The professional golf tournament at The Landings Club has gone through so many changes in four years that keeping the status quo in 2022 would be different.
“We’d be bored,” Cheyenne Overby said Sunday morning.
Overby is the director of the tournament, which started in 2018 as the Savannah Golf Championship and was an event on the Web.com Tour.
That tour, now called the Korn Ferry Tour, is owned and operated by the PGA Tour to develop golfers for the future. That future was put on hold, temporarily, in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic led to the Savannah event and others being canceled.
The Savannah tournament, usually at the end of March, was put back on the tour schedule the first week in October 2020, meaning that Overby’s team had to reorganize for the delayed event, then have about six months before the next one this past week.
Except now the event has a title sponsor, Club Car, and a presenting sponsor, The Landings Club. Around the Deer Creek Course are shiny new golf carts on display courtesy of Club Car — which signed a four-year contract — and staffers and volunteers are donning all new apparel with the company logo.
A champion of the newly named Club Car Championship at The Landings Club was to be crowned later Sunday.
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“Especially with Club Car stepping in, it really puts a different perspective on this golf tournament,” tour player Shad Tuten, a former standout at Armstrong State University in Savannah, said Friday. “I really do think it’s one of the better, if not top three or four best, on the Korn Ferry Tour. They do an unbelievable job. This tournament, even last year, was great.”
The October tournament, because of coronavirus pandemic protocols, was not open to the general public. Overby said about 2,000 spectators a day — residents, member of The Landings Club and their guests — watched the four rounds.
One major change was general admission tickets were available for the 2021 tournament. Overby said on Sunday morning that they don’t expect more than 5,000 spectators on any given day.
“That’s what we were really comfortable with,” she said. “That’s what you’re seeing on a lot of PGA Tour events right now. We were right within the threshold of what we were expecting.”
Home game
Among those in attendance Friday were Joe and his wife Price Mingledorff, who are residents of The Landings and have gone all four years to the tournament.
“We’ve had a great time. We love having this here in our backyard,” Price Mingledorff said.
“We live on the golf course, we hang there, then we usually come to (No.) 18 and Schooner’s Cove,” Joe Mingledorff said.
Schooner’s Cove is a popular hangout for fans at the par-4 No. 5 hole. Players can be rewarded, or punished, for aggressively hitting tee shots at a green guarded to one side by water.
And spectators, should a player make birdie or better, are rewarded with $1 beers, a 75% savings, at the concession stand. Hence, an especially motivated cheering section at this watering hole, which has its own bleachers for more of a stadium feel than elsewhere on the course.
A panel of six unofficial judges — Elsa Lindenschmidt, Joan Resler, Caroline Ambrose, Joanne Taylor, Ellen Pitts and Bonnie Kelly — dutifully sits in chairs flanking the green and rates the tee shots on a scale from 1-10. These six women, voluntarily braving sometimes stifling temperatures for hours on end, also have signs to signal a birdie, an eagle or a “whoopsie” for an errant shot.
Lindenschmidt, who said she coined the name Schooner Cove, said Friday that the most memorable shot they’ve seen at No. 10 came in the final round of the 2019 event. Kevin Dougherty hit his tee shot into the water hazard, but the ball was playable. So he took his shirt off to avoid the splash of water and mud and holed-out his second shot, going from a whoopsie to an eagle and creating a viral video in the process.
“That was the best,” Lindenschmidt said Friday. “We gave him a 10.”
That might have been before the chip shot.
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“Schooner Cove is fun, regardless, but it’s really fun on a Sunday afternoon or morning when everybody sees the finalists,” Kelly said. “It’s great. Everybody’s so generous and they want the kids to succeed, and that makes it fun.”
There’s also a charitable side to Schooner’s Cove. For every birdie made at No. 5, Sound View Wealth Advisors of Savannah donates $50 to The Landings Military Family Relief Fund, up to $5,000 a tournament. The company has donated $20,000 in “Red, White & Birdies” from 2019-21.
Eddie Ambrose, a partner, said the charity combines his appreciation for the military (his wife and family have ties) and for golf as a former collegiate and professional player.
Sound View is one of 12 charity partners with the tournament, Overby said, that give to local organizations. Donating to charity is an emphasis on the PGA Tour, and Overby is glad for a return to relative normal after pandemic-related limitations in 2020, including the absence of special events.
“We did a couple of things last year; we did what we could,” she said. “But a lot of that revenue is generated from client sales. So when you have something going on like last year, it’s tough.”
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Acres and acres
Deer Creek, like any golf course, offers plenty of room for spectators to spread out, and there were signs all around telling patrons to wear masks, stay two club lengths (6 feet) apart and wash their hands. They were also informed in advance in communications and advertising.
“I think people are doing a pretty good job of helping us keep everybody safe,” said Overby, noting that many local residents already have been vaccinated, including those most at risk.
She said that the club staff, tournament partners and volunteers — an army of about 650 — have been very supportive of the health and safety measures.
As part of Korn Ferry Tour protocols, the players, caddies, tour staff on the property and club staffers working inside the clubhouse were tested for COVID-19 at the beginning of the week. She said there were no positive tests.
“I think the commissioner did a wonderful job setting up a process to make sure that one positive test doesn’t turn into 15 in a week,” Overby said. “It’s been very successful. We had a less than a 1% positive test rate on the Korn Ferry Tour last year for players and caddies. Guys are doing what they’re supposed to. We appreciate that. It’s been really good.”
The tournament’s success can be measured on various fronts: spectators, players, sponsors, charities, health issues, course conditions, weather and more. Overby said Sunday the event is faring “very, very well.”
“Everyone seems to be thrilled,” she said. “So when everyone else is happy, we’re happy.”
Nathan Dominitz is the Sports Content Editor of the Savannah Morning News and savannahnow.com. Email him at ndominitz@savannahnow.com. Twitter: @NathanDominitz