In 2006, two years after opening to acclaim as the best new private course in America, The Concession Golf Club in Lakewood Ranch was fighting for its survival. Its clubhouse was still a double-wide trailer. Lunch was prepared on a George Foreman grill. And even though the club had pared its initiation fee to $25,000, it had just 50 members. The subprime crisis was taking hold, and housing prices were falling.
“I wondered what I had gotten myself into,” recalls Brian Weimann, who moved from Wisconsin in 2008 to become the club’s caddie master. “That summer, our caddies would go for a couple days without even seeing a member. We wondered if the golf club was going to be turned into a hunting ground or a subdivision.”
Just when it looked like The Concession, with a course designed by two of golf’s legendary players, Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin, might become another of the financial crisis’ broken real estate dreams, an unlikely hero emerged: Bruce Cassidy. Back then, Cassidy was just a member who never envisioned getting into the golf business, but he gave the club a lifeline as a silent partner and, in 2009, became its full owner. Soon, a 33,000-square-foot clubhouse was built, along with 34 lodges, a par 3 course and a 21-acre practice area that ranks among the best in Florida. The club also stayed true to its ambition: Not a single home has been built on The Concession’s 527 acres, where native oaks, pines and palmettos flourish alongside manicured greens and velvet smooth fairways.
The Concession owner—and savior—Bruce Cassidy.
But Cassidy, 75, the son of a coal truck driver from Steubenville, Ohio, who didn’t start playing golf until he was 35, wanted more than just to save The Concession. He wanted to make it a showcase for the game’s biggest events and greatest players.
Mission accomplished. From April 16-19, 2026, The Concession will host the Senior PGA Championship, the first professional major tournament played in Florida in more than a quarter-century.
Among the scores of tournaments that fill professional golf’s calendar, majors are the jewels. The Senior PGA Championship is one of five majors that anchor the PGA Tour Champions season for players over 50, and the major at The Concession will feature a litany of the greatest players of the past half century, including Ernie Els, Freddie Couples and Bernhard Langer. Those names alone are expected to draw up to 7,000 fans a day. But the event could reach another realm if Tiger Woods, who turns 50 this year but is recovering from back surgery, joins the field.
“If Tiger can play, our attendance might double,” Cassidy says. “This will be the first major [in the seniors division] he is eligible for. And I imagine Tiger would really want a chance to add it to the great victories he has achieved.”
Woods or not, the tournament should provide a needed boost for area businesses. From October 2024 to September 2025, Sarasota County reported a 6.3 percent decline in visitors, according to Visit Sarasota. And the Senior PGA is not a one-off event. The Concession will host the tournament three years in a row. Sarasota and Manatee counties each pledged $4.5 million over that time to support the event. Cassidy says if the tournament is comparable to other recent Senior PGA championships, it will pump $60 million to $70 million each year into the local economy through the tournament and related spending for lodging, food, entertainment and the like.
“This is an investment that is really going to pay off for our area,” says Bill Galvano, former president of the Florida Senate and a member at The Concession, who lobbied for the public dollars. “Visitors are going to see our great beaches, our restaurants, everything our area has to offer, and many of them are going to come back again.”
Multi-unit lodges for members and guests.
Golf’s role as an economic driver is nothing new around here.
Sarasota’s love affair with the game goes back to 1886, when a Scottish immigrant and pioneering land developer named John Hamilton Gillespie built the first golf holes in Florida and some of the first in the United States. The Sarasota two-hole course was a dried lakebed where the Sarasota County Post Office is now located on Ringling Boulevard. In 1905, Gillespie built a nine-hole course, starting from Links Avenue in downtown Sarasota, stretching east to the Sarasota County Terrace Building and then to Tuttle Avenue.
“Sarasota was first in Florida for golf,” says local historian Jeff LaHurd. “Golf played a big role in attracting people to the region. It helped spur the area’s development.”
In 1926, America’s first great champion, Bobby Jones, hit the opening shot on a new municipal course off Fruitville Road, and the following year the course was renamed for him. Sarasota also hosted what national media called the “Match of the Century” in 1926, a duel between Jones, the amateur, and Walter Hagen, the swaggering professional, which Jones lost in a stunning upset. In the mid-1920s, two other courses opened: the Sara Bay Country Club and the Longboat Key Club. Those two, and the Bobby Jones course, were all designed by Donald Ross, one of golf’s most revered course architects. In 1940 and 1941, Sarasota hosted the Senior PGA Championships at the Bobby Jones and Sara Bay courses.
