Tour to Make It's Maiden Voyage to Virginia

Charlottesville, V.A. – The Charlotte, N.C. based Tarheel Professional Golf Tour will be making it’s first trip to Virginia next week for the inaugural Spring Creek Classic at the Spring Creek Golf Club in Charlottesville. The tour, which was formed in 2002 and has quickly become one of professional golf’s top developmental tours, consists of 21 tournaments throughout the 2007 season with events being played from Hilton Head Island, SC to Charlottesville and all points in between.

Tarheel Tour Tournament Director David Siegel is excited about the tour’s arrival into a new market. “We have been looking to hold an event in Virginia for quite some time and when the opportunity to play at Spring Creek presented itself, we were all ecstatic. We are expecting a field of roughly 125 players featuring some of the top names in golf and a plethora of players who will soon be on the PGA TOUR.”

The Spring Creek Classic will be a 54-hole tournament conducted on June 26-28, with a 36-hole cut coming after the second round. The top 33 percent of the field will make the cut and thus compete for the $15,000 first-place prize during Thursday’s final round, as well as a share of the estimated $90,000 purse.

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The player that most golf fans will be eyeing during the tournament is Tommy “Two Gloves” Gainey of Bishopville, SC. Gainey, who gained his nickname from the two gloves he wears while playing golf, earned national acclaim as a participant on the Golf Channel’s “Big Break V” series. He recently won the “Big Break VII’s” reunion series, thus solidifying his spot in several Nationwide Tour events. Gainey currently sits in second place on the 2007 Tarheel Tour money list with earnings over $35,000.

The money list is led by William McGirt of Boiling Springs, SC, who has earned $38,848 thus far this season. McGirt, long considered the best player on the Tarheel Tour without a victory, claimed the title at last month’s Cabarrus Classic and inevitably removed the monkey from his back.

Other Tarheel Tour notables who will be teeing it up next week include 2006 U.S. Open participant Andy Bare, last week’s winner and all-time Tarheel Tour leading money winner Matt Cannon, and Wesley Pate, son of 1976 U.S. Open champion Jerry Pate.

Local players of note include former PGA TOUR player Cameron Yancey (Blackstone), 2005 Tarheel Tour winner Rich Hanna (Standardsville), former William & Mary collegiate star Tim Pemberton (Charlottesville), and Hooters Tour winner Jay Woodson (Powhatan).

The first round will begin at 8 A.M. on Tuesday morning. The tournament is open to the public and free of charge.