PGA Tour Canada still eyes Ottawa
Nothing imminent, but tour president ‘optimistic’
Jeff Monday says PGA Tour Canada would still very much like to return to the nation’s capital, but that return apparently remains far from imminent.
“It takes some doing, and you have to have lots of conversations to get the right partners all lined up,” the tour’s president said Wednesday at the Ottawa Airport as he waited to fly to Florida after checking preparations for the Great Waterway Classic, starting Thursday at Upper Canada Golf Course in Morrisburg.
Hold it. Little Morrisburg has a PGA Tour Canada event, but much larger Ottawa doesn’t?
Yes, and it has been a dozen years since the capital’s most recent stop on the tour schedule, the Eagle Creek Classic, ended its four-year run.
Great Waterway regional tourism is sponsoring the new event, which made its debut last year at Gananoque. After Morrisburg this year, it moves to Kingston in 2014 and Belleville in 2015.
Sponsorship is one of three key elements, Monday said, the others being a golf course capable of serving as site of a pro tour event and a local host organization that can engage the community, including volunteers and sponsors.
Ottawa “is the type of market that we think we can thrive in,” Monday said. “We are optimistic that, at some point in the future, we will make something happen in Ottawa because we really do think that the community would support it.”
Toronto doesn’t fit that criteria, Monday said.
“Obviously there is tremendous potential for corporate sponsorship there, but I’m not confident that the community would come out and rally around a PGA Tour Canada event.”
Interest in Morrisburg was good, Monday added, and the Great Waterway Classic is like any other event using the tour’s model, albeit it on a smaller scale.
The tour’s 2013 schedule has nine events. With or without Ottawa, Monday said the goal was 12 or 13 tournaments over roughly 16 weeks between May and September.
“For next year, we will be closer to that goal,” he said. “I would fully expect that by 2015 we will be at that goal.”
Gatineau city council voted in December to approve negotiations with PGA Tour Canada and to spend up to $50,000 annually for five years on an an event, but the tour decided in January not to proceed in Gatineau because of the potential impact on this year’s Morrisburg tournament. As well, no potential title sponsor had yet been identified.