Ryder Cup winner Alex Noren has the added incentive of a place in the year's first major as he seeks a maiden PGA Tour title at the Barracuda Championship.

Noren reached a career-high eighth in the world rankings after victory in the BMW PGA Championship in 2017 and won the French Open at Le Golf National in 2018 before helping Europe regain the Ryder Cup on the same course later that year.

However, the 38-year-old Swede has slowly fallen down the standings and a share of third in last week's 3M Open took him from 125th to 115th, with 2018 Ryder Cup players exempt for the US PGA Championship only if they were ranked inside the top 100 on Monday.

A victory at Tahoe Mountain Club - a new venue for the event after 21 years at Montreux Golf and Country Club in Reno - would secure Noren a berth at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco and extend his streak of consecutive major appearances to 16.

The Barracuda Championship - formerly known as the Reno-Tahoe Open - uses a Modified Stableford format, which allocates points based on the number of strokes taken at each hole.

Eight points are awarded for an albatross, five for an eagle, two for a birdie, zero for a par, minus one for a bogey and minus three for a double bogey or worse.

Noren will play the first two rounds alongside Australia's John Senden and Canada's David Hearn, while Ireland's Seamus Power, Scotland's Russell Knox and the English pair of Brian Davis and Ben Taylor are also in the field.

- TEAMtalk media