PGA Tour’s Napa event has a new sponsor – Procore

While the big boys and girls of the sports-reporting world were in Paris covering the Olympics and the first day of Olympic golf competition, some of we lesser lights in the world of golf media converged on the Silverado Resort in beautiful Napa, California for the media day for the upcoming 2024 edition of the PGA Tour’s Napa Valley stop.

It was an intriguing invitation, because the early communications from the event’s organizers had labeled it as the “Napa Valley Golf Championship”, signaling that the presenting sponsor of the last three years, the cybersecurity company Fortinet, had pulled out after completing only half of its six-year commitment to bankroll the tournament. Frankly, I wasn’t too surprised, because Fortinet had made it clear all along, back in the days before the Tour’s return to a calendar-year schedule, that they wanted Napa, and they wanted that special spot in the tournament calendar that this event occupied.

“We made a six-year commitment to the PGA Tour as a partner to have the Fortinet Championship, and the concept was we would be the first event of the season, and kick off the FedEx Cup points. That’s changed.

“We’re working very tightly with them—they know our preference. They know what we’re willing to do and it has a lot to do with Napa.”

Two years ago, in a press conference before the second year of Fortinet’s tenure as the presenting sponsor of this event, I asked their Senior VP of Marketing for North America, Jim Overbeck, what they thought about the schedule changes:

“I told them as the music’s playing, when it stops we don’t want to be in a worse chair than when we started. They’ve been a great partner with us, and they’re working to move some roadblocks to make sure that we’re in a really good spot.”

Evidently those roadblocks couldn’t be overcome, because here we are in 2024 and Fortinet is out. John Norris, the PGA Tour’s Senior VP of Tournament Business, politely declined to comment on the terms of Fortinet’s exit.

Past business aside, in what was almost literally an 11th-hour deal, Procore Technologies, Inc., a construction management software company based in Carpinteria, California, near Santa Barbara, has signed on for an initial two-year commitment to sponsor what will now be known as the Procore Championship. (I’m not exaggerating when I call it an 11th-hour deal: the agreement was signed at 8:00 p.m. on July 30th, the night before the July 31st media day press conference.)

Fans will notice some differences from last year’s event, with a return to parking at several sites along Atlas Peak Road, all served by shuttles, and the entrance to the tournament grounds once again just to the left of the main lawn, adjacent to the pro shop.

Though the post-round concerts won’t be back this year, the tournament’s events committee and the new sponsor’s management are committed to making the Procore Championship a fan-friendly event that highlights the special qualities of the Napa Valley region while providing a great golf-viewing experience.

Tournament rounds will take place September 12 – 15, at Silverado Resort and Spa at 1600 Atlas Peak Road, Napa. More fan information, including ticket info, is available at https://procorechampionship.com.

Napa Valley Golf Championship calls for volunteers

The rebranded Napa Valley PGA Tour event is putting out a call for volunteers to help run this year’s event. Formerly known as the Safeway Open and the Fortinet Championship, the Napa Valley Golf Championship, an official PGA TOUR event, takes place Sept. 12–15, 2024 at Silverado Resort in Napa, California.

If you have ever attended or even previously volunteered at a golf tournament, whether professional or amateur, you know how important the volunteer workers are to the running of an event. It is a fun, rewarding activity – I know, as I have volunteered at a number of USGA championship events – and a great chance to see, in this case, Tour-level professional golf close-up.

Committees seeking volunteers for the event include the hospitality committee, the supply and distribution committee, and the gallery management ambassador committee.

A branded uniform, including a polo, jacket and hat, in addition to other appreciation pieces, is included in the registration fee ($55 for new volunteers.)

For more information on committee descriptions and to sign up visit NapaValleyGolfChampionship.com/Volunteer/.

Fortinet Championship kicks off FedEx Cup chase again in 2022, but what comes next?

