LEHI — Former BYU golfer Jordan Rodgers calls himself an athlete who happens to play golf.

And like most athletes, his best work comes close to home.

“The home team always has the advantage, and I just enjoy putting on a show for friends and family,” Rodgers said shortly after finishing a pretournament tradition of fly fishing on one of Utah’s rivers. “I don’t get nervous, but I feel excited and well-prepared. I’ve played this course several times for a few hours each day.

“It’s an advantage knowing the course, knowing how the course changes in the wind, but you still have to go out there and make the shots and make the putts.”

The Skyline High alum was one of three sponsors’ exemptions to book a spot in the field of the Web.com Tour’s Utah Championship that runs Thursday through Sunday at Thanksgiving Point Golf Club in Lehi and broadcast on NBC’s Golf Channel.

For Rodgers, the chance to play close to home as a professional golfer fulfills a dream.

An accurate driver with a long putter in his short pro career, Rodgers has had some of his best finishes in his home state. Among the top finishes of the two-time all-West Coast Conference honoree was a first-place finish at the 2015 PING Cougar Classic, where he shot a three-day total of 5-under-par 311.

Shortly after graduation, Rodgers won the 2015 Utah State Amateur title at Soldier Hollow in Midway. He followed up that title by turning pro, and he placed second at the Utah Open. Rodgers held an early lead in that tournament at Riverside Country Club in Provo before Arizona’s Nathan Lashley edged him on the back nine of the final round to win the title.

“I’m excited to go out and compete and play in front of my buddies,” said Rodgers, who will tee off on the 10th tee at 2:52 p.m. MT. “I play golf because I enjoy it. I enjoy the challenge, but I also like getting to know the other guys and the fans. Every time I play in front of large crowds, I try to engage. Anything I can do to make someone’s day, I try to do what I can to be myself."

Event organizers are also excited to have Rodgers in the field of the only event affiliated with the PGA Tour in Utah. Among the other Utahns to qualify for the Utah Championship are Riverside teaching pro Matt Baird, Park City’s Steele DeWald, Riverton’s Marcus Burbank and Cottonwood Heights’ B.J. Staten.

“It’s a strong field, and one of the things we are excited about is having local players,” said Thanksgiving Point director of golf Mark Whetzel, who oversees operations for the tournament. “Besides the local aspect, we’re getting to the point where these players to guarantee their (PGA) tour card are in crunch time.

“We couldn’t be more excited than to have Jordan Rodgers this year. He’s an amazing player who knows the course really well. Being familiar with this course is a definite advantage, and Jordan’s fearless, and having someone like him here will really help the depth of our field.”

Among other tenants, the Utah Championship aims raise the standard of golf in Utah — and it’s beginning to turn out results. Three native Utahns in Lehi’s Tony Finau, Farmington’s Danny Summerhays and Ogden’s Zac Blair are full-time tour players, and a half-dozen golfers with Utah ties have qualified for next week’s PGA Championship.

Finau qualified with a top-15 finish at last year’s PGA Championship, Summerhays emerges as one of the top-70 players on tour and Blair was named as an alternate after Tiger Woods pulled out of the event with an injury.

Last year’s Utah Championship winner Patton Kizzire will also play in the year’s fourth major next week.

2015 Utah Championship

Patton Kizzire wins Web.com Tour's Utah Championship

Patton Kizzire won the Utah Championship on Sunday for first Web.com Tour title, beating South Korea's Sung Kang with a 3-foot birdie putt on the second hole of a playoff.

The surge is a significant improvement from Rodgers’ high school career, when competing colleges urged him not to stay in cold-weather Utah during his recruitment.

Now, Utah natives are proving they can make it at all levels.

“We may not have the prestigious courses of other states, but we can take it low,” Rodgers said. “Zac, Tony, Daniel and all these guys are showing that we can compete at the next level. Now we just have to be more consistent.

“It’s cool to see that kids who are born and raised here are out there.”

Golf will also enter the Olympic Games for the first time since 1904, and future Olympians will be on the course in Lehi. Cheng Tsung Pan, the No. 18 golfer on the Web.com Tour with three top-10 finishes, will represent Chinese-Taipei at the 2016 Summer Games in 15 days, and Seamus Power will play for Ireland in Rio.

“It’s great to have them playing in an event on the Web.com Tour,” Whetzel said of the Olympians. “That field alone and the way the golf course is received has been great to see everybody and to get to know them.”

Thanksgiving Point is in the second year of hosting the 24-year-old event and has seen the rise of the Web.com Tour in a national profile second only to the PGA Tour in the United States.

“It’s our only PGA Tour-affiliated event,” Rodgers said. “It has a lot of people trying to get to the next level. It means a lot to have the opportunity to go out and compete.”

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