Senior Players will not charge for admission
If you subscribe to the notion that the best things in life are free, mark down these dates — Oct. 7-10.
That’s when the TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm will throw open its gates for the Senior Players Championship. The tournament will offer free admission, making it the first U.S. major championship to do so. The extraordinary measure was announced Monday at Avenel.
“It’s been done at a couple events on the Champions Tour, but it’s the first time it’s been done at a major,” tournament director Steve Schoenfeld said. “The goal is to get as many people out here as we can to enjoy the fact that they will not have to reach into their pocket.”
There will be no charge to park, to ride the shuttle bus or gain admittance to the grounds as the tournament makes a one-year pit stop at the newly renovated course. The Senior Players was contested the last three years at Baltimore Country Club and will return to the Timonium course in 2011.
Each day of the Senior Players will be individually sponsored. Golf Galaxy (Friday), Telos (Saturday) and OMNITEC Solutions (Sunday) have signed on. The tournament has yet to find a sponsor for Thursday’s opening round.
The Champions Tour experimented with free admission last year at the 3M Championship in the suburbs of Minneapolis. The event was in competition with the PGA Championship, the following month at nearby Hazeltine.
“It was such a successful program, they actually made more money in sponsorship packages than they would have selling the tickets outright,” Champions Tour president Mike Stevens said.
This year’s 3M, which was contested last week, did not charge admission. Neither did the Allianz Championship, held in February in Boca Raton, Fla.
“A lot of people are coming out who wouldn’t necessarily have come out,” Stevens said. “We’re finding a new audience.”
Finding a new audience in October will be a challenge. The Senior Players will compete with college football on Saturday and pro football on Sunday. The Redskins host the Packers at FedEx Field at 1 p.m.
Defending champion Jay Haas, who birdied the last two holes last year to edge Tom Watson, is looking forward to playing gussied-up Avenel.
“Everyone’s excited to hear about the redo,” Haas said. “I think there were some issues before. Some of the guys played a few times, weren’t crazy about some of the holes out here. But to have a tournament here in our nation’s capital is important.”
