DETROIT, Mich. – James Nicholas '19, the former captain of the Yale Men's Golf Team who shot a 61 in the June 8 Korn Ferry Tour Qualifier, will compete in this week's PGA Rocket Mortgage Classic at Detroit Golf Club with a sponsor's exemption.

Nicholas will be the third Ivy League player to make a PGA Tour start since Yale's Peter Teravainen '78 in 1991. Bob Heintz '92 and Dartmouth's Peter Williamson '12 were the others. The Rocket Mortgage Classic runs from July 2 - 5.

The Scarsdale, N.Y., native came to Yale as a three-sport star and ended up playing two seasons of football for the Bulldogs before focusing all of his athletic attention on the links and helping his team win the 2018 Ivy Championship.

Nicholas, who claimed medalist honors at the 2019 Ivy League Championship and was the league's player of the year, qualified to play as an individual at the 2019 NCAA Stanford Regional. He earned a spot on the PING All-Region Team for the Northeast before setting his sights on Q School.

Williamson played two events in 2013 as an amateur (the Memorial and the Arnold Palmer Invitational), but missed the cut in both. He played in the 2017 Puerto Rico Open, again missing the cut. Heintz was the last Ivy Leaguer to play on the PGA TOUR and the last Ivy League TOUR member.

Harrison Shih (PGA TOUR Latinoamerica) went to Columbia, but he's never played a PGA TOUR event. Evan Harmeling attended Princeton and is a current Korn Ferry Tour player. He also has never played in a PGA TOUR tournament. Mike Blodgett (Penn) played some events on the Korn Ferry Tour in the early part of the last decade, and Yale's Chris Eckerle '02 played one Korn Ferry Tour event in 2003.

One of the best-known Bulldog golfers was Jess Sweetser '23, the 1920 national intercollegiate champion and a lifelong amateur who routinely played a pro tournament or two each year because he won the British and U.S. Amateur. He played in the U.S. Open and the Masters, but he was never a pro.

Click HERE for the Rocket Mortgage field.