2023 Barracuda Championship venue, field and player rankings explored

The Reno-Tahoe Open, known as the Barracuda Championship for sponsorship reasons, is an alternate event which will be played in the same week as The Open Championship.

The tournament will be played at the Old Greenwood Course at Tahoe Mountain Club in Truckee, California. It is a 7480-yard, par 71 venue, which has hosted the tournament since 2020.

Between 1999 (inaugural edition) and 2019, the Barracuda Championship was played at the Montrêux Golf and Country Club in Reno, Nevada.

As an alternate event, the winner of the Barracuda Championship does not receive an invitation to the Masters Tournament. However, they do receive 24 world ranking points, 300 FedEx Cup points, a two-year exemption from the PGA Tour and a spot in the following season's PGA Championship.

For the same reason, the Barracuda Championship rarely features the top stars of the game, who are usually competing in bigger tournaments. However, there have been some notable figures in the Reno-Tahoe field, such as Collin Morikawa, who won it in 2019.

One interesting aspect is that the Barracuda Championship is the only PGA Tour tournament that uses the Modified Stableford Scoring format, whereby players receive points for each hole played, and the one who accumulates the most points is declared the winner.

Points are distributed at the rate of 8 points for double eagle (three strokes under par or better), five for eagle, two for birdie, zero for par, -1 for bogey and -3 for double bogey or worse.

This is a system created to increase competitiveness so that players do not get discouraged after having one or two bad holes. It has been applied in the Barracuda Championship since the 2012 edition.

Barracuda Championship's field explored

As a result of being played on the same weekend as The Open Championship, most of the game's top stars will be absent from the Barracuda Championship.

However, some interesting golfers will be present. Five golfers from the Official World Golf Ranking's (OWGR) top 100 will be present. They are Keith Mitchell (62), Justin Suh (71), defending champion Chez Reavie (77), J.J. Spaun (86) and Mark Hubbard (91).

Collin Morikawa won the 2019 Barracuda Championship (Image via Getty).

In addition to Reavie, several former winners will be in attendance, including the tournament's record holder with 50 points, Erik van Rooyen (2021). Richy Werenski (2020), Chris Stroud (2017), and Scott Piercy (2011) are some of the other former champions who will compete this weekend.

Fans should also keep an eye on some promising young players, such as Akshay Bhatia and Peter Kuest. They are two players who have shown signs of their quality in previous events, although they haven't yet made the leap in their results that they would like.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the presence of a historic player like the Italian Edoardo Molinari, who has nine professional victories and was the champion of the 2005 US Amateur Open, the 2009 World Cup and the 2010 Ryder Cup.