The 2021 Fortinet Championship (the event previously known as the Safeway Championship) was a successful tournament, and Fortinet, the Silicon Valley online-security company, did an admirable job of stepping up and taking over as presenting sponsor when Safeway stepped away from the role after the 2020 event. Back for 2022, with a few minor changes in the entertainment and hospitality aspects of the event, the Fortinet Championship is set, once again, to open the 2022-2023 PGA Tour season and the race to the FedEx Cup—but what about the future?

This event is no stranger to change. First staged in 2007 as the Fry’s Electronics Open at the Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, it was renamed the Frys.com Open in 2008, was moved to the CordeValle Golf Club in San Martin, California in 2010, and moved again, to its current location at the Silverado Resort and Spa, in October 2014. In 2016 Safeway Inc. took over the event, which was played as the Safeway Open through 2020, and in 2021 Fortinet took up the mantle.

Starting in 2024 the PGA Tour is going back to a calendar-year schedule, ending the nine-year run, starting in 2013, of the oddball wraparound season that elevated the then-Frys.com Open from the first event of the post-Tour Championship fall schedule to the opening gun in the race for FedEx Cup points. The coming change in schedule means that the 2023 Fortinet Championship may once again be relegated to a position as the first event in a second-tier fall schedule that will lack the presence of the big guns of the PGA Tour, who are  likely to be resting up after the money chase of the FedEx Cup finals.

Back in the days before the 2013 advent of the wrap-around PGA Tour season, the late-season Fall Series tournament consisted of four events played after the conclusion of the FedEx Cup Tour Championship series. That “Fall Series” was definitely the low season for the PGA Tour; it mostly drew players from near the bottom of the money list—both veterans and newbies—who were looking to bolster their dollar count and strengthen their position for the next season.

Under the PGA Tour’s coming new calendar-year schedule, those players who are outside of the FedEx-Cup-eligible top-70 at the end of the regular season will compete in a “compelling, consequential final stretch” of fall events that will determine their status for the following season, while the top 50 players will be eligible for a new Fall Series of up to three international events played after the Tour Championship. These new, limited-field, no-cut (AKA “money-grab”) events will represent a chance for the top players to pad their bank accounts some more, if they so desire, and still have the “off season” that so many of the already-pampered stars of the game are complaining that they lack.

The old pre-wraparound Fall Series may have lacked the star power and tension of the race for the FedEx Cup, but it carried some drama because of the make-or-break storylines that it engendered. At least, that’s the way many people saw it, myself included—but after I asked Jim Overbeck, Fortinet’s Senior Vice President of Marketing for North America, about the company’s reaction to the scheduling change, I got the feeling that the folks at Fortinet don’t feel the same way.

The talk from the dais at the 2022 Fortinet Championship Media Day press conference on July 14th was almost all about the business-networking opportunities that the tournament represents, giving the distinct impression that the golf tournament was viewed as a jolly good excuse to get together and talk network security against a backdrop of beautiful Napa Valley scenery, amongst rolling, vine-covered hills, while enjoying world-class wine and food.

Overbeck’s initial response to my question was, “If there’s one question I saw coming, that was the question.”

He continued, saying “We made a six-year commitment to the PGA Tour as a partner to have the Fortinet Championship, and the concept was we would be the first event of the season, and kick off the FedEx Cup points. That’s changed.”

The return to a calendar-year season means “our product changes a little bit.” Citing his relationship with the PGA Tour, Overbeck went on to say, “We’re working very tightly with them—they know our preference. They know what we’re willing to do and it has a lot to do with Napa. I told them as the music’s playing, when it stops we don’t want to be in a worse chair than when we started. They’ve been a great partner with us, and they’re working to move some roadblocks to make sure that we’re in a really good spot.”

I’ll be honest—I don’t know exactly what all of that means, but that one sentence—“I told them as the music’s playing, when it stops we don’t want to be in a worse chair than when we started.”—leads me to think that the Fortinet folks really like Napa, but don’t relish the thought of losing the cachet of being the event that kicks off the PGA Tour’s big show—the FedEx Cup race.

