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What, other than their first letters, do Hartford, Honolulu and Hilton Head have in common?
For starters, they have all hosted the PGA Tour for more than half a century. Furthermore, they all sit in American metropolitan areas that are outside the top 50 - 51st, 55th and 202nd, respectively.
Now, what do New York City, Chicago, Washington, Philadelphia and Miami all have in common?
They are all top-10 American metropolitan areas that do not host annual PGA Tour events.
Starting in the fall of 2024, a new PGA Tour event debuts in metro area #230: St. George, Utah. The inaugural Black Desert Championship, to be held October 10-13 at the striking, eponymous resort and golf course, brings top-flight professional golf to yet another relative niche market, centered more on hardcore golf tourism than raw population.
That, in my opinion, is precisely pro golf's sweet spot.
At a time when professional golf is in existential crisis thanks to the disruption caused by the Saudi-fueled LIV Golf Tour and the PGA Tour's assorted attempts to respond to its rise, the future of the sport is cloudy. Camps of administrators, pundits, players and fans are divided as to the best course of action.
Some see the future of golf in the globe-trotting spectacle of Formula 1 racing, which visits roughly two dozen cities from Azerbaijan to Zandvoort (Netherlands) every year. A true world tour - 30 years after now-LIV leader Greg Norman first proposed it - would signal some level of global greatness inherent in golf. While national opens like the Australian, Canadian, Scottish, Irish and South African are more fitting "signature" events than what the PGA Tour has cooked up, it seems that the game's mostly U.S.-based elites just don't want to crisscross the globe too often if they can help it.
So, what can be done stateside? The fact that there is not an annual PGA Tour event in markets like New York, Chicago, Boston and others strikes some as problematic for a sport that sees itself as deserving of similar attention as the majors: football, basketball, baseball, hockey.
But golf is not and likely will never be in the same league as the big four. No matter what fan-experience enhancements the PGA Tour concocts, it is not likely to rise above strong niche status.
Having attended the last big-4 professional sporting event ever held in Connecticut - the final Hartford Whalers game in 1997 - and having attended what is now the Travelers Championship throughout my childhood, I can attest to the way the PGA Tour quenches the thirst of sports-mad but sports-bereft southern New England. Its presence stands out in a place like Hartford precisely it is pro sports' only bright spotlight on the area during the year. Is it any wonder that the Travelers brings in more fans per year than any non-major besides the Waste Management Phoenix Open?
The same dynamic exists in places like the aforementioned Honolulu and Hilton Head. The Sony Open serves as the first full-field event of the season, but the laid-back Hawaii vibes and primetime viewing window help ease fans and players into the year.
For Hilton Head's part, the home of the RBC Heritage every year since the iconic Harbour Town Golf Links opened in 1969 is one of the pillars of the PGA Tour schedule, placed conveniently the week after the Masters just 130 miles south and east of Augusta. The wisdom of Signature events is a debate for another time but the thought of a PGA Tour schedule without Harbour Town is unthinkable. Its mix of history (55 years and counting) and charitable support (more than $50 million since 1987) proves that successful professional golf events focused on quality of confirmed support rather than quantity of potential interest are the ones that tend to thrive.
The 2024 schedule righted a historical wrong by bringing a tournament to Myrtle Beach, a destination that fits the PGA Tour's niche beautifully. Visitors flock to dozens of courses from across the world every year and the local golf community is strong and growing all the time. It's no wonder that even though it was an opposite-field event, the 2024 Myrtle Beach Classic at the Dunes Golf & Beach Club exceeded attendance expectations.
What other smaller markets deserve a look from the PGA Tour? The best candidate I can think of, which used to host an event each year, is Milwaukee. The city that launched Tiger Woods' career golf-obsessed; locals know how to take advantage of their limited annual run of good weather. Brown Deer Park might be too short nowadays, but Erin Hills certainly isn't. The consensus in 2017 seemed to be that it didn't quite fit as a U.S. Open venue, but that doesn't mean it couldn't sing as a PGA Tour stop.
Should big cities without annual events be shut out of pro golf? Not necessarily, but because there's so much else to compete with, they tend to be better suited to splashy feature championships. A regular PGA Tour event would barely rate a blip in cities like New York and Chicago; there's seemingly always a bigger show in town.
The 2024 BMW Championship at Castle Pines Golf Club brought good buzz for men's pro golf in Denver for just the second time (BMW Championship at Cherry Hills in 2014) since The International ended in 2006, but would the energy be the same for an annual event? The atmosphere at the 2019 PGA Championship at Bellerive reminded fans of how great a sports town St. Louis is. Annual stops in Los Angeles, Dallas, Houston and Detroit confer big-city bona fides on the PGA Tour schedule, too.
What about the Big Apple? The 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black will be insane, and following it up with the 2026 U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills and the 2028 edition at Winged Foot only makes sense in establishing a New York groove. Serving other major cities through major championships is the best way to ensure that people turn out in force for golf in the biggest, currently less-visited markets. Although by establishing the likes of Pebble Beach and Pinehurst as U.S. Open anchor venues, the USGA also knows that smaller, soulful sites help give their flagship championship a strong individual identity. Golf quotient beats raw population most of the time.
Which leads back to Black Desert. With its black lava tubes and red rocks in the distance, the PGA Tour's newest event has an eye-catching course to call home in a smallish but golf-heavy destination: St. George, Utah. It has the makings of the type of strong, niche-market tournament that the PGA Tour has relied on for decades and of which it should never lose sight.
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