The Country Club of Virginia ' s James River Course will again host a PGA Tour Champions playoff event in 2017.

SAVE THE DATES The Dominion Charity Classic will return to the Country Club of Virginia’ s James River Course in 2017, with the second edition being a little bigger than the first and coming a little earlier on the calendar.

The DCC, which was the second stop on the PGA Tour Champions Charles Schwab Cup playoffs calendar, will be the first playoff event in 2017, moving from the first week of November to the weekend of Oct. 20-22. Because the DCC is now the first Schwab Cup event, the field will increase from 54 players in 2016 to 72 in 2017. The top 54 after the DCC will advance to the second event on the slate in Thousand Oaks, Calif. The final playoff event will again take place in Scottsdale, Ariz.

The move addresses unwieldy travel issues that affected the 2016 playoff schedule. The final event on the regular-season schedule was in Cary, N. C. The

first playoff event was in California, followed by a trip to Richmond and, finally, a trip to Arizona. The schedule change will alleviate some of those concerns.

Also, the LPGA Tour’ s Kingsmill Championship will return in 2017 at the Williamsburg resort ' s River Course. The dates are May 15-21. There will be a one-week break after the Lorena Ochoa Match Play in Mexico prior to Kingsmill. The Tour will head to Ann Arbor, Mich., for the LPGA Volvik Championship immediately after Kingsmill.

USGA ENACTS NEW LOCAL RULE The USGA and The R & A announced the introduction of a new Local Rule that

eliminates the penalty when a ball is accidentally moved on the putting green. The Rule went into effect on Jan. 1 and has been adopted by the USGA and The R & A in all of their championships, qualifying competitions and international matches.

“ Eliminating this penalty responds to the concerns we have heard from both golfers and committees about the difficulties in applying the current Rules when a player accidentally causes a ball to move on the putting green,” said Thomas Pagel, USGA senior director, Rules of Golf and Amateur Status.“ This change is a good example of the type of Rules Modernization changes we hope to implement after completing our fundamental review of all of the Rules. We are looking for ways to improve the Rules by making them easier to understand and apply.”

The change affects Rules 18-2, 18-3 and 20-1. When a player’ s ball lies on the put-

DOMINION CHARITY CLASSIC