Does this mean that a change in the Fortinet Championship’s spot in the PGA Tour schedule is in the works once the calendar-year season returns? We will have to wait and see, and maybe not as long as we might think, because while the new schedule begins in January 2024, the change really comes in August 2023 after the Tour Championship, when the new fall schedule picks up as a lead-in to the return of the calendar-year season.

Late-Sunday Cal-Stanford alumni matchup at Fortinet Championship goes Cal’s way as Max Homa wins

“I’d rather be lucky than good” was one of my late father’s favorite sayings, but what’s hard to beat is someone who’s both—and that sums up 8-year Tour pro Max Homa’s final round at the Fortinet Championship pretty well.

Opening the tournament with a 5-under 67 was a good start for the 2013 Cal grad, but following the 67 with an even-par 72 must have made for a tense Friday evening—he was not to know this, of course, but no one else who carded an even-par round on Friday finished better than T-22, and 18 of those who did, missed the cut.

Still, Homa’s five-under standing was good enough to make the cut with a shot or two to spare, and a Saturday pairing with fellow SoCal native and notable positive-thinker Phil Mickelson may have been just what the doctor ordered for him. After a so-so one-under opening nine in which he balanced two bogeys against three birdies, Homa and Mickelson had a chat and decided that they both needed to get something done on the back nine.

It worked. Mickelson ran off a string of five birdies after a bogey on the 12th, and Homa birdied six of the nine holes, including a string of three to close out the round, with no bogeys, for a back-nine 30. The “moving day” 65 put Homa in a five-way tie for 3rd, two strokes behind co-leaders Maverick McNealy and Jim Knous.

Homa and McNealy ran off identical 33s on the front nine on Sunday, and Homa slipped back by a stroke with an untimely bogey and the par-4 10th hole—but it was at the 12th, a relatively straightforward 393-yard par-four, that things began to get interesting.

Homa’s drive strayed right and ended up in a reasonable lie in the right rough, leaving him 94 yards to the back-center flag. Trusting in the advice of his caddy, Joe Greiner, Homa lofted a shot to the center of the green that took three hops and rolled on a curving left-to-right path right into the cup for an eagle—and all of a sudden he was one back of the leader McNealy. Skill? Yes, but even Homa admitted after the round that it was a lucky shot.

Stanford grad McNealy, whose game had cooled off after a second-round 64, opened his fourth-round back nine with a string of six pars, while Homa followed the pitch-in eagle on 12 with a birdie on 13 to tie the lead. For the next three holes nothing changed, as the two carded identical pars on holes 14 through 16—and then came the 17th hole.

Max Homa hit two pure shots, one from the tee and one from the fairway that landed 18 feet above the hole, and rolled in a tricky right-to-left downhill slider to make birdie, and take over the lead, by a stroke, from McNealy.

McNealy, on the other hand, fared rather less well on the 17th hole than his namesake automobile—a nondescript compact marketed by Ford in the 1970s—ever had in the marketplace.

Coming over the top with probably the only bad swing he had made all day, McNealy’s tee shot at the 361-yard par-four hit a tree on the right and dropped well short, leaving him farther from the hole—189 yards—than he was from the tee. His second flew the green, and his chip from the trampled-down rough behind the putting surface raced by the hole on the downslope and ran off the front of the green. Another chip, from the front apron, left him an 11-foot bogey putt down the hill, which narrowly missed, followed by a two-footer for double-bogey that finally dropped.

And just like that, Max Homa was the tournament leader by three strokes.

A sloppy but routine par at the 18th by Homa put McNealy in the unenviable position of having to hole out from the fairway to tie the round and force a playoff. That fairytale scenario didn’t pan out, but the young man who literally grew up on Pebble Beach Golf Links before his family moved to Hillsborough, on the San Francisco Peninsula, when he was a teen, and who was more interested in hockey than golf before walking on to the Stanford Men’s Golf team, showed his fortitude on the final hole. With a calm that showed that he had put the relative ugliness of the previous hole behind him, he striped a center-cut drive down the final fairway, followed by a beauty of a shot to the back of the green at the par-five 18th, rolling in a 32-foot eagle putt to cement a solo second-place finish.

