By Art Stricklin
MCKINNEY
–The Tournament Players Club at Craig Ranch, built to host golf championships
when it opened three years ago, grabbed it biggest one to date, with the
hopeful promise of more to come, with the official announcement of the 2008
Nationwide Tour Championship, Nov, 6-9.
First
reported this summer, it will be the first Nationwide Tour event in the North
Texas
area, the second in Texas
after the 2006 event at The Houstonian in Richmond
,
and will form a late-season professional golf triangle which will include
Barona Creek in San Diego
in a
three-year rotation.
“It’s a
great day for Texas Golf,” said The Woodlands PGA Tour member Roland Thatcher.
Most
significantly for the North Texas
area, it will include
the active involvement of the Dallas-based Salesmanship Club, the operators and
organizers of the hugely successful PGA Tour Byron Nelson Championship, which
has topped the $100 million dollar mark in charity contributions in a 30-year
span.
For one
week, we’re going to have the 60 greatest Nationwide Tour players in the
country here in our city and at the TPC-Craig Ranch course,” said Andy Stern,
chairman of the Salesmanship Club’s Charitable Golf Division. “We will have our
members with these players all through the year and it will be a great
partnership now and in the future.”
McKinney
developer David Craig has made no secret of his desire to bring the PGA Tour’s
Byron Nelson Championship to his TPC course, and said he views next year’s
tournament as a good showcase for his course.
“We have
never made any secret that we built this venue to host championships, and for
2008, the Nationwide Tour Championship is the perfect tournament we can have
here,” he said.
“We cannot
have anything larger until we get more infrastructure in and get our luxury
hotel built, and that will be 2011 at the earliest,” Craig added.
Nationwide Tour President Bill
Calfee also said that the addition of the TPC-Craig Ranch in McKinney
would complete the three-way rotation for future Nationwide Tour Championships.
It will return to The Houstonian
Golf Club outside of Houston
in
2009 where it will be run by the Houston Golf Association, organizers and
operators of the Shell Houston Open. In 2010, it will be back at Barona Creek
in San Diego
with an association of
The Century Club, the longtime operator of the PGA Tour’s Buick event at Torrey
Pines.
Calfee said he hoped the event
would return to the rapidly growing Craig Ranch development in 2011.
The 72-hole event, which will be
carried live all four days on the Golf Channel, will be the first ever held on
a TPC layout, this Colin
County
par 71 green grass gem designed by Tom Weiskopf, and the first to offer a $1
million total purse.
“I would say the Nationwide Tour
Championship has no rivals in terms of (golf) drama anywhere,” Thatcher added.
“In terms of getting the No. 25 spot (and earning a PGA Tour card) it can all
come down to one putt, and that’s what you’re going to see showcased next
year.”
Recently promoted 2008 PGA Tour
member Brad Elder went to high school in Plano
,
just a few minutes south of the current Craig Ranch facility, and said he was
amazed that the TPC facility would now host the Nationwide Tour’s best in 2008.
“It’s just a great area where a lot
of the (local) Nationwide Tour players already practice. I don’t get out there
enough, but it’s be going to be an incredible course for the Tour Championship.
This is the first time the
Salesmanship Club, the longtime charity leader on the PGA Tour with more than
$100 million total in charity contributions through its annual Byron Nelson
Championship, has participated in another professional event. But it was a
chance they couldn’t pass up.
Salesmanship President Randy
Engstrom said all money raised next year would go toward the club’s programs
which benefit kids and family services in the North Texas
area.
It will also give club members a
chance to establish ties with future PGA Tour stars for the next decade in a
rapidly changing Tour environment, where the club must stage its trademark PGA
Tour event without tournament namesake Byron Nelson and with a substandard date
on the Tour schedule.
“You will see the red pants
(Salesmanship Club members) at several tournament next year,” Engstrom said.
Another factor in the success of
the 2008 Tour Championship and beyond is the energetic work of charismatic
developer Craig.
It was his vision and drive which
has turned the once barren North Texas
farmland into a thriving
full-service community, which now includes professional baseball fields, a
world class training facility led by Olympic gold medal winner Michael Johnson
and a Cooper
Aerobics
Center
facility led by famed doctor
Kenneth Cooper.
“I remember the first time David
took me on a tour of this facility. He
was pointing out a hotel there and a training facility here, and I thought he
was crazy because there was frankly nothing there,” said Calfee.
“But David Craig is a “can do”
person, and he is passionate about doing it right and doing what it takes to
make it right. It was his vision to have the first million dollar purse here.”
“It will be a week long party,”
Stern added of the ’08 event.
The TPC Craig Ranch opened its fairways and greens to members and guests as a
private golf facility on September 16,
2004
. Designed by PGA
Tour legend and world-renowned golf course designer Tom Weiskopf, the course
stretches to 7,438 yards from the PGA Tour tees and plays to a par 71 (all
other sets of tees are par 72). Routed
along the beautiful white-limestone based Rowlett Creek, the TPC Craig Ranch
was designed to challenge some of the game’s best competitors while still
providing an enjoyable round for the average player.
There is a
massive stone clubhouse which overlooks the 18th hole along with
several dining options and large locker rooms for men and women.
The second
stage of the 2008 Qualifying School took place at Craig Ranch for the second
straight year, but come next year, North Texas golf fans will see the game’s
next wave of stars at a facility which seems destined to star all on its own.
Recent Comments