Rochester’s Danielle Downey Classic Should Include LPGA “Legends” Competition

In 2006, the Wegmans LPGA Rochester tournament featured a Tuesday “shootout” for former Rochester champs mostly retired from LPGA competition. Pat Bradley was the 18-hole winner over players such as Patty Sheehan, Nancy Lopez, Jane Blalock, Deb Richard, and Kathy Whitworth. It was very successful and well-attended (an LPGA tour caddie remarked that there was a larger gallery that day than at the prior week’s tournament in Westchester County). In fact, the attendance probably exceeded most Thursday tournament rounds. There is a hunger to see former stars that formed a bond with the local golf community and that have largely, although not completely, exited the limelight.

Including a similar event, or even a 36-hole Legends Tour event before or during Classic week at Brook-Lea C.C., would be a great way to remember that Rochester golf history of which Danielle Downey formed a part. The 2014 LPGA Championship completely failed to do this. Correcting that error at next summer’s Symetra Tour event would guarantee even greater attendance and attention for the Downey Classic.

Those past champs, or the LPGA “legends” players in general, could compete in their own senior division in a block of times either before or after the tee times for the main Symetra Tour competition-on Saturday and Sunday perhaps. Something similar to this is done each year at the 3M Championship. Staged on a Donald Ross course and featuring the LPGA’s past, present, and future, the Danielle Downey Classic would bring “full circle” Rochester’s LPGA golf history in a way the LPGA tournament never quite did.

Perfect New Golf Event for Rochester? A Return of the LPGA’s Greats

They first came to Rochester more than 37 years ago. Many of these women made such an impression on local golf 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 golf 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 a 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…”

 

 

 

An Inaugural Senior Women’s Open Wouldn’t be First Open in Rochester for LPGA Pros

The 1973 U.S. Women’s Open, conducted by the USGA, was held at The Country Club of Rochester, one of the premier private clubs in the area. Several clips of the television coverage of that event are available (see below). Several still-competing Legends players were in the Open field that week in 1973, including Jane Blalock, Shelley Hamlin, Susie Berning (the winner that year), Sandra Palmer, Donna Caponi, and JoAnne Carner.

Clip #1 in a series of ABC television coverage videos from that 1973 U.S. Women’s Open currently on Youtube is located below. The other clips can be easily found on Youtube. The commentary by Byron Nelson is classic!

Susie Berning won the 1973 U.S. Women’s Open at CCR in Rochester

Rochester’s LPGA Tournament History and Records, 1977-2014

See the Democrat and Chronicle’s coverage here. Unmentioned by the D&C is that the 1973 U.S. Women’s Open was held at The Country Club of Rochester and likely provided some impetus to the creation of the LPGA’s Rochester event, first held four years later in 1977.