BARRINGTON — Normally, pro-am day at the CVS Caremark Charity Classic is low key. Many of the players who compete in the tournament proper usually are not available. They are away competing in regular tour events.

This year, it is different.

The pro-am will be better than ever, and even make a bit of history, when it is held with a double-shotgun format Sunday at Rhode Island Country Club.

A change in the schedule allowed it to happen. The event will begin the day after the U.S. Open finishes — at least the day the Open is scheduled to finish. The Open has a very different field than a typical tour event. Only 7 of the 20 players who will take part in the CVS Classic have been at Bethpage. Also, there is no Champions Tour event and no LPGA event.

That means co-hosts Billy Andrade and Brad Faxon will be in the pro-am. So will be Brett and Dana Quigley. Players in the main tournament are not required to take part in the pro-am at the CVS. But all four LPGA stars in the field — Juli Inkster, Morgan Pressel, Helen Alfredsson and Natalie Gulbis — have agreed to play in the pro-am. Hall of Famer and former CVS champion Nick Price has, too. It will make for easily the best pro-am field ever at RICC.

"For our event, it works out great this way," Faxon said.

And it gets even better. Event organizers pay pros to play with the sponsors and others who take part. This year, there are more good players than ever involved because the LPGA and Champions tours do not have events.

In all, 25 LPGA players have signed up. Christina Kim, young star Stacy Lewis, Kristy McPherson , Brittany Lincicome and Point Judith’s Anna Grzebien are among them. The Champions Tour will be represented by Russ Cochran, Jim Thorpe, Mike Goodes, Donnie Hammond, Mark Lye and Billy Kratzert.

Perhaps the best part of all, is that the schedule will allow for perhaps the most impressive gathering of Rhode Islanders ever on the same course on the same day.

Ocean Staters have had much to boast about in the last 30 years in golf. The state has produced a hard-to-believe line of stars in the game, for years more than the rest of New England combined.

In Sunday's pro-am, Faxon, Andrade, the Quigleys and Grzebien all are entered. So are Brad Adamonis, who is now in his second year on the PGA Tour and Patrick Horgan, a tour member for a decade. Rodney Butcher, now on the Nationwide Tour, will return home to take part, too. Patrick Sheehan had planned on playing, but instead is in Arkansas, playing in a Nationwide event along with URI grad Michael Sims.

Even without Sheehan and Sims, it will be the biggest and best one-day display ever of the talent the state has produced on the course.

As if the pros are not enough, there will be well known people from others lines of work, including football Hall of Famer Roger Staubach who has become a regular participant.

Shot gun starts will be held at 7 a.m. and 1 p.m.

pkenyon @projo.com