At PGA Tour’s Wyndham Championship, Zebulon’s Blake McShea getting ‘foot in the door’

Blake McShea was on the practice range at Greensboro’s Sedgefield Country Club with the first rays of the sun Wednesday, a little after 6 a.m.

He was on the course soon after, putting in a quick practice round for the Wyndham Championship, which begins Thursday at Sedgefield. McShea has a tee time in that one, too – at 2:17 p.m, in one of the last threesomes off.

To say that McShea is excited is a seven-letter understatement. It will be the first PGA Tour event for the Zebulon native, who played most of his college golf at UNC-Wilmington before making the decision to see where pro golf might take him.

At 24, it has taken him to the GPro Tour, one of golf’s many mini-tour circuits where golfers pay their entry fees and try to win it back, plus a little more. It has had him enter qualifiers for PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour events, with the hope of going low enough to grab one of the precious spots available.

McShea qualified for the Wyndham. In fact, he qualified twice.

With so many golfers eager to get into PGA Tour tournaments, there often are prequalifying events — tournaments before the Monday morning qualifier.

“It’s definitely hard, very hard,” McShea said Wednesday. “I don’t think people realize how hard it is and the kind of work people put in. It’s definitely tough just to get your foot in the door out there.”

Getting through both qualifies as beating some long odds. That’s what McShea did.

In a prequalifier at Bermuda Run Country Club in Clemmons, he used a late birdie to shoot a 2-under 69 and grab one of the final qualifying spots. Twenty-three golfers advanced to the Monday qualifier at Bermuda Run where just four Wyndham spots were available.

“I figured I need to be 5- or 6-under to make it,” McShea said.

After 16 holes, McShea was 3 under par. Two holes later, he signed for a 6-under 65 and was in the Wyndham.

McShea eagled the par-5 17th, holing his pitch shot from just off the front of the green. A tap-in birdie at the 18th finished it off. That’s called getting it done.

McShea likes to say he shows little emotion on the course. But there was a lot to celebrate Monday.

His game plan for the Wyndham is simple enough, he said.

“Sedgefield is cool because you don’t have to go out there and be the long-ball driver,” McShea said. “If you can put it where you want it off the tee, which is crucial because the rough is pretty thick, you can score pretty well. Everybody is going to hit 8- and 9-irons in and then it’s what you can do from there.”

McShea honed his game as a kid at Zebulon Country Club — “A good little track five minutes from my house,” he said — before becoming a McConnell Golf Scholar, joining a Raleigh-based program that helps promising high school golfers more fully develop their skills.

McShea began his college career at Methodist before transferring to UNCW after his freshman year. The Colonial Athletic Association player of the year as a senior in 2021, he holds the second-lowest career scoring average (72.32 strokes) in UNCW program history.

McShea said competing on the GPro Tour helped him mature his game and work on his weaknesses — his driver accuracy and his putting. He won a little money along the way, helping pay expenses.

“I definitely gained a little confidence,” he said.

McShea also has turned to golf instructor Chase Duncan at N.C. State’s Lonnie Poole Golf Course. Duncan, he said, keeps things simple and works on the basics, which has helped.

For now, it’s just a matter of teeing it up and getting a good first look at the PGA Tour, from inside the ropes. He’ll have Nic Brown, the 2022 Carolinas Amateur champion and a back-home buddy, serving as his caddie at Sedgefield.

“Every tournament I’m in I want to have a great finish. That’s what I’m there to do,” McShea said. “But with a good friend on the bag we’re going to have some fun out there. I mean, I’m not going to put too much pressure on me. It’s another golf tournament I’m trying to do well.”