, including the 2009 Barclays and inaugural McGladrey Classic in 2010. But he has had to reclaim his PGA Tour status in the Web.com Finals each of the last two years, and has struggled since his win at Sea Island Golf Club four years ago.
After going almost four years without a top 10 finish on the PGA Tour, Slocum made a strong run at victory in Greensboro, the final regular season event of the 2013-14 season. Slocum was tied for the lead with two holes to play, but bogeyed both to drop to 4th place and outside the top 125 on the points list, sending him back to the Web.com Finals.
Slocum was again in contention a few weeks later in the Web.com Finals event in Charlotte after a third round 64, but followed with a 74 and fell to a tie for 16th. After beginning the last of the four Finals tournaments in Jacksonville well outside the top 25, Slocum tied for 4th to move up to 16th in the final standings. He secured his 2013-14 PGA Tour by placing 8th, 17th and 17th in the last three Finals events last year, shooting 66 or 67 in the last round of each tournament.
Swafford enjoyed a respectable rookie season on the PGA Tour this year, ending up 146th on the points list with his best finishes a tie for 8th in Hawaii and a tie for 11th at Congressional. Other than one round, he played consistently in the Finals, tying for 10th in Charlotte and recording top-25 finishes in the last two tournaments.
As a Web.com Tour rookie in 2012, Swafford won the Stadion Classic at UGA a year after completing his college career in Athens, and turned in a solid showing in the 2013 Finals to earn his PGA Tour card.
After an exceptional sophomore season on the PGA Tour in 2013, Castro fell from a top-30 finish in the FedExCup to 135th, with a tie for 8th in Charlotte his lone top 10. He had a chance to regain his exempt status in the Finals, but a series of sloppy finishes marred otherwise excellent rounds in each of the four tournaments.
Castro will be only three spots on the PGA Tour priority list behind the last place finisher from the Finals, but will not have the chance to improve his status during the 2014-15 season,. He will likely have to play primarily on the Web.com Tour, getting somewhere around a dozen PGA Tour starts in second tier and lower profile events.
Taylor, who played his college golf in his hometown, played in the Ryder Cup in 2006 after just his third season on the PGA Tour. But after seven solid seasons including a pair of wins in Reno, he has struggled since the 2010 season. Taylor spent almost his entire 2014 season on the Web.com Tour and finished in the top 50 on the money list. It was his first full season there since 2003, when he had a win and two runner-up finishes to play his way onto the PGA Tour for the first time.
A poor final 36 holes in the Finals event in Columbus, O., dropped Taylor into a tie for 10th and likely cost him his PGA Tour card, with that tournament coming just a few weeks after Taylor nearly drowned after his boat capsized while he was fishing in Augusta.
Wilcox was 142 in the FedExCup standings as a rookie this past season, getting into just 16 tournaments after beginning at the bottom of the priority list. Wilcox played his way onto the PGA Tour with an excellent 2013 season on the Web.com Tour, winning in Valdosta and tying for 3rd in Utah after a final round 59. But he did not play in any of the four Finals events and fell to the bottom of the list for entry into PGA Tour tournaments to start the season.
After tying for 8th in his PGA Tour debut in Hawaii, Wilcox enjoyed a solid season that included a tie for 4th in the Greenbrier Classic, but was unable to get into enough tournaments to finish among the top 125. He will be able to make a small number of PGA Tour starts this season, but will play primarily on the Web.com Tour.
Former Georgia Tech golfer Matt Weibring and former Georgia Southern golfer Aron Price placed 32nd and 60th respectively on the Web.com regular season money list, but did not play well enough in the finals to return to the PGA Tour, where both have spent several seasons. Weibring was 37th in the Finals after a tie for 9th in the opener, missing the cut the next three weeks. He was 2nd and 4th in consecutive weeks in June in Wichita and Evansville, but had just two profitable weeks the remainder of the season.
Two of the more prominent players to lose their PGA Tour status after the 2014 season were St. Simons resident Jonathan Byrd and former Georgia Tech golfer Troy Matteson.
Byrd has five PGA Tour wins, including the final stop at Callaway Gardens in 2002 during his rookie season, his memorable playoff hole-in-one in Las Vegas in 2010 and the Tournament of Champions in 2011. He contended for wins each of the last two years in Reno, but those were among his few highlights for those two seasons. Byrd was 136th in the FedExCup standings, and could also pick up enough sponsor invites to play a reasonable schedule in an effort to regain his exempt status. He played well only one week of four in the Web.com Finals, tying for 21st in Jacksonville.
Matteson was a successful PGA Tour player from 2006 to 2012, winning the Frys.com event twice in different locales. But he has been 167 and 165 in the FedExCup standings the last two seasons, finishing better than 40th just twice in 2013-14. Matteson regained his PGA Tour status in the Web.com Finals last year, but missed three cuts and finished T58 in the four recent tournaments. The last time he played the Web.com Tour full time was 2005, when he had two wins, three runner-up finishes and was 1st on the money list.
Ryuji Imada, a member of Georgia’s 1999 NCAA Championship team, won the last PGA Tour event at TPC Sugarloaf in 2008, but has had very little success in recent years, losing his status after the 2012 season. He has spilt his playing time between the PGA and Web.com Tours the last two years, but has struggled on both, and barely earned a spot in the Web.com Finals, finishing 195th in the FedExCup standings, mostly due to a tie for 10th in Hawaii. Imada still gets some starts off his past champion status, but there will be quite a few more players in that category this year. He missed the cut in all four Finals events.
Warner Robins native Kris Blanks has been hampered by a shoulder injury the past few seasons, but managed to pick up a win early in 2014 in a Web.com Tour event in Louisiana. Blanks worked as an assistant at The Landings in Savannah for a number of years and was a regular in Georgia PGA tournaments. He played the PGA Tour full time from 2009 to 2012, twice finishing as a runner-up including a playoff loss in the 2011 Canadian Open.
But he was able to make just five total starts in 2013 and did not play well this year apart from his win The last year Blanks played the Web.com Tour full time was 2008, when he won a tournament and finished 13th in earnings. He made two of four cuts in the Finals, but finished outside the top 50 in both.
Henrik Norlander, who helped lead Augusta State to back-to-back NCAA Championships in 2010 and ’11, will be back on the Web.com Tour in 2015 after placing 50th on the regular season money list. Norlander played the PGA Tour as a rookie in 2013 but did not retain his playing privileges. He enjoyed a steady 2014 season with three top 10as, but did not have a strong showing in any of the Finals tournaments although he made the cut in three.