At least for this year, you could make a case that Columbus is the Golf Capital of the U.S.
Jack Nicklaus oversaw the restoration at OSU Scarlet, which hosts a Web.com event this week. And his Muirfield Village will host the Presidents Cup in October
Over the course of this year, Central Ohio will have hosted three important golf events. The first was the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village Golf Club back in June. Next up is the Nationwide Children’s Hospital Championship this weekend at Ohio State’s Scarlet Course. Finally, 24 of the world’s top golfers will descend on Muirfield Village for the President’s Cup in early October. That event pits a team of American pros against an international squad with players from every continent except Europe.
This week, Marc Lucas, general manager of the OSU Golf Club, and his staff are busy with preparations for the Nationwide event. That event is technically part of the Web.com Tour, although it is a playoff event with ramifications for PGA Tour qualifying in 2014. The playoffs featured the top 75 players on the Web.com Tour as well as players ranked 126th to 200th on the PGA Tour as they compete for PGA cards for 2014.
“To have all of those events here in central Ohio is great,” Lucas said. “I don’t know if any other city has done that in a single year before. It’s nice to put that feather in our camp with being in Columbus.”
This is the seventh year Scarlet has hosted the Nationwide event. This is the first of a three-year deal to play the event at Scarlet.
“In the community, I think this event has been pretty well received,” Lucas said. “We are one of the busiest in terms of attendance that the Web.com Tour sees each year. The players like it because it is a really good test of championship golf. It sets up harder than most courses on that tour.
“We try to promote golf to future recruits. It’s televised on the Golf Channel, so it presents itself as a true test of golf. For some of these future players who want to get on to the PGA Tour, they see that playing at Ohio State is important to prepare themselves for a chance to play at the next level.”
The prized Scarlet Course was opened in 1938. It was designed by Alister Mackenzie, who also designed Augusta National Golf Club. The course was restored and updated in 2006 by Jack Nicklaus and his design group. The restoration lengthened the Scarlet Course to over 7,400 yards for tournament play.
Scarlet hosted the Women’s NCAA Championship in 2006 and the Men’s Championship this past spring.
“We should be close to bidding for another men’s NCAA championship,” Lucas said.
The Nationwide event will include a number of pros who have distinguished themselves in their careers, including Trevor Immelman, Ricky Barnes, Ben Curtis and many others.
“We have seen sponsorships ramp up for this event,” Lucas said. “They added Worthington Industries as a major sponsor this year. The media coverage has more than doubled. The group of players here is more recognized than what you typically see at a Web.com event.”
Lucas said the easiest part of preparing for the event is working on the golf course. OSU has partnered with HNS Sports, which also collaborates with Muirfield on the Memorial and will also work on the Presidents Cup, to get all provisions in place.
“We feel like we don’t have to do too much to prepare the golf course,” he said. “We have collegiate events in the spring, we have club events and then we have junior events in the summer. We try and keep it tournament-ready year around.
“The part where you have to erect the stands, the scoreboards and the tents, that usually takes about a month. That’s a pretty good undertaking.”
In terms of the OSU Golf Club, it is available for students, faculty and staff and alumni.
“All students have the ability to play,” Lucas said. “All they have to do is bring out their Buck ID and we have student rates that are heavily discounted. Any alumni can come out and play. Bring your alumni card and you can play. We also have memberships available. We are kind of a hybrid. We have memberships and a daily fee.
“The members have access to the daily tee sheet seven days in advance. Then the students, faculty and staff and alumni have that access four days in advance. If you have an affiliation with Ohio State, you can certainly come out and play.”
Weekly badges for the Nationwide event ($30) through Sunday are available by clicking here.
President’s Cup Next Up
The PGA Tour’s Fed Ex Cup playoff format will wind down in the next two weeks with the BMW Championship outside Chicago this week and the Tour Championship next weekend in Atlanta.
The Presidents Cup will then be held Oct. 3-6 at Muirfield Village Golf Club. This international event is patterned after the Ryder Cup. The Ryder Cup pits an American team against pros from Europe. The Presidents Cup sends the U.S. team against top pros from every continent except Europe. Former PGA Tour stars Fred Couples and Nick Price are serving as the respective team captains this year.
Muirfield Village will become the first course to host the Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup (an international women’s event) and the Presidents Cup.
Of course, it was the former Ohio State star and PGA legend Nicklaus who built Muirfield Village back in 1976. This year, Muirfield unveiled a new clubhouse just in time for the Memorial.
“It’s a big year here for us,” Nicklaus said. “We had the Memorial, we’ll have the Presidents Cup and then with the new clubhouse as well. We started with a tiny project and it turned into a huge project.”
When Muirfield was awarded the Presidents Cup several years ago, Nicklaus asked then-OSU president Gordon Gee if he could see if OSU would be scheduled for a night game that weekend. And, even though one schedule was done and ripped up when Nebraska joined the league in 2011, Ohio State will be playing a road night game at Northwestern on Oct. 5.
The Presidents Cup will be televised by the Golf Channel and NBC Sports.
Players accumulate points over a two-year period to qualify for the Presidents Cup. The 10 American automatic qualifiers were Tiger Woods, Brandt Snedeker, Phil Mickelson, Matt Kuchar, Jason Dufner, Keegan Bradley, Steve Stricker, Bill Haas, Hunter Mahan and Zach Johnson. Couples then used his two captains’ picks to select Webb Simpson and 20-year-old Jordan Spieth to round out the U.S. squad.
The European qualifiers included Adam Scott, Jason Day, Charl Schwartzel, Ernie Els, Louis Oosthuizen, Hideki Matsuyama, Branden Grace, Graham DeLaet, Richard Sterne and Angel Cabrera. Price’s captains’ picks were Brendon de Jonge and Marc Leishman.
Fans attending the Memorial in the past are in for a treat. Stands have been erected near the greens on several of the back-nine holes to bring fans closer to the action. Party tents have also been erected on many of those holes as well. With the international flavor of this event, it should be quite a spectacle.
“We figure the 15, 16, 17 area is where most of the matches will be decided,” Nicklaus said. “We wanted to be able to get more people out there to see what’s going on out there.”
The American squad has won seven of the nine previous Presidents Cup events since its inception in 1996. The U.S. has never lost the Cup on American soil. It was announced recently that the 2015 Presidents Cup will be played at Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea in Incheon, South Korea.
All-tournament badges are available for $210. Click here for ticket information on the Presidents Cup.
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