GPro Tour golfers visit Albemarle Plantation, give venue high marks (2024)

HERTFORD, NC (WTKR)- Visit Albemarle Plantation this week and you'll see golfers from all over the country. It would seem many were born with a club in their hands.

"Me and my dad would play growing up and I would just kind of hit some clubs around," smiled Connor Reid. "Didn't really play. We never finished a full 18."

"I think at three (years old) I hit somebody's window out in my next door neighbor's house," Jarrett Swan added. "They were like 'alright, he may be picking this up.'"

Now, many of them are together on a professional tour and swinging for the same goal.

"Get to the PGA Tour, dominate, win, support my wife," Swan said of his goal. "That's about it."

"I want to play on the PGA Tour, so I'm going to do whatever it takes to get there," said Reid.

Swan and Reid are on the latest leg of that journey, competing on the GPro Empact Tour. The tour is a developmental circuit aimed at helping golfers grow their game and get ready for higher levels. It's considered a grooming ground for the PGA Tour.

"We're feeding into the Korn Ferry Tour, we're feeding to the PGA Tour," noted Swan. "A lot of guys that you see here will be on tour."

"There's not a lot of tours in the US where you can play three really hard rounds of golf and have to play well to make money," fellow GPro golfer Tyler Smith pointed out. "It's the perfect pressure practice."

Pressure is something that golfers experience on a daily basis in their professions. The players on the GPro Tour are all chasing the same dream and experiencing the ride together. Even though they're fierce competitors on the links, the participants provide plenty of support for each other as well.

"[We] travel a lot together and that definitely helps you get through it," Swan said. "At the end of the day we're all pulling for each other, but when I stand in that first tee, everyone wants to beat each other's brains in. That's the beauty of golf."

"We all want to win," Reid added. "That kind of builds and we all have similar goals so really the relationships are unbelievable."

"I missed the cut in an event earlier this year and actually caddied for Connor in the final round," said Smith. "It's a brotherhood."

This week the tour brings them to the scenery and landscape of the Sound Golf Links at Albemarle Plantation. The Empact Championship tees off on Thursday morning, one of 27 tour events the golfers take part in throughout the season, but ask them and this one might be the gem of the circuit.

"The community just adopts you," Reid pointed out. "They take you in and it's just fantastic."

"They put us up in their houses, which they don't have to do," shared Swan. "They schedule food for us every night, which they don't have to do. That's stuff we don't get."

"We'll have a couple hundred people out here watching us," Smith said. "We'll be able to play in front of people, which we normally don't. Most of the time we're in the middle of nowhere."

Fans who feel like taking in some golf in person this week will get the chance to see some of the next up and coming players, some of which they may see on television down the road. Organizers and golfers hope spectators describe the event like the players do- as a hole in one.

"It's amazing," Albemarle Plantation Senior General Manager Lee Duncan said of the field. "They drive the ball a mile, their short games are magnificent. These kids can play."

"Have fun," Swan said of his hopes for the fans. "We're trying to be out here, put on a good show. Somebody's going to win. I hope it's me, but if it's one of my boys, I'll be happy as all get-up for them, too, and just come out and watch us. Support us."

The GPro Empact Championship runs from Thursday through Saturday and is free for spectators. The tour is scheduled to return to Albemarle Plantation in December for the tour championship event.

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