Stuart Appleby, the inaugural winner of the Greenbrier Classic, needs an exemption to get into the tournament and will receive one, the Gazette-Mail learned Friday.
Appleby, the 46-year-old Australian, is best known in West Virginia for his final-round 59 in the 2010 tournament, which netted him his ninth and final PGA Tour victory. He beat Jeff Overton by one stroke.
Appleby has been a Tour member for 21 years but has fallen on hard times lately. He received an exemption into this week's Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Connecticut, but withdrew.
He has entered 10 events this season but has made just one cut, finishing 74th in a Mississippi event last October. He retains Tour status as a past champion, but that is at the bottom of the categories.
Past Classic champions receive special preference to get in the field, but that lasts only for five seasons. The winners in 2012 and 2014, Ted Potter Jr. and Angel Cabrera, will play from that category.
2011 champ Scott Stallings qualifies as a Web.com Tour Finals top finisher, regaining his privileges after a difficult 2016. 2013 champion Jonas Blixt and 2015 champion Danny Lee are playing on the two-year exemption for Tour event winners.
As the tournament's sponsor, The Greenbrier may dole out eight exemptions, though four have restrictions. Two must be PGA Tour members, and Tommy Gainey is getting the other one. Gainey also has low status as a past champion, winning the 2012 McGladrey Classic in Georgia.
Two must be Web.com "graduates" who are too low in the order to field. There are about 50 golfers in that category, and most are likely to make the field on merit.
The four unrestricted players, a resort official confirmed, are 2016 West Virginia Amateur champion Alan Cooke; Charleston native Christian Brand, who is playing on the Web.com Tour; the flamboyant John Daly, who recently won a senior-tour event; and Davis Love IV.
Love IV, generally referred to as Dru Love, is the son of Davis Love III, the 21-time Tour winner who has played all six Classics.
The Greenbrier apparently has ended its practice of awarding an exemption to the Haskins Award winner, the college player of the year. Mississippi's Braden Thornberry is the honoree this year and, as recently as Friday, Ole Miss coach Chris Malloy said he expected Thornberry to play at the Old White TPC.
Another unlucky soul is Ryan Martin, who said he was offered an exemption last year before flooding canceled the event. Martin said Friday he was holding out hope for the offer to be carried over to this summer, but was notified a few weeks ago that it was not available.
Martin is a golf instructor at the StoneCrest Golf Course in Prestonsburg, Kentucky, and plays several mini-tours and has won several events. He also plays in Florida during the winter, and next week he is planning to play the Monday qualifier for the Web.com event in Nashville, Tennessee.
"The only thing I got on that is an email saying that 'we'll see next year,' " Martin said. "I had already booked all the rooms last year and everything. And then I got an email, I guess, two weeks ago from Habibi [Mamone], the tournament director, saying that they didn't have any exemptions available."
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The Classic has set the cutoff date for "sale" of complimentary badges for midnight Wednesday.
For those registering, there are some prizes being dangled. Those include two Ford vehicles, awarded Saturday and Sunday.
The other is a trip to the World Golf Village at St. Augustine, Florida, with three days and two nights at the Renaissance Resort, a round for two at the Slammer & Squire course, two tickets to the World Golf Hall of Fame and a 30-minute golf lesson for two at the PGA Tour Golf Academy.
Contact Doug Smock at 304-348-5130 or dougsmock@wvgazettemail.com. Follow him on Twitter @dougsmock and read his blog at http://blogs.wvgazettemail.com/dougsmock/.