Golf continued to flourish in subsequent decades, with dozens of courses from North Port to Palmetto carved out of Florida scrubland, many becoming the anchors for massive housing projects.
No homes have been built on The Concession’s 527 acres.
Then, in the early 2000s, Kevin Daves, who developed The Ritz-Carlton, Sarasota, on Sarasota Bay, set his eyes on the high-end golf market. At the time, the top clubs in Naples commanded $100,000 to join, but the tip of the Sarasota market was $30,000. Daves acquired a tract of undeveloped land between University Parkway and State Road 70, land that had never been ranched
or farmed. Most Florida golf courses are 150 to 180 acres, often intersecting subdivisions. But this parcel, destined to become The Concession, comprised more than 500 acres. Instead of clear-cutting the land and surrounding it with homes, Daves kept much of it natural.
Further setting The Concession apart were the men who designed it: Nicklaus and Jacklin. Nicklaus, golf’s all-time leader in professional victories, has designed golf courses since the late 1960s. But they were always Nicklaus signature courses. Daves persuaded him to partner with English golfer Jacklin, now a Bradenton resident, and the most successful British player of his generation, who won the 1969 British Open and the 1970 U.S. Open.
Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin, designers of The Concession golf course, shake hands during the seminal 1969 Ryder Cup in which Nicklaus conceded, giving the moment—and the course—its name.
The two men are forever linked in golf lore because of the 1969 Ryder Cup between the United States and Great Britain, when Nicklaus competed against Jacklin in the final singles match that would determine the champion. The two nations were acrimonious rivals, and the Ryder Cup had boiled with charges of bad behavior on both sides, like crowding over an opponent as he tried to putt. On the final hole, with the match tied, Jacklin faced a short putt. Nicklaus picked up Jacklin’s ball marker, conceding the hole, saying he was certain Jacklin was going to make the putt. The gesture, which became known as “the concession,” is one of the great acts of sportsmanship in golf history.
In 2006, when The Concession opened, Nicklaus and Jacklin took center stage.
“Little did I know that giving someone a 20-inch putt would become such a big gesture,” Nicklaus said at the time. “This golf course is a result of that gesture. When Tony and Kevin came to me with the idea of The Concession, I said, ‘Well, that sounds like a pretty good idea.”
But golf was facing headwinds. Golfing attendance nationally had been in decline for years. The game, after all, is incredibly difficult, and devoting three to four hours hitting a small white ball began to feel incongruous in the fast-paced Internet age. When the financial crisis hit, every sector of real estate tanked, but golf courses were hit particularly hard. And The Concession, with just 50 members, was floundering.
A Great Blue Heron wades in one of The Concession’s water features.
Cassidy seemed an unlikely savior.
One of six siblings, he grew up watching his father rise before dawn to haul coal. Cassidy followed his father into the mining business, becoming a plant manager, and in 1990, set off on his own to form Excel Mining Company, which supplied safety equipment for mines and generated $240 million in annual sales. Cassidy sold most of the company in 2006 for an undisclosed amount to Snow Phipps Group (SPG). A year later, Cassidy and SPG sold the company for $670 million to Australia-based Orica Ltd.
That same year, Cassidy moved to Florida and became one of the first members at The Concession. Growing up, he never played golf or knew anyone who did. But the top executives he traveled with all played, and Cassidy became an accomplished golfer, playing many of the best courses in the world. The Concession became his favorite course. And in 2009, with Daves struggling to hold onto the club, Cassidy provided an influx of cash, becoming a silent partner, and then the full owner.
It was a big risk. Cassidy declined to say how much money he lost during his first years as owner of The Concession. “At that time, golf was a bad four-letter word,” he says. “Golf clubs were closing all over the country, getting turned into neighborhoods. But The Concession had such great bones. I really believed we could make it successful.”
By the mid-2010s, the economy began to rebound. And then golf got a big break from an unexpected source—the pandemic. With so many recreational activities shut down during Covid, golf—played outdoors with plenty of space between participants— became a haven. Participation rates soared. Today, The Concession has a full membership of 300 with a waiting list, even as its initiation fee has increased to $200,000.
