MONTGOMERY, Ala. — The State of Alabama will host the PGA Tour for the first time in a quarter century when the The Barbasol Championship comes to the Grand National golf course in Opelika in July of 2015.
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, House Speaker Mike Hubbard, Retirement Systems of Alabama CEO David Bronner, Alabama Tourism Director Lee Sentell, and PGA Tour officials hosted a press conference Monday to announce the event.
The title sponsor has agreed to a 4-year contract that will carry the yearly tour stop through 2018. Officials say the event may also rotate to other Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail courses in Alabama over the course of the four years.
Grand National is said to be “the single greatest site for a golf complex Robert Trent Jones, Sr. had ever seen.”
Here’s how the RTF Golf Trail website describes the course:
Built on 600-acre Lake Saugahatchee, 32 of the 54 holes drape along its filigreed shores. Both the Links course and the Lake course were in the top 10 of Golf Digest’s list of “America’s Top 50 Affordable Courses” and all three courses at Grand National are listed among the nation’s 40 Super Value courses by Golf Digest’s “Places to Play”.
The event will be broadcast to over 90 million U.S. households by the Golf Channel.
The estimated economic impact of the event will be $20 million, according to state officials. There are more than 1,000 hotel rooms within a 7 mile radius of the course, and the entire east Alabama hospitality industry is expecting to experience a significant boost.
The last time Alabama hosted a PGA Tour event was in 1990 when the PGA Championship was held at Shoal Creek in Birmingham.
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