Pavon, Yu highlight Aon Swing 5 exemptions for Pebble
The field for next week’s first full-field signature event of the season is set.
Following Saturday’s finish at the Farmers Insurance Open, 12 players officially punched their tickets for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Among the additions to the 80-man pro-am event are five players via the Aon Swing 5 – Saturday’s winner Matthieu Pavon, Sony Open champ Grayson Murray, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Kevin Yu and Stephan Jaeger, the 54-hole leader this week before a closing 72 knocked him back to T-3.
In Jaeger’s case, however, he was already in Pebble courtesy of his FedExCup ranking after last fall. Because Pebble draws from Nos. 61 and beyond in points to get to 80 players, Jaeger, at No. 61, was guaranteed a spot. But with him taking a Swing 5 exemption, Keith Mitchell was the beneficiary; Mitchell, at No. 69, is the last man in with Hayden Buckley the first alternate.
Alex Noren, Thomas Detry, Mark Hubbard, Erik van Rooyen, Brandon Wu, Davis Riley and S.H. Kim also qualified via last year’s points.
Jake Knapp and Nate Lashley, both T-3 at Torrey, were the first two left out of the Swing 5. Lashley tied for seventh in the race with Justin Thomas. Thomas, though, will fill out the Pebble field on Monday when the Official World Golf Ranking updates.
Yu, who was T-6 at Farmers after a T-3 the previous week in Palm Springs, returns to Pebble after posting a T-7 there last year. The following week, though, Yu tore the meniscus in his left knee working out and missed 20 weeks, knocking him well down the points list, from No. 38 pre-injury, and he finished No. 111, missing the playoffs.
“Back-to-back top-10s, this is the first time for me,” Yu said. “Yeah, I can see the game is trending right now, so hopefully I can keep it up. … Looking forward to what’s coming up, for sure.”
The next Swing 5 will include the Sony-AmEx-Farmers aggregate but also add the WM Phoenix Open to the equation. Those five after Phoenix will then qualify for the Genesis Invitational at Riviera.