The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
James under consideration for sponsor’s exemption
Ben James has won junior golf tournaments in the state, across the region and in different parts of the country.
He has qualified to represent the United States on national junior teams. He has played in the U.S. Junior. And James will soon be playing collegiate golf in the Atlantic Coast Conference.
James is hoping all of that and more will merit serious consideration for a spot in next month’s Travelers Championship. There is a chance it could happen, which would be a rarity for a high school golfer.
“No doubt Ben is an incredible player and his reputation and playing record to this point speaks for itself,” Travelers Championship tournament director Nathan Grube said. “He is definitely somebody we have been thinking about.”
James certainly has the resume to be considered.
A senior at Hamden Hall Country Day, James is ranked No. 1 in the junior golf rankings by Junior Golf Scoreboard and No. 2 by the American Junior Golf Association based on his achievements. Among them: he qualified for both the U.S. Junior Presidents Cup team in 2019 and U.S.
Junior Ryder Cup team in 2021.
James is one of four junior golfers in the nation to be receiving a 2022 Byron Nelson International Junior Golf Award on Wednesday at the AT&T Byron Nelson Classic, a PGA Tour stop at TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney, Texas. This award is not just for golf achievement, but also for character, something Nelson was
renowned for during his life, long after his legendary career ended.
James, who advanced to sectional qualifying for the U.S. Open on Monday at Wee Burn Country Club in Darien, will graduate from Hamden Hall and continue his golf career at the University of Virginia, the Cavaliers will be heading to New Haven for the NCAA Division I Regional Championship to be held at Yale
Golf Course May 16-18. The Cavaliers are the No. 7 seed out of 13 teams.
Sponsor’s exemptions are precious commodities for PGA Tour events. Golfers nationwide, and beyond, apply for different reasons.
Grube said the tournament normally receives between 70-100 requests for sponsor’s exemptions each year. The tournament normally grants six each year.
“A small group of us, we look at everything,” Grube said. “We obviously look at the basic stuff like the amateur world golf rankings,”
Grube said. “We know a lot of the agencies out there. We talk to them when we are on the road recruiting players. We’ll ask them, ‘Who are you looking to sign?’ We talk to the (sports)writers who cover the college golf scene, the people from the Golf Channel. We see who wins the Ben Hogan Award and the Byron Nelson Award (awards that normally go to the world’s best amateur golfers). We see how (amateurs fare) in U.S. Open qualifying. All those names go into a (group). Then a handful keeps coming to the top of the list, usually five to eight players.”
Grube said of the six exemptions, two normally go to PGA Tour pros who no longer have their fulltime tour playing privileges and need exemptions to secure spots. Travelers then gets four unrestricted — all of which need to be approved by the tour. The hope is that an early break forges a relationship in which the golfers keep coming back to play the Travelers.
The Travelers Championship has become well known for providing topflight amateur golfers exemptions into its event since taking over title sponsorship in 2007. Many of them turned pro at the Travelers tour stop at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell. The tournament, held each June following the U.S. Open, comes just weeks after the NCAA national championships conclude.
Among the amateur golfers who ended up either turning pro at Travelers or soon after include: Jon Rahm (second in the world rankings), Patrick Cantlay (fourth), Webb Simpson, Bryson DeChambeau and Rickie Fowler.
In 2019, three of the four unrestricted exemptions went to Collin Morikawa, now ranked third worldwide and winner of both a PGA Championship and Open Championship, Viktor Hovland, ranked sixth, and Matt Wolff, who finished second to DeChambeau at the 2020 U.S. Open.
Travelers has given out exemptions for other reasons. Chase Koepka was a Monday qualifier for the 2020 Travelers but withdrew for precautionary
reasons after his older brother Brooks, a four-time major champion, also withdrew for precautionary reasons because his caddie had tested positive for COVID-19.
Travelers extended a sponsor’s exemption to Chase Koepka last year. The other three exemptions were given to top amateurs.
Travelers normally announces its sponsor’s exemptions the week before the tournament.
“Exemptions are really, really hard to allocate. We try to follow our process. Typically, those four unrestricted (exemptions) turn pro with us,” Grube said.