A handful of players competing in next week’s South Georgia Classic at Kinderlou Forest Golf Club have ties to the state of Georgia.

None of the golfers currently in the field for the South Georgia Classic have any direct ties to the Valdosta area, but a few come from the southern half of the state.

Five golfers in the field were born in Georgia.

Paul Claxton was born in Vidalia. He played college golf at the University of Georgia. Now he lives on Sea Island. The 44-year-old Claxton turned pro in 1993, and has spent four years on the PGA TOUR. In 2007, he became the first player to surpass $1 million in career earnings on the Nationwide Tour. He has now earned $1,644,147. He has won two Nationwide Tour tournaments, the 2001 BUY.COM Louisiana Open and the 2007 Melwood Prince George’s County Open.

Russell Henley was born in Macon. He played collegiately at Georgia. Now he lives on St. Simons Island. At Georgia, he won the 2010 Haskins Award as the most outstanding collegiate golfer. That same year, he tied for 16th at the U.S. Open. In 2011, playing as an amateur, he won the Nationwide Tour’s Stadion Classic at UGA, played at the University of Georgia’s golf course.

John Kimbell was born in Atlanta, and continues to call the Peach State home. Now he lives in LaFayette, in the northwest corner of the state. Kimbell won the inaugural South Georgia Classic in 2007. He also has three Hooters Tour wins and a Tight Lies Tour win. He did not start playing golf until he was 22, but six years after he started playing, he became a pro golfer.

Gene Sauers was born in Savannah, and played his collegiate golf at Georgia Southern. He still lives in Savannah. The 49-year-old Sauers has been a professional golfer since 1984. He has won three PGA TOUR tournaments (the 1986 Bank of Boston Classic, the 1989 Hawaiian Open and the 2002 Air Canada Championship), and has 48 top-10 finishes.

Josh Broadaway was born and raised in Albany. He left the state to play golf at Troy State, but returned to Albany after graduation, and still calls the city home. Broadaway has three third-place finishes and 15 top-10 finishes in his Nationwide Tour career.

Two other golfers now call the state of Georgia home.

Scott Parel was born in Pontiac, Mich. (a suburb of Detroit), but went to college at Georgia (although he did not play on the UGA golf team). Since graduating, he has remained in the Peach State, and now calls Augusta home. He has eight career top-10 finishes on the Nationwide Tour.

Josh Geary is from New Zealand, but now lives on St. Simons Island. His best finish on the Nationwide Tour was a tie for second in 2009 at the HSBC New Zealand PGA Championship.

Several golfers in the South Georgia Classic played college golf in Georgia.

Like Claxton and Henley, Justin Bolli played college golf at the University of Georgia. Since turning pro in 1999, Bolli has won four tournaments, three on the Nationwide Tour (the Chattanooga Classic in 2004, the Northeast Pennsylvania Classic in 2007 and the Price Cutter Charity Championship in 2009). He also won the Georgia Open in 2003.

Hudson Swafford also played for the University of Georgia. He turned pro after graduating from UGA last year. This is his first year on the Nationwide Tour, and he has made the cut in four of the six tournaments he has played in.

Two former Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets will be playing at Kinderlou next week. Paul Haley II won the Atlantic Coast Conference title and graduated from Georgia Tech in 2011. He has been one of the top golfers on the Nationwide Tour so far this season. He currently ranks second on the Nationwide Tour’s money list, having won $156,280. He won the 2012 Chile Classic for his first professional victory.

 Nicholas Thompson also played for Georgia Tech, where he helped the Yellow Jackets win the ACC title in 2002. Thompson spent 2006 and 2008-10 on the PGA TOUR, where he earned over $3 million. In 2007, he won the Nationwide Tour’s HSBC New Zealand PGA Championship.

Georgia Southern will also have two former golfers competing, Aron Price and Sauers. Price, an Australian, has played on both the PGA TOUR and the Nationwide Tour. His lone professional win came in 2008, at the Nationwide Tour’s Livermore Valley Wine Country Championship. He has played in 69 career PGA tournaments, and has made the cut in 44 of them.

For the first time since 2008, there may not be a golfer in the field that played at Valdosta State. Brent Witcher played in the South Georgia Classic in 2009 (his senior year at VSU) and 2010, while former Blazer Cole Willis made the field as a Monday qualifier last year. Witcher is an alternate, so there is still a slim chance that a former VSU player will be playing in the Classic this year.

Two other alternates, Matt Weibring (Georgia Tech) and Richard Scott (Georgia), also played college golf in the Peach State.