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more photosCrowds watch the competition at Crosswater Club in Sunriver during the 2009 Jeld-Wen Tradition in August.
Rob Kerr / The Bulletin
Is two a crowd?
2010 Tradition set for the same weekend as Portland's Safeway Classic
By Zack Hall / The Bulletin
Published: November 25. 2009 4:00AM PSTIt looks like the 2010 Jeld-Wen Tradition will have some competition.
The LPGA Tour last week announced its 2010 schedule. And it appears that the Safeway Classic, the popular annual Portland-area late-summer stop on the women's pro tour, will be played Aug. 20-22.
Those dates happen to be the same week that The Tradition, a major championship on the Champions Tour, is scheduled to be played at Crosswater Club in Sunriver.
Few things are better than golf in Oregon in August. But this could be too much of a good thing.
Consider the matter of volunteers, who are counted on to do the little things for a professional golf tournament. For The Tradition, many of those volunteers over the past three years have come from Portland and have been able to volunteer for the Champions Tour event and the LPGA tournament. And the majority of The Tradition's spectators live outside Central Oregon, according to a 2008 survey of spectators done by The Tradition.
Will those same spectators bother to make the trip to Central Oregon for The Tradition when a quality tournament is also being played in their own backyard?
And played at the same time, the two tournaments will be fighting each other for state and regional media attention.
Yet it is still anyone's guess as to what holding Oregon's only two major professional golf tournaments on the same weekend will mean for The Tradition and the Safeway Classic.
“We think both tournaments will feel some effect from this, but it is too early to tell precisely what that might be,” says Mike Galeski, executive vice president of Portland-based Peter Jacobsen Sports, which manages The Tradition.
The two tournaments have moved closer together in recent years.
In 2009, The Tradition was played Aug. 17-23, a week later on the calendar than in the two previous years. And the Safeway Classic — which drew more than 80,000 spectators last year at Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in North Plains, more than doubling The Tradition's estimated attendance — was held the following week.
In fact, in all three years The Tradition has been held in Central Oregon, the Safeway Classic has been played the following week.
But in 2010, the LPGA Tour's CN Canadian Women's Open will be held during the last weekend of August to accommodate Canadian national television, taking away the possibility of playing the Safeway Classic the week following The Tradition.
And the LPGA gave supermarket chain Safeway the choice of several alternative dates.
“That was the week that (Safeway) ultimately settled on as being the best for them, given what we were able to offer to them,” says Mike Nichols, vice president of tournament business affairs at the LPGA. “It is definitely not an ideal situation.”
It certainly is not ideal for The Tradition, which after a slow start in Central Oregon gained momentum in 2009 with respectable final-round crowds and an exciting sudden-death playoff between John Cook and eventual champion Mike Reid.
And while the decision on whether or not to keep The Tradition in Central Oregon beyond 2010 will likely be made before the 2010 tournament begins — discussions are ongoing, Galeski says — fighting another tournament for fans, volunteers and even sponsors is a headache The Tradition does not need.
But there is an upside, Galeski says.
The weekend rounds of The Tradition are slated again for NBC Sports, while the Safeway Classic is likely to be televised by ESPN's family of networks.
And the two networks will be broadcasting images of golfers such as Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Michelle Wie and Lorena Ochoa from Oregon's two most recognizable golf courses not named Bandon Dunes. And it can't be bad to show the rest of the country what Oregonians already know: that golf in this entire state can be pretty special.
“It's certainly a unique situation on the schedule this year, and we feel the overriding positive is that it provides a great opportunity to showcase golf in the state of Oregon,” Galeski says.
Still, both golf tournaments would be better off on their own weekends.
It is hard enough trying to sell tickets and sponsorships in these difficult economic times without the added competition.
“We will ultimately do what is in the best interest of Safeway related to what the schedule provides in 2011 and beyond,” the LPGA's Nichols says. “Hopefully it won't happen again. I don't think it, as I think everybody would agree, is in the best interest of anyone to have them on the same week.”
Zack Hall can be reached at 541-617-7868 or at zhall@bendbulletin.com.
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