Rozner: These Web.com golfers are the real deal

When Brady Schnell teed off Thursday, just past 7 o'clock on an unusually chilly June morning at Ivanhoe Club, the gallery at No. 10 consisted of a marshal, a reporter, a dedicated wife and several angry, red-winged blackbirds who clearly didn't offer their approval of any nearby activity.

Not exactly a U.S. Open crowd at Oakmont.

To a fresh observer of the Web.com Tour, a first glance reveals few clues on a bucolic golf course. But spend several days around these guys and there's a thundering revelation.

These players are really talented and differ in virtually no way from their PGA Tour cousins, and many at the Rust-Oleum Championship will become familiar names on the PGA circuit in short order.

There are young players just out of college on their way up.

There are former PGA players trying to make it back.

There are Web.com veterans who simply love the game and want to play professional golf.

And then there are the older players hoping something will click, hanging on to the belief that they will find something, the aging pitcher discovering a knuckleball and a new lease on life.

Hey, Steve Stricker did it, right?

The top 75 on the money list will make the Web playoffs, and then 50 PGA Tour cards will be awarded. The top 25 on the regular-season money list get promotions and another 25 cards go to players who earn the most money in the four playoff events.

The pressure is extraordinary, with every swing and every putt significant, impacting the possibilities for 2017 and far beyond.

"It's golf. There's a lot of time to walk the fairways and your mind wanders sometimes," said Schnell, currently 24th and in a spot to move up next year. "The second place in Raleigh (a month ago) put me in the top 25 and closer to my goal, but there's half a season left and you have to try to focus on the task at hand."

Late Friday afternoon, it was 30 degrees warmer, with temps in the 90s and humidity in the high 80s. As the winds picked up, the task was to make the cut at Ivanhoe, and with 3 birds on the back and some brilliant scrambling down the stretch, Schnell reached the weekend on the number.

An Iowa native who played his college golf at Nebraska, the 31-year-old Schnell has played in 5 PGA Tour events, 12 on the Latinoamerica Tour, 53 on the Web.com Tour - where he now resides - and 30 on the PGA Tour Canada, where he fired a 59 in Calgary two years ago by dunking it from the fairway with a gap wedge from 122 yards on the final hole for a walk-off eagle.

He arrived in Chicago with his dad, Curt - a teaching pro in Iowa - on the bag, and Friday morning he awoke at 3 a.m. to drive his wife, Jenn, to the airport, so she could get back to Arizona and her job.

This isn't Triple-A baseball. This is more like guys sitting on the bench in a major league stadium, waiting for their chance to play and hoping they can shine given limited opportunities to stick in the big leagues.

But these players carry their own luggage and drive event to event to save money, frequently staying in host homes to avoid hotel charges.

Halfway through the season, No. 75 on the money list - Denny McCarthy - has cashed checks for $27,511, while No. 75 on the PGA Tour - Webb Simpson - has collected $925,105.

A thank-you note to Tiger Woods would be appropriate.

But the Web is what keeps the dream alive for the best golfers in America not currently on the PGA Tour.

Out of 320 million Americans, these are among the best 320 golfers.

Literally, one in a million.

Of course, they don't take any solace in that number. They want to be among the top 125 and playing on the PGA Tour.

"It's why every guy is here," said 38-year-old B.J. Staten. "We all want to be there."

Staten is known around the Tour as one of the really good guys, but his tournament was pretty much over when a downpour ate up his back nine Thursday, and despite 6 birdies in 7 holes Friday, he missed the cut.

He'll head to Nashville, where he was born and his mom still lives, and Staten will stay with her for the next week and the next event.

Staten was on the PGA Tour in 2006-07, playing 25 events and earning $428,000. He's played 183 events on the Web since 2001, most of them since 2007, but he also met his wife, Alisha, at a Web event in 2010.

No. 83 on the money list, he's got two young boys and a wife in Utah.

"On days you don't play well, you think about those other things, like being home," Staten admitted. "They creep into your mind and you wrestle with what you're doing out here, but you talk to them and FaceTime and they wish you luck and you keep working.

"You try to play for your family and make a living and provide for them, but maybe the attitude needs to change a little bit so you enjoy it more.

"My wife is phenomenal. If I shoot 60 or 100, I will have a text from her and the boys supporting me. She always says we'll get through it together."

In October 2012, Staten was a shot away from being back on the PGA Tour when Russell Henley - who already had his card for 2013 - birdied 18 in Jacksonville at TPC Sawgrass in the final regular-season event of the year.

That putt tied Staten, who then missed his birdie attempt on 18, and Henley won on the first playoff hole. One putt either way and Staten is on Tour again.

Said his caddie Braden Smyth, "There's not a day that goes by that I don't think of that 18th hole."

The Web.com has a hundred stories like it, a lip-out here, a horseshoe there.

From a distance, it seems a long way from Oakmont. Get up close and you realize how wrong that is.

brozner@dailyherald.com

• Listen to Barry Rozner from 9 a.m. to noon Sundays on the Score's "Hit and Run" show at WSCR 670-AM.