My home club (St. Catharines G&CC) just hosted the Canadian Tour Championship this past weekend, the marquee event on the Tour.
I thought it was a tremendous event and really enjoyed watching some future PGA Pros (guys like Mike Weir, Stephen Ames, Steve Stricker, Chris DiMarco, Stuart Appleby and many others started out on the Canadian Tour) take on our course. Was thrilled to see the course hold up well, with -11 winning in a playoff, although the course was converted to a par 70 from a par 72 for the event.
We made the decision about a year and a half ago to host the event, mainly to help market our club and increase exposure to the public. The Golf Channel had cameras at the club and will be doing a summary show in the next month.
We had a number of golf openings at the time and our board felt that the pros of hosting the event would outweigh the cons, with the most notable con being that the members lost their course for a one week period. Reciprocals were set up with many of the top private clubs in Ontario so the members that wanted to play golf above all else were certainly taken care of.
Interestingly enough, we ended up filling all of our golf openings in the spring this year so any interest coming from non-members because of the tournament would just mean that our waiting list would increase.
Still, the event brought in some money for the club, both from the Tour itself and the F&B sales and merchandise sales and interest in memberships have increased substantially. There were a couple small cosmetic changes to the course and we'll be completing the second half of our new drainage system this fall using some of the money generated from the event, which obviously benefits the entire membership. The Tour is also very interested in returning again next year, something that the board will be considering in the next month or two.
I for one really enjoyed having the tournament at our club and hope the Board (or the membership if it goes to a vote) decide to bring the Tour back in 2010.