How good was the Humana field?

Here’s weird little note from our friends at the PGA Tour.

This week’s Farmer Insurance Open includes all 25 Nationwide Tour graduates from last fall’s class.  The first full-field event of the year, the Sony Open in Hawaii, featured 23 of the top 25.  Last week, only the top 17 got in the Humana Challenge.

Okay, so what does all of that mean. Well, for starters, it means more players were able to get into the Framers Insurance field off of their Nationwide exemption that they did at the Humana. Which would tend to indicate that the Humana had a stronger field.

On the other hand, there is this numbers game. The Humana field expanded to 144 players this year. But the Farmers Insurance event, which uses two course but has no amateur play during the event, has 156 players. So there are 12 more players in the Framers Insurance event, which could easily explain the extra eight Nationwide players.

Still, it’s just another example of how the Humana field was stronger this year than it has been in quite some time. And remember there were five withdrawals from the field of the Humana early in the week, which helped bring a few more Nationwide players into the field. If some players has stayed healthy earlier in the week, the Humana might have only had 14 or 15 Nationwide players in the field.

However you decide to look at the numbers, the Humana field was better this year than it has been in a long, long time.