There are 156 golfers in next week's Greenbrier Classic. Rest assured, these guys can play.
But the field, by PGA Tour standards, isn't great.
It begins with the fact that the highest-ranking player in the field is Patrick Reed, No. 17 in the world. That is a low for the seventh-year tournament, even lower than the first two seasons. Held in late July and early August, the Classic was in a rough spot on the summertime calendar.
By the one purely objective measure, this Classic field will be the thinnest since the event moved in 2012 to the current Fourth of July week. The tournament returns Monday with practice rounds, with competition beginning Thursday.
The Official World Golf Ranking, operated by the world's largest pro tours, has a formula to rate the field. That is purely based on the rankings of players entered.
The formula to rank players is based on a two-year, rolling average. You receive the full value of a finish for 13 weeks, then that declines gradually over the next 91 weeks, to zero.
By a rough, unofficial tabulation, the winner next week will receive 34-36 rating points. That's higher than the Greenbrier Classic's late-July years in 2010 and '11 (32 in both instances) but lower than the 2012-15 tournaments (40 or more). The high was 48 in 2012, when five players were ranked higher than 17th - Tiger Woods (4), Webb Simpson (5), Bubba Watson (6), Steve Stricker (13) and Phil Mickelson (16).
Today, Woods' glory days are over, Simpson is ranked 59th, Watson has dropped to 41st, Stricker plays part-time on the senior tour and Mickelson has slipped to 25th.
Winners of the majors always receive 100 world-ranking points, The Players Championship 80. The last World Golf event was worth 74 points and the Memorial Tournament 66.
This week, the Quicken Loans National is worth 42 to the winner. After the Classic, the John Deere Open is typically one of the thinnest, with 30 points going to the winner in 2015. Fall events have similar or lower values.
Of those above Reed these days, five have played in at least one Greenbrier Classic - No. 1 Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Sergio Garcia (twice), Justin Thomas (twice) and Matt Kuchar. Jason Day once entered the Classic, but withdrew with a thumb injury.
No, the best players don't come close to playing every event. This isn't NASCAR, when the same 43 drivers navigate left doglegs every week.
This season, Johnson has played in World Golf Champoinships, the invitation-only Hero World Challenge, the Tournament of Champions, the majors, the Memorial Tournament and only five "regular" events. He took the months of November and April off.
Considering that he missed the cut at the Memorial and the U.S. Open, Johnson stands to go into the British Open without playing on Sunday since May 21.
Talk about tan, rested and ready!
All told, the Greenbrier Classic field features three of the world's top 25 players, nine of the top 50, 21 of the top 100 and 50 of the top 200. Bear in mind that many of the competitors play in the European, Asia or other tours.
nnn
Once upon a time, the measurement of a player's standing on the PGA Tour was simply dollars and cents. In the greatest legacy Woods has left, the money has long since gone crazy.
Of players in the Classic, Kevin Kisner is ninth in the 2016-17 season with $3.744 million, followed by Si Woo Kim with $2.55 million and Russell Henley at $2.376 million.
But the season points standings carry all the weight these days, and Kisner is seventh, Henley 18th and rookie Mackenzie Hughes 21st.
The Greenbrier Classic offers the standard 500 FedExCup points for the winner, but its purse of $7.1 million is above average on the Tour. The winner's share is $1.278 million.
nnn
Capital High and Marshall University graduate Christian Brand missed his third cut in a row this weekend on the Web.com Tour, and this one had to hurt.
He missed by a single stroke at the Nashville Golf Open by suffering a bogey on the seventh hole, his 16th of the day.
Brand returns to the Classic, where he played in 2011 as the reigning West Virginia Amateur champion. He has made two of five cuts on the lower tour this year, winning $15,377 with two 17th-place finishes.
nnn
The Classic may not have the very best pros, but it will have the first- and third-ranked amateurs in the world. Yes, there is an official ranking for that.
Joaquin Niemann is the current king of the hill. The 18-year-old Chilean, who won six events in 2016, has arrived at the University of South Florida to begin his college career this fall. He has won two events in Chile this year, and made the round of 16 at the 2016 U.S. Amateur.
He played the recent U.S. Open, missing the cut and finishing seventh among the amateurs.
"He has no glaring weaknesses," said USF coach Steve Bradley, for whom Niemann will play beginning this fall. "He doesn't lack confidence. There's not a shot out there that he can't hit or he's not comfortable hitting. I don't think I've ever seen him in a situation where the moment is too big for him."
Niemann planned to take summer school classes at USF as he adjusts to life thousands of miles away from home.
The third-ranked amateur is Mississippi star Braden Thornberry, who is the fifth Haskins Award winner to play at the Old White TPC. The Haskins Award is considered the sport's equivalent to the Heisman Trophy, and Thornberry won the NCAA tournament by four strokes.
He tied for fourth at the PGA Tour's St. Jude Classic in Memphis, Tennessee, two strokes out of the lead.
"The kid's the real deal, for sure," Ole Miss coach Chris Malloy said earlier this month. "His short game is as good as I've ever seen, and I think it's something that everyone who will see him for the first time in West Virginia will be overly impressed with."
Maverick McNealy, who finished 60th in the 2015 Classic, is ranked No. 2. McNealy, a Stanford graduate and son of Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy, may remain an amateur.
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/.