The Stephen Curry-PGA Tour collaboration will have to hold off at least one more year as Ron Kroichick of The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the event has been scrapped for 2019.
Despite dates being held for the beginning of the 2019-20 PGA Tour season for the Curry-hosted event at Lake Merced Golf Club outside of San Francisco, the initial report from Kroichick intimated that sponsorship issues with Workday were to blame, although the Tour has pushed back against that assertion.
“To partner a PGA Tour tournament with an iconic global athlete like Stephen Curry would be an extraordinary opportunity and one we’ve been pursuing, as widely reported in recent months,” the Tour said in a statement to The Chronicle. “Due to a combination of factors, we are unable to bring a proposed event to San Francisco at this time.
“While it has been reported that sponsorship was the primary factor, this is untrue. The bottom line is the short timeframe for creating an event in early fall of 2019 created the biggest obstacle. We look forward to continuing discussions with Stephen Curry, his family’s foundation and other parties with the hopes of ultimately bringing a PGA Tour event to the Bay Area.”
ICYMI, my story on PGA Tour abandoning plans for @StephenCurry30-hosted event at Lake Merced, updated with quotes from Curry and statement from tour: https://t.co/zgqvTVbD8l
— Ron Kroichick (@ronkroichick) January 9, 2019
Adding to the tight timeframe was the fact that Lake Merced membership had approved $3.6 million in course updates, a prerequisite for the course to host the event.
“We are still committed to bringing an event to San Francisco,” Curry told The Chronicle. “It just won’t be this year.”
Echoing Curry’s sentiments that the one-year cancelation wasn’t the end of the road, GolfChannel.com’s Rex Hoggard described the situation as “on hold.”
“The best way to say it is that it’s just on hold as it stands right now,” Hoggard said. “Even though the original report said this was all about sponsorship issues, the people I have talked to said it really had nothing to do with sponsorship; it had to do with the timeframe of trying to get a tournament prepared and ready to be played this fall.”
Hoggard went on to lay out how important partnerships with both Workday, the potential sponsor, and Curry, the host, would be to the Tour going forward, and as a result of that longterm forecast, they didn’t cut any corners in rushing to putting a subpar event on in September.
