San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee announced today that the city will host one of professional golf’s majors as well as two other high-profile tournaments over the next several years.
The mayor joined Professional Golfers’ Association of America president Ted Bishop and PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem to announce that the 2020 PGA Championship, the 2025 Presidents Cup and next year’s World Golf Championships-Match Play Championship will all be played at San Francisco’s TPC Harding Park.
TPC Harding is a public golf course situated on the eastern side of Lake Merced in the southwestern part of the city.
The PGA has previously partnered with the city to host events at the course and helped with its rebuild in 2002.
The renovated course reopened in 2003 and in 2005 hosted the WGC-American Express Championship, a PGA Tour event, along with others since then.
San Francisco Recreation and Park Department officials were also at this morning’s announcement.
Lee said because of the three upcoming events, “the staff at Recreation and Park know they are working at a world-class venue.”
He said the PGA deal seals San Francisco as a host city for golf events for the next decade and “both complements and supports our businesses and reflects what our city is all about.”
“We pride ourselves in hosting events that take advantage of our setting,” he said.
The 2020 PGA Championship will be the first major golf tournament to be held at a TPC property and is being held in California for the fifth time.
TPC Harding Park will be the second public golf course to host the PGA Championship.
Bishop said playing at a public course “makes a profound statement.”
“TPC Harding Park really truly is the essence of public golf,” he said.
This year, the PGA Championship will be held in August at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky.
In 2025, the Presidents Cup will be held again at Harding Park after it was first hosted there in 2009, becoming the first West Coast venue to host the match-play competition.
The Cup, held every two years, features 24 of the world’s top golfers, with 12 from the U.S. and 12 from around the world, excluding Europe.
The next Presidents Cup is scheduled for October 2015 at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea in South Korea.
The first of the three upcoming events at TPC Harding Park is the 2015 WGC-Match Play Championship, taking place from April 27 through May 3. Along with a new venue and new date in the PGA schedule, the tournament will feature a new format.
Finchem said the “new direction for match play will create more enthusiasm and excitement.”
He called the new system a “World Cup format,” with 64 players divided into 16 four-player groups and playing round-robin matches for three days. The player with the best record in each of the four groups will then advance to the round of 16. Elimination rounds will then determine who plays in the quarterfinals, the semifinals and championship and consolation
matches.
Historically, the event pitted the No. 1 player against the 64th, the second against the 63rd and so on.
Sasha Lekach, Bay City News
