You are excused if you look down the list of main contenders this week at the John Deere Classic and ask yourself if this is a college event or pro.

Start with the favorite, Collin Morikawa. He’s a 22-year-old Californian who turned pro last month after an amateur career that included a no. 1 world ranking. He’s made four straight cuts in PGA Tour events, all in the top 40 and with a best of second last week at the 3M.

Then go down the list and you have Viktor Hovland, Sungjae Im, Joaquin Niemann, and Doc Redman joining Morikawa in the top dozen picks. Not until you mix in a few oldies like Zach Johnson, Lucas Glover, Charles Howell, and Ryan Palmer does it start to feel like this is the PGA Tour that we all know and love. Although, caution, none of those vets is playing well recently.

Truth be told, it is not a strong field, with most of the big guys either playing in Scotland or warming up for the Open Championship somewhere else in the British Isles. The only three entries from the Hawley Ratings top 40 are Jason Kokrak, 36th; Howell, 37th; and Hovland, 40th. Consider the top 50 and there are three more – Palmer, Glover, and Ryan Moore.

Over the decades, our alookatgolf.com computer model has developed a liking for Tour newcomers who show some early success. Morikawa certainly fits that description, and he spoke with golfdigest.com after finishing tied for second with Bryson DeChambeau, a stroke behind fellow rookie Matthew Wolff, last weekend. “Heading down to the end of the season and obviously there’s one more notch I want to reach, but it is a good feeling, you know, to finish T-2,” he said. “You’re never going to be fully disappointed on that. It’s another week and I think this is really going to help me just kind of move forward in the next month or so.”

Morikawa has earned $778,000, not bad for a guy who sat in classrooms for months while this year’s Tour got underway. He would rank 116th on the offical money list if he had a Tour card now. If he is in the top 125 in the FedEx Cup standings when the playoffs start Aug. 8, he will have secured a Tour card for 2019-’20. “I love this, I love being out here,” Morikawa said. “This is exactly what I’ve wanted to do my entire life. I’m excited to keep playing. Next week should be fun, and hopefully we’ll keep going from there.”

Hovland is a 21-year-old from Norway whose pro career stretches all the way back three events. He played three other 2019 Tour events as an amateur and has made all six cuts, with three top-20s. He was 32nd at the Masters.

Im is a 21-year-old Tour rookie from South Korea. He’s made 21 cuts this season with six top-10s. The last four times out, he was 15th at the 3M, 21st two events in a row, and seventh at the Canadian.

Niemann is a 20-year-old Chilean — yeah, youngest of the bunch. He didn’t do much this year until the last month and a half. He’s posted consecutive top-10s in the 3M, Travelers, and Rocket, and had three straight finishes above 40th prior to that.

Redman is a 21-year-old former U.S. Amateur winner from Clemson. In three appearances this year he was top-20 at the Wells Fargo, runner-up at the Rocket, and missed the cut at 3M.

The TPC Deere Run course is just east of the Mississippi River in Silvis IL. The event has been played here since 2000. Per the Hawley course fit statistics, shots gained off the tee and greens in regulation are the two stats most heavily correlated with success on the course over the last eight iterations of the event. Putting correlates to a lesser extent. Canadian Corey Conners, winner of the Texas Open this season, has the performance profile that best fits those leading stats. Howell is second and then there is a fairly tight bunch that includes Im.

Niemann and Wyndham Clark, a 25-year-old from the University of Oregon, lead the field in terms of how they have improved their rating numbers over the last four events. Cameron Tringale and Hovland also are on a strong upswing.

It almost never pays to forget about Zach Johnson in this event. The 43-year-old Iowan by birth has played this event 17 straight years. In the last 10 he has one win (2012), three seconds, two thirds, a fifth, a top-20 (last year), and two top-40s. The product of Drake University is the all-time money-winner in this event and has 12 Tour victories in his lifetme. But on the other hand, Johnson is one of those who have slumped the most in recent appearances. He hasn’t played since finishing outside the top 50 in the U.S. Open. He made the top 40 at the Canadian and has two missed cuts in the last five times out.

Also looking to break out of slumps are Glover, Howell, Pat Perez, and Jhonattan Vegas.