It was an exciting final-round tussle between a SoCal kid who came north to play college golf for public university Cal-Berkeley, and a NorCal native who made his mark on the team for the exclusive private university across the bay. This was Homa’s third win, and second in his home state, and while McNealy is still looking for his first PGA Tour victory, this tournament, and his narrow miss to finish second at last year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, show that his fans are not likely to have to wait long before he hoists a trophy on the PGA Tour.

Day One is in the books at the 2021 Fortinet Championship

Given the variety of weather and playing conditions stress that has plagued the PGA Tour’s Napa Valley stop in recent years—high winds, fires, smoke-filled skies—a day that begins under a cool, grey overcast and finished under clear, sunny skies, with only light, fitful breezes, has to be considered a total win. Such was Day One of the 2021 Fortinet Championship at the Silverado Resort and Spa.

Tournament spokesman Phil Mickelson had a fair first round, opening with a 2-under 70, slotting him in at T-34 at the close of play; it was a good fit with his opening round record here at Silverado from 2016 through 2020: 69–69–65–75–71. The two other most notable names in the field, and the two top-ranked players at Silverado this week, World #1 Jon Rahm, and 2021 Masters champ and #20-ranked Hideki Matsuyama, had mixed results, due mostly to moderate to poor performances on the greens. Matsuyama closed out the day with a 3-under 69, T-23; while Rahm carded an even-par 72 to sit T-104 at the end of the day.

Sitting atop the leaderboard at the end of the first round was Kansas native and ASU grad Chez Reavie, who carded a 7-under 65 on the strength of Top 10 rankings in both Strokes-Gained-Approach and Strokes-Gained Putting. Tied for second behind Reavie are American Cameron Tringale and Canadian Adam Hadwin, both a stroke back at 6-under 66.

Among NorCal-adjacent players, SoCal native and former Cal Men’s Golf player Max Homa got his tournament off to a strong start with a 5-under 67, T-4. This is by far his best first-round performance on Silverado’s North Course, where he has opened with rounds of 72, 80 (ouch!), 72, and 70 in his past recent appearances.

Three Stanford Men’s Golf alumni, Patrick Rodgers, Maverick McNealy, and Joseph Bramlett, are next in the pack of NorCal-connected players, at 4-under, 3-under, and 3-under, respectively.

Among the former winners of this event that are in the field this year, Emiliano Grillo (2015), Brendan Steele (2016, 2017), and Kevin Tway (2018) all came in at 2-under 70, while Cameron Champ (2019) struggled to a 1-over 73.

It’s good to be back

The COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns have led to big changes in everyone’s lives, and a part-time, freelancing golf writer like myself missing out on a few of the golf events that come to the Bay Area is of minor importance; nevertheless, it felt great to walk into the media center for the 2021 Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort and Spa on Wednesday morning of tournament week.

A golf tournament media center is a busy place; there are always conversations going on and heads bent over the ubiquitous laptop computers. Writers and photographers come and go, heading out to the course to watch a specific player or group of players or to conduct an interview, or returning to transcribe notes, write stories, or process photos. Things quiet down in the late afternoon and evening, especially Sunday evening, when the writers who are on deadline are pounding their keyboards in earnest, thinking fast and typing faster in order to get their stories in on time.

I may not be a week-to-week denizen of golf tournament media centers, but I have spent my share of time in them over the last nine years, and they have become familiar places to me. It began with the 2012 U.S. Open at the Olympic Club—and if that’s not starting by jumping into the deep end, I don’t know what is. Since then I have covered seven more USGA championships: another U.S. Open, at Pebble Beach; two U.S. Women’s Opens, at CordeValle and the Olympic Club; two Girls’ Jr Championships, at Lake Merced Golf Club and Poppy Hills; a Jr Amateur Championship, at Martis Camp; and a Women’s Senior Amateur at CordeValle.

