The professional golf tours are coming to the area this month with The Players Championship leading off in March followed a week later by the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf.
The Players Championship is at the TPC Stadium in Ponte Vedra Beach; the Legends is at the World Golf Village’s King and Bear course.
The Players Championship goes first from March 18-24 and the Legends follows on April 1-7. Both have enormous purses: the Players is the PGA Tour’s richest event at $6 million total with over $1 million to the winner, and the Legends is at $2.5 million with $300,000 to the individual winner (there are also two team divisions.)
It’s a big time for golf in the area and it looks like everyone in real estate feels the benefits.
“You bet the TPC helps,” said Clare Berry, Berry & Co. Real Estate, a specialist in sales at the beaches. “It’s great exposure for the area, although most spectators are more interested in looking at golf and partying than looking at real estate that week. But they see and enjoy our beautiful weather and often come back at a quieter time for a closer look.”
It’s the right time of year, too.
“I don’t know what impact it has on sales but it is a terrific opportunity for increased rental revenue in what I think would be an otherwise slow month,” said Carole Martin of Ponte Vedra Club Realty.
The Players brings top-level executives to the Ponte Vedra area and, says Phyllis Staines, RE/MAX Coastal Real Estate, the tournament “ ... definitely helps to increase the interest in Ponte Vedra Beach real estate from out of towners during the month of March. With my office being centrally located on A1A, we benefit immensely from this event.”
There is one downside. Staines points it out: “The only bad thing about the TPC is the traffic. It’s very difficult to show property during the week the tournament is played.”
The Players, indeed, will draw huge crowds and create traffic problems, and the tournament’s director, Brian Goin, expects a record number of people to watch.
“We had a great tournament last year and sales have been high,” he said.
He got the biggest break of all last year: Tiger Woods, the game’s biggest name, was the winner, holding off local resident Vijay Singh to win by one shot. Having Woods’ image on pre-event advertising — putting the winner out front is the tradition — is an ad agency’s dream.
The enthusiasm around The Players, hope the organizers, will carry over a week later.
The Legends offers much-needed exposure to the World Golf Village and its new course, the King and Bear. The course is the subject of national interest among golfers because it’s the only one designed by two of the game’s greatest names, Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
The Legends is in a new time slot — after the Players, instead of the week before — and organizers are in a full-court press to get attendance boosted.
And, the PGA Tour is putting out a good lure: free admission with a Players season badge.
The format has been adjusted to allow the better players to compete for official money, if they wish, but they’ll be in individual competition. Defending champions Andy North and Jim Colbert now will work against each other; they won last year when it was a pairs event, and this year they’ll be in the new individual category.
Players like veteran Tommy Bolt and Sam Snead will compete in the ”Demaret” better-ball division for players 70 and over. There’s also a “Raphael” division for 50-69 players who wish to compete in the two-man format.