As the PGA Tour unveiled the Greenbrier Classic field on Friday, the tournament lost two top-50 players in the world at the official entry deadline, but gained two top-50s in Bill Haas and Gary Woodland.
Haas and Woodland will each play in their sixth Classic. Haas, No. 38 in the world rankings, has done well at the Old White TPC, with two top-10 finishes, including a playoff loss in 2011. Woodland is ranked 48th in the world.
Tony Finau, ranked 31st in the FedExCup point standings and 65th in the world, was another late entrant.
Nine top-50 players are in the field, though none is ranked higher than Patrick Reed's 17th. Following him are Kevin Kisner (23rd), Phil Mickelson (25th), Si Woo Kim (30th), Haas (38th), Jimmy Walker (39th), Bubba Watson (41th), Woodland (48th) and J.B. Holmes (50th).
The Classic lost commitments from Kevin Chappell (26th) and Brian Harman (27th).
As the points race heads down the summer stretch, there are eight inside the top 30: Kisner (seventh), Russell Henley (18th), Hughes (21st), Woodland (23rd), Haas (26th), Kim (27th), late entrant Hudson Swafford (28th) and Webb Simpson (30th). Five more are in the next 10, including Phil Mickelson.
Nine players have won events this year, led by Kim's breakthrough win at The Players Championship. Other winners are rookie Mackenzie Hughes, Swafford, D.A. Points, Russell Henley, 2013 Classic champion Jonas Blixt and Kisner. Kisner won the Dean & Deluca Invitational in late May at Fort Worth, Texas.
Watson and Mickelson, the true stars of next week's tournament, have seven of the field's 18 career major championships. The others are by Vijay Singh (three), John Daly (two), Walker, Keegan Bradley, Stewart Cink and Geoff Ogilvy.
The Classic did indeed resume its recent tradition of bringing in the Haskins Award recipient for the college player of the year, Braden Thornberry of Mississippi. The tournament gave another exemption to the world's top-ranked amateur, Chilean Joaquin Niemann.
Tournament officials were able to grant those two exemptions without restriction. The PGA Tour earmarked those for players who "graduated" from the Web.com Tour in 2016, but all of those made the 156-man field without help.
The first four unrestricted exemptions went to Daly, West Virginia Amateur champion Alan Cooke, Web.com Tour player and Charleston native Christian Brand and Davis Love IV. 2010 Classic winner Stuart Appleby and Tommy Gainey received the two exemptions limited to PGA Tour players.
The status of the 51-year-old Daly is unclear after he withdrew from the U.S. Senior Open this week with a shoulder injury. He won his first PGA Tour Champions event this year.
Should he play, Daly will be one of 11 who will have participated in all seven Classics. The others are Simpson, Points, Davis Love III, Ricky Barnes, Johnson Wagner, J.J. Henry, Greg Chalmers, Charles Howell III, Carl Pettersson and Cameron Tringale.
Two others, Jonathan Byrd and Brendon de Jonge, are deep in the alternate list. De Jonge is the only player to make all six cuts in previous Classics.
Practice rounds begin Monday on the reconstructed Old White TPC course. The field fills out with the four open qualifiers that day, at the Cobb Course at Glade Springs.
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/.