MyTurn by JIM DUCIBELLA
Quid Pro Quo
Pro golf’ s tenuous history with the Commonwealth
Professional golf in Virginia has always had a whack-a-mole look to it.
Tournaments come, and tournaments go. Sponsors pop up, and sponsors disappear. They even change tours.
Crestar Bank floated LPGA and Senior PGA Tour events. Anheuser-Busch did the same, on the grand stage of Kingsmill.
The Richmond area is the latest to perform this shuffle.
After 10 years of hosting the Dominion Energy Charity Senior Classic at The Country Club of Virginia, the title sponsor terminated its contract with the PGA Tour— four years shy of the original end of a historic extension between a sponsor and host venue.
The decision, said Dominion Energy spokesman Ryan Frazier, meets the company’ s“ back to basics” strategy of providing clean energy to customers. Fill in your own punch line. It also“ basically” saves it the $ 2.5 million purse.
Lord knows, Metro Richmond has tried to make pro golf a thing. The United Virginia Bank Seniors / Crestar Classic was played at Hermitage CC from 1983 to 1990. Arnold Palmer ' s last victory was there in 1987.
A Nike / Buy. com / Nationwide Tour stop ran from 1993-2008 at The Dominion Club( two years at Stonehenge G & CC). The last six( 2003- 2008) years, the main sponsor was Henrico County.
Now, the latest iteration of young pros trying to advance their careers— under the Korn Ferry blanket— will settle at The Federal Club in suburban Glen Allen. Henrico County’ s Economic Development Authority, Sports & Entertainment Authority, and the Virginia Tourism Corporation are joining forces to sponsor.
Thus continues the Commonwealth’ s ritual of tournaments hopscotching from city to city.
The LPGA’ s Crestar, then Crestar / Farm Fresh Classic was staged in three different locales— Portsmouth, Suffolk, and Chesapeake— over just 13 years.
It folded from a dearth of sponsors and fans, despite a champion’ s list that included Hall of Famers Juli Inkster, Amy Alcott, and Kathy Whitworth( the last of her record-88 victories), and some of the day’ s most popular players, like Jan Stephenson, Beth Daniel, and Patty Sheehan.
Butch Liebler, who was the tournament director for two Buy. Com Virginia Beach
Ariya Jutanugarn won twice during the LPGA ' s nearly two-decade run at Williamsburg ' s Kingsmill Resort.
Opens, hustled enough pro-am money to present the Boys and Girls Clubs of Hampton Roads with more than $ 200,000. To do so, he worked for free.
“ Charity is a big factor [ for sponsors ], though they also come to give exposure to a city or area,” said Liebler.“ But it’ s my experience that after three, four, five years, they figure out they aren’ t getting what they wanted from their investment.”
One major issue Virgina can’ t do anything about is its lack of Fortune 500 corporations. The PGA Tour visits Orlando, Dallas / Fort Worth, New York, Houston, San Antonio, Philadelphia, Detroit, and others regularly. If they lose a sponsor, there’ s another usually waiting in the wings.
Not so for Richmond or Hampton Roads, which also don’ t have competitive-sized TV markets.
Anheuser-Busch and the PGA Tour had the longest of love affairs in Virginia. From 1981 to 2002, the A-B Golf Classic, or Michelob Classic, lured some of the Tour’ s top dogs to Kingsmill’ s River Course in Williamsburg.
The fact that the fields were watered down because the tournament normally was held one week before The British Open didn’ t matter. A-B’ s goal was to sell Kingsmill’ s residential lots— and lots of beer.
When A-B abandoned the men, pro Fred Funk lamented,“ I guess I’ m more disappointed in Anheuser-Busch [ for ] not thinking that they’ re getting their money’ s worth out of a PGA Tour event.”
In 2003, A-B switched to the much less expensive LPGA, dropping the purse from a high of $ 3.5 million to a max of $ 2.2 million. Give‘ em credit, they hung in for seven years— and came back in 2012 before leaving the Commonwealth for good.
Then-Anheuser-Busch vice president Dan McHugh explained the move, saying,“ We ' re looking [ for ] a little bit more national scope... create a footprint in more tournaments.”
Now we have another attempt to sell pro golf to Virginians. The four-year deal with Korn Ferry is long enough to gauge whether it will stick around.
Citing community support for the last 10 years, Steve Schoenfeld, former executive director of the Dominion Energy Charity Classic and now the Korn Ferry event, says he is confident it will succeed.
History says otherwise. Hopefully for Virginia golf fans, time will tell that he ' s right.
VSGA ARCHIVES
40 V IRGINIA G OLFER | J ANUARY / F EBRUARY 2026 vsga. org