“Covid was terrible for almost everything,” Cassidy says dryly, “but it was very good for golf.”
Weimann, who rose from caddie master to become the club’s general manager, says Cassidy’s leadership is the single most important explanation for The Concession’s success. “It’s 1,000 percent because of Bruce,” he says. “He’s no-nonsense, down-to-earth, extremely generous and understands how to manage people.”
Players must be precise to have a chance at par.
As The Concession has prospered, it’s stayed true to its mission as a club with an almost singular focus. Aside from its gourmet dining room, there are few other amenities. Members might play or practice during the day, dine and then return to the lighted 18-hole putting green in the evening. Dozens of its members don’t even live in the area. They come for long weekends simply to play the course.
“We don’t have a swimming pool, tennis courts or bingo nights,” says Weimann. “The Concession is about golf, golf, golf.” (That said, the club’s culinary lineup has become so popular that it sells separate $3,000 dining memberships for non-golfers.)
The club’s adherence to tradition includes having a staff of 50 caddies, each of whom wear white jumpsuits. Carts are available but, unlike many Florida courses, walking is also an option because The Concession is self-contained. The club prides itself on having few rules.
“No houses, no white stakes signaling out of bounds,” Cassidy says. “If you can find your ball anywhere on the course, you can hit it.”
And for golfers who relish a challenge, The Concession is as challenging as it gets. The United States Golf Association ranks courses from 55 (easiest) to 155 (hardest). The Concession, from the tournament tees, is 155. At most courses, hitting the ball on the green is the ticket to a good score. But at The Concession, the undulating greens, guarded by water and sand-filled bunkers, are so difficult to navigate that players have to hit precise spots on the putting surface to even have a chance at par.
“This is a course that will challenge even the best players,” Galvano says. “Some courses have one or two signature holes. At The Concession, I feel every hole is memorable.”
Soon after taking over The Concession, Cassidy went to work attracting the biggest tournaments and best players. In 2015, the club hosted the NCAA men’s and women’s college championships. In 2021, it lured the World Golf Championship, but Covid prevented fans from attending. Cassidy’s goal was a major, the most important tournaments in professional golf, which are so difficult to attract that Florida has hosted just three in the regular PGA and Seniors divisions since 1950.
Some majors, like The Masters—considered a pinnacle event in golf—are always played at the same course. (The Masters, for example, is played at Augusta National in Georgia.) Others, such as the British Open, take place overseas. And the U.S. Open and U.S. Senior Open are played in the summer, when Florida’s heat makes having them here undesirable. But the Senior PGA Championship is played in the spring, and Cassidy saw an opening. Cassidy spent years building relationships and laying the groundwork for the event, including in his current role as chairman of the Senior PGA Championship committee. “This course itself could hold a major tournament tomorrow,” he says.
But making the course accessible for thousands of fans has taken months and cost millions. Thousands of palmettos were cleared to improve sight lines. Bulldozers and other heavy equipment are working to construct a 14-acre entrance and drop-off area for thousands of fans, who will park remotely and take shuttle buses to the event. Nearly 2,000 volunteers are being recruited.
The Concession Golf Club was designed by fashion designer and home designer Adrienne Vittadini and interior designer Pamela Hughes.
Now, after years of anticipation, The Concession is ready for its star turn.
“You’ve got to give Bruce so much credit,” Galvano says. “When he took over, there was a lot of work to do here. He’s worked hard and invested so much to make it happen. I’m excited for our area to get the opportunity to host this tournament for the next three years.”
Cassidy has his ambitions set even higher. If the Senior PGA goes as well as
expected, The Concession will be in the running for the biggest events in golf. Cassidy has his eyes on the PGA Championship, one of the four jewels of the regular professional tournament that would be, if The Concession could land it, the biggest sporting event ever to come to the region. Patience is required, because it likely won’t be until 2035, when Cassidy will be in his 80s.
“At my age, I don’t have a long time to wait,” Cassidy says. “But I’m going to keep working toward it because this golf course is truly special. It deserves it. Being part of making it happen has been one of the most fun and rewarding things I have done in my entire life.”