The Spartanburg, and Clemson, product performed admirably last year in appearances on both the PGA Tour and Nationwide Tour.
The 26-year-old will make his second Nationwide appearance at the BMW Charity Pro-Am starting Thursday at a trio of different upstate courses. Poole, who lives with his wife in Aiken, S.C., grew up playing the Country Club of Spartanburg, but he’s got plenty of experience on the this week’s courses — Carolina Country Club, Thornblade and Bright’s Creek. “It will be nice to have kind of a home court game, I guess you could say,” Poole said. “Knowing the courses is huge, mostly for a confidence standpoint, because you know where to hit off the tees and into greens whereas others don’t know some of those little things that can really help.” Poole’s ninth-place finish at last week’s eGolf Walnut Creek Championship moved him to 23rd on the money list with $16,433 in six starts with three top-15s and a pair of top-10s. But no matter how successful a player may be on tours such as the eGolf or Hooters, the only automatic berths onto the PGA tour come via a top-25 finish in earnings on the Nationwide Tour or through the brutal PGA Qualifying School at the end of the year. One caveat on the Nationwide Tour is should a player finish inside the top-25 in an event, he earns an automatic invite to the following week’s tournament.
Two years ago, Boiling Springs product Tommy Biershenk Monday qualified for a Nationwide event and was able to stay on that tour for a full month with a pair of top-5s and a 24th place finish. An injury eventually derailed his hot streak.