- May 3, 2024
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From the moment he arrived at The Concession Golf Club, Jerry Kelly was all smiles.
He came to represent Team USA in the World Champions Cup, the PGA Tour Champions event held Dec. 7, 8 and 10 in the Lakewood Ranch area. From the onset, Kelly lived and died with every shot, making big gestures and shooting looks to the home crowd.
Why such passion? Because this, Kelly said, was no ordinary event.
“This is our Ryder Cup,” he said. “It feels fantastic to be on a team. You know, you do make bonds with these guys. I've got their back any time. It's just a fun event.
"Whoever put this thing together, … it's fantastic.”
It was put together by Intersport’s Charlie Besser, who owns and promotes the event; the PGA Tour Champions; and The Concession.
Justin Leonard, Kelly’s partner for the first two days of the event, echoed the sentiments after Team USA’s comeback victory over Team International on Dec. 10.
“From the moment we arrived, every 'I' was crossed, every 'T' was dotted — I'm from Texas, that's how we say it," Leonard said in the glow of victory. "To get on property and to play practice rounds … I mean, just the dinners, … having dinner with these guys and their wives and their families and kids. It's just been a great, great week. A great atmosphere. The bonus is that we're getting to sit up here as the inaugural champions of the World Champions Cup."
Members of all three teams — Team USA, Team Europe and Team International — at the World Champions Cup made similar comments all week, particularly in regard to the event’s evenings, where the players could decompress in their respective cottages and talk about the event as well as their personal lives.
The comments spoke well not just to the event, but to The Concession. Players were complimentary of the course, and particularly about the challenge it presented for some of the best golfers in the world.
"There's a lot of water off the tee," Team Europe's Bernhard Langer said. "Every hole has water. So you can take the aggressive line or you (can) try to play for the fat part of the fairway. Then the greens are, obviously, the tricky part. They're the main thing. You have to hit the little plateaus to have a reasonable chance for birdie. Otherwise, you could miss a green or you could easily three-putt or worse. And if it is windy, that makes it that much harder."
Players also liked the unique format of the event. The World Champions Cup used six ball, scotch sixsomes and singles scoring. The addition of a third team to the traditional one-on-one team golf concept made the volatility of the leaderboard skyrocket.
Each of the three teams led after a given day of the event with the Americans seizing the lead at the right time, in the final holes.
It made for exciting golf, for the players and the fans.
Add up the fun format, the volatility, the camaraderie, and the challenge of the course itself, and the PGA Tour Champions and Intersport had presented a winning formula.
It was Besser who had the original idea for a senior Ryder Cup type event more than 10 years ago.
Besser said he pictures the World Champions Cup being a “100-year event,” eventually holding similar prestige to the Ryder Cup or the President’s Cup.
But before it can hit year 100, it has to hit year two.
Will the event return to The Concession for its second iteration?
The Concession General Manager Brian Weimann gave no concrete answers.
“There’s definitely a chance,” Weimann said. “I think they’re looking for the event to be in the United States for the first two years of it. From there, it will travel around the world and then eventually come back to the States. So that’s something we will be looking at.”
The World Champions Cup is the second large-scale professional tournament the club has hosted. In 2021, The Concession hosted the PGA Tour’s World Golf Championships-Workday Championship, a move necessitated when the event was cancelled in Mexico because of COVID-19 concerns. The Workday Championship was a chance for the club to impress golf's leaders with how it handled logistics, and it also was a chance for The Concession to impress the players.
The World Champions Cup was a doubling-down on both of those things. The Concession again showed it could host a large-scale event, while the course received more worldwide air time on ESPN and ABC.
Like the Workday Championship, Weimann said the World Champions Cup is a stepping-stone event for the club. Weimann said the club is still waiting to hear the result of its bid for the 2031 PGA Championship. A good showing with the World Champions Cup, could only help.
“I know they (executives of the PGA of America, which administers the PGA Championship) are watching,” Weimann said. “I’ve been in contact with them. We had the PGA Tour out here on (Dec. 7) looking at us. It’s exciting. It’s heading in the right direction. That was one of the big reasons we brought the Cup here as well.”
