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With the coronavirus pandemic wiping out the schedules of the PGA Tour’s international circuits, a new approach was needed to find playing opportunities for the hundreds of professionals who aren’t exempt on golf’s major tours.
The answer has come in the LocaliQ Series, a group of eight tournaments to take place throughout the Southeastern region of the United States, starting the first week of August and ending the last week of October. Seven of those will be 54-hole events featuring 144 players, with fields mainly consisting of players with status on the Mackenzie Tour, PGA Tour Latinoamérica and PGA Tour China. The final event will be 72 holes, and will include a limited field based on points earned in the previous tournaments.
In addition to the LocaliQ Series, a group of four tournaments called the Canada Life Series will take place for players already in Canada. The U.S.-Canada border is expected to remain closed to nonessential travel until at least Aug. 21.
The efforts to put together these events comes on the heels of the PGA Tour’s three international development tours having to abort their original scheduling plans due to the coronavirus. Rob Ohno, the PGA Tour’s senior vice president of international tours, said the process to find sponsorship, venues and the proper cadence for scheduling was unlike anything else in his career.
“Honestly, it’s a miracle,” Ohno said. “Our team put together 12 events, literally in 30 days. There were so many little details to work out, contacting venues, figuring out sponsors, figuring out eligibility, figuring out player rewards, figuring out COVID (procedures) … I’m sure people thought we were crazy.”
“We were moving so fast that keeping each other updated was half the battle.”
Rob Ohno
The process began in May when it became apparent that border closures would prevent the Mackenzie Tour schedule from going forward with its schedule. The official cancellation came late that month, but John Slater and Jamie Wiles of the PGA Tour staff already had been discussing the idea of a series that could be played in the United States.
“John came to me with the idea in late May and I probably laughed,” Ohno said. “And I said, ‘What, are you kidding me? Come on. We don’t have enough time.’ But we kind of joke that sometimes the best ideas are the ones people laugh at, and this was certainly the case.”
Confirmation of the idea’s validity came in the form of a survey to gauge player interest during the first week of June. Within 24 hours, they were inundated with positive responses and decided to push onward.
A deadline to announce the series was set one month ahead, so players who would need to travel and quarantine had enough notice. Ohno’s team first met officially on June 8, and they had to let the players know their plans by July 3.
“We were moving so fast that keeping each other updated was half the battle,” Ohno said.
One key element was to follow a weekday tournament model that would allow players to make it from Monday qualifiers on the Korn Ferry Tour to LocaliQ Series events. That also greatly informed where the venues would be, starting just outside Atlanta, Georgia, and slowly working south into Florida, thus helping the large portion of affected players who live in that region of the United States.
The venues secured by Ohno’s team may have come at the last minute but the quality of courses is high. Included in the series is the Golf Club of Georgia and Echelon Golf Club (Alpharetta, Georgia), Callaway Resort and Gardens (Pine Mountain, Georgia), Auburn University Club (Auburn, Alabama) and the Club at Weston Hills (Fort Lauderdale, Florida).
The tournaments will feature a minimum $100,000 purse with the winner’s share set at $16,000. There also will be three exemptions available into a 2021 PGA Tour event – one going to the champion of the final tournament and two more for the top players on the series-long points list. If the winner of the final event is also one of the top two on the points list, the player in third place will earn the exemption.
Sean Fairholm
Top: Taylor Pendrith during the Mackenzie Tour's Mackenzie Investments Open in 2019