golf courses

Question
How does a golf course qualify to be played on the PGA tour?

Answer
Hi Kris,

A lot goes into that decision.  First, the PGA Tour has to have a reason to leave one of the current courses.  There are only so many tournaments and every tournament has a home for the time being.  But when they want to make a change it's usually the course that want "out".  The members of Tour home courses get displaced for many weeks while the tour staff prepares it for the annual event.  So after awhile, the members of the courses sometimes end the relationship.

A new course must get tour staff approval in terms of the quality of the course itself and the other facilities.  The course must be able to host thousands of people, the TV networks, etc.  And, each tour event must have a huge volunteer following in order to pull the whole thing off.  It must have a qualifying not-for-profit 501 (c.3) charity that the tournament will benefit.

There are many, many courses that think they want to host a PGA tour event but once they understand how they must turn their course and club over to the tour, things change.  And finally, the course and other grounds are going to be damaged by the heavy equipment and all the spectators.  It takes time to recover from all that.

Finally, like many such issues, it helps to "know someone" and have a relationship of trust with the decision-making people at the PGA Tour office.  They get many such inquiries but most do not develop into anything.

Good golfing,

Paul Dolman
PGA Golf Professional