End of an era at Akron’s Firestone as Senior Players Championship moves to California

The writing was on the wall when the Champions Tour didn’t stand up to Kaulig Companies when they insisted on renaming it the Kaulig Companies Championship, completing forgoing any linkage in its title to its positioning as one of the five Champion’s Tour majors. Kaulig didn’t care and just wanted “ownership” of it as a local/regional event and to rebrand it in NASCAR style where brand and logo is everything and tradition be damned. So once that was set in motion, no surprise here that when Kaulig walks away from the sponsorship (and their goal to own and support an event in their own backyard) that the Tour was left in a position to have to just take the $$$ from any sponsor and to submit to the demands of that sponsor (i.e. moving the event). Certainly the Champions Tour is in a much more precarious situation financially than the PGA Tour, its parent organization, in that it is often a “terms taker” rather than a “terms setter” with regards to its events. But as a traditionalist, it is sad to see majors which appear on the schedule as simply any other corporate branded event week, when they used to stand out due to their title and position on the schedule.

Would really love to see the new PGA tour schedule under Rolapp find a way to put a stop at Firestone, even if it’s a tier 2 event or whatever. Northeast Ohio is an incredibly golf hungry region and I am sure I wouldn’t love the game as much as I do if I didn’t have the chance to watch the pros play the WGC events as a kid.