At a time of big changes in golf, one development on the senior circuit should not go unnoticed. The Senior Players Championship is moving to California, which likely spells the end of 72 years of PGA Tour presence at Firestone Country Club.
Healthcare company Hoag is taking over as title sponsor of the Senior Players and moving it from Firestone to Newport Beach Country Club, which has hosted the Hoag Classic since 1996. It will be played March 25-28 instead of a summer date.
That leaves Firestone without a tournament for the first time since the Rubber City Open in 1954.
Firestone opened in 1929 as a park for employees of the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. It landed the 1960 PGA Championship, which inspired the American Golf Classic from 1961 to 1976. The PGA Championship returned in 1966 and 1975.
Firestone also hosted the first big-money event in 1962, the World Series of Golf, for the four major champions of the year. Jack Nicklaus, the 22-year-old U.S. Open champion, won $50,000 (he won $17,500 that year for the U.S. Open).
The World Series of Golf became part of the PGA Tour schedule in 1976 (Nicklaus won again), and it became a World Golf Championship in 1999. Tiger Woods won a record eight times. Over 11 straight visits to Firestone starting in 1997, Woods won seven times and never finished worse than fifth.
The one year the WGC went to Sahalee outside Seattle in 2002, Firestone hosted the Senior PGA Championship.
Justin Thomas won the final WGC at Firestone in 2018 before it moved to Memphis, Tennessee, and the Senior Players Championship took over in 2019. And now it’s leaving.