I have also been privileged to cover the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the First Tee Open at Pebble Beach; the Schwab Cup Championship at TPC Harding Park; and the Frys.com Open / Safeway Open / Fortinet Championship at CordeValle, and now Silverado Resort and Spa.

Along the way I have met, and in some cases gotten to know either as nodding acquaintances or good friends, a number of the prominent names in golf coverage, both locally and nationally—people who cover the game for a living, and from whom I have learned much just by listening and reading their work. It felt strange to be a “new kid” again when I started my side gig as a golf writer, especially after having achieved something like “elder statesman” status in my engineering career, but fresh starts keep a person young, I believe, and I have enjoyed the opportunities I have had to meet those writers whose work I have been reading for years, and to learn from those pros.

Though they have been only a small part of my life, I missed the hustle and bustle of a media center during my time away due to the lockdown. It’s an environment that couldn’t be more different from the engineering-office workspaces I have been inhabited since 1981, and as I come close to bringing down the curtain on a 40+ year mechanical engineering career, I hope to be able to extend my side-gig golf-writing career to semi-fulltime status, and continue to spend time in tournament media centers.

Watch this space over the next four days as I bring you stories and insights from the PGA Tour 2021/2022 season opener—the Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort and Spa.

A leavening of big names enriches the field in Napa this week for PGA Tour season opener

Before the PGA Tour’s changeover to the split schedule in 2013–2014, the events which were played in the Fall and early winter, after the Tour Championship, were known as the Fall Series. These tournament were generally played by a mix of young guns, mid-packers, and former greats who had slipped off their game—players who had to scramble for starts in the regular season and were looking for opportunities to play their way into, or back into, the mainstream events of the Tour.

With the onset to the split schedule some things changed, and some things stayed the same. FedEx Cup points and a shot at a Masters berth were added to the plate for these events, adding further incentive for their traditional fields, but the fields generally remained the same, with few of the big names wanting or needing to tee it up and play before the traditional season-openers in Hawaii in January.

The newly revamped Fortinet Championship (formerly the Safeway Open; before that the Frys.com Open) sits in a somewhat precarious spot in the schedule this year—after the FedEx Cup and the week-long PGA Tour “off-season”, and immediately before the Ryder Cup. The crème de la crème of American players are in Wisconsin practicing at Whistling Straits with Ryder Cup skipper Steve Stricker, so some of the big names that golf fans would love to see this week won’t be in the field. Despite that, there will still be plenty of talent, and a few big names, striding the fairways of the North Course at the Silverado Resort & Spa in Napa later this week.

One big-name early commit is fan favorite Phil Mickelson. Mickelson was the official tournament spokesman for event during its four-year run as the Safeway Open, thanks to his association with tournament organizers Lagardère Sports, and has remained in that role after the handover to cyber-security company Fortinet as presenting sponsor of the event. Presumably he doesn’t need to be in Wisconsin this week to prep for his role as a Ryder Cup vice-captain.

One surprising, and very welcome, name in the field this week is Jon Rahm, the current holder of the World #1 ranking and a member of the 2021 European Ryder Cup team that will be in Whistling Straits next week.

You have to read down the OWGR list to #20, Hideki Matsuyama, for the next top-tier name that is appearing in the field at Silverado this week, hopscotching over a bunch of guys who will be teeing it up at Whistling Straits next week, on both squads. Webb Simpson and Kevin Na round out the rest of the Top 30 players who are in the field this week.

Plenty of other notable, recognizable names are in the field, though, such PGA Tour stalwarts as Charley Hoffman, Charles Howell III, Matt Kuchar, Pat Perez, Jason Dufner, Brandt Snedeker, and Harold Varner III.

Former champions of the event who are in the field this year include Sangmoon Bae (2014) and Emiliano Grillo (2015) from the Frys.com Open days; Brendan Steele (2016, 2017), the first Safeway Open champ, who liked it so well he came back and did it again the next year; and Kevin Tway (2018). Other players of note whom fans will be able to see this week are Danny Willett, who benefitted from Jordan Spieth’s 2016 Masters meltdown to take home that year’s green jacket; and newly named PGA Tour