AdventHealth Championship opens with ideal weather, low scores at Blue Hills C.C.

Conditions for Thursday’s opening round of the $1 million AdventHealth Championship golf tournament could not have been more idyllic.

And the scores showed it.

With temperatures in the low- to mid-70s, Jeff Overton and Griffin Wood — who both hail from Indiana — blistered Blue Hills Country Club with matching rounds of 8-under 64.

With some golfers still out on the venerable par-72 track as of early Thursday evening, Overton, 40, and Wood, 34, sat atop the leaderboard with a 1-stroke advantage entering Friday’s second round.

Vince Whaley, a 29-year-old Georgia Tech grad, and Alistair Docherty, a 30-year-old Canadian who played at Cal State-Chico, were tied right behind them with matching scores of 7-under.

Some 156 professional golfers are competing in the annual four-day, 72-hole Korn Ferry Tour event in Kansas City. The Korn Ferry Tour is the developmental feeder tour for the PGA Tour, and AdventHealth this week re-upped as this event’s title sponsor through 2029.

The AdventHealth Championship is the 10th stop of the Korn Ferry Tour’s 26-event season this year.

This is the 14th year of AdventHealth’s sponsorship and fifth straight time the tourney is taking place at Blue Hills.

Past AdventHealth tourney champions include two-time PGA Tour winners Sepp Straka (who won here in 2018), reigning event champion Grayson Murray (2023) and Cameron Young (2021), who currently ranks No. 16 in the world.

Murray, 30, won last year by overtaking Wilson Furr in Sunday’s final round. It was Murray’s second Korn Ferry Tour win and first since 2016.

Blue Valley North High School grad Harry Higgs, 32, who’s previously played on the PGA Tour, is among this week’s field. So, too, is 37-year-old former K-State standout Robert Streb, who like Higgs has competed on the PGA Tour and is playing via a sponsor’s exemption

Tickets for this year’s AdventHealth Championship — $10 for adults per day or $30 for a four-day pass — are available at www.adventhealthchampionship.com/tickets. Admission’s free for those 17 and younger, members of the military and AdventHealth workers with identification.

According to a news release, last year’s AdventHealth Championship “raised nearly $250,000 for the tournament’s benefactor, the AdventHealth Kansas City Foundation, to distribute through the Play It Forward program, which aims to support fundraiser awareness and assist philanthropic needs.”

The event has generated nearly $1 million in funds for local charities in the Kansas City community since 2009, according to AdventHealth Championship officials.

The Korn Ferry Tour will this year award 30 PGA Tour cards to top players based on points earned throughout the lower series’ 2024 season. Korn Ferry Tour alumni currently comprise some 83% of the PGA Tour’s membership.