About this Blog: Perfect New Golf Event for Rochester Would Include LPGA Greats

Note: I’m just a golf fan aiming to encourage some discussion and interest in a Legends Tour/LPGA event in Rochester following the demise of the LPGA Rochester International/Wegmans LPGA Championship. I’m not affiliated with the LPGA, The Legends Tour, any tournament, or other golf entity. Please join the discussion and comment. Interested sponsors, clubs, or organizers should probably contact Jane Blalock at The Legends Tour.

In 2018, the long-awaited U.S. Senior Women’s Open will be staged by the USGA for the first time. (It will be near Chicago. A Rochester site wasn’t chosen for 2018 or 2019 but hopefully…)

 

Nancy Lopez

They first came to Rochester, N.Y. more than 37 years ago. Many of these women made such an impression on local fans that it can’t be said that they ever truly left. Now, as the final Rochester LPGA event has been staged at Monroe G.C., after 37 years at Locust Hill C.C. and having been a “major” championship since 2010, the golf community is left without a top-tier women’s gold event. However, good memories and the spirit of the event persist among the many players, volunteers, organizers, and fans of the yearly competition. Though the Rochester community’s LPGA tournament is gone, and many of the revered players have moved onwards to  their “senior” days, these players remain in the heart of Rochester golf fans—and ready to compete here again.

The community greatly benefited from the event’s long presence. Due to its support of Camp Good Days and other charities, and the golf competition itself, it became a local tradition and gathering place for the golf and business communities.

The Legends Tour, spearheaded by 1979 Rochester LPGA champion Jane Blalock in 2000, has assembled a contingent of events each year for LPGA players 45 and older. Many of the “legends” who were former Rochester champs enjoyed blockbuster crowds in 2006 when a special, former champions’ “shootout” was held at Locust Hill on Tuesday of tournament week. Attendance was comparable to most Thursday or Friday rounds.

A perfect, albeit smaller and more modestly-funded, replacement for the long-running LPGA tournament at Locust Hill and Monroe would be a Rochester Legends Tour event. Once again, the likes of Nancy Lopez, Patty Sheehan, Pat Bradley, Rosie Jones, Laura Davies, and Juli Inkster would grace the local golf scene as part of another community-building event. (Note: Annika Sorenstam will also be 45 in October of 2015)

Perhaps the USGA will decide the stage an inaugural U.S. Senior Women’s Open, a possibility under consideration. Rochester, due to the mutual appreciation between LPGA players and Rochester fans through the decades, and its great golf venues, would be an excellent choice for the first Open. In either case, whether as a fan-friendly Legends event, or a USGA championship, a return is possible and this blog is intended to serve as an informal discussion forum dedicated to the subject.

As related by the D&C: “Nancy Lopez will never forget the crowds, and the way Rochesterians welcomed the players of the LPGA Tour into their town, into their homes and into their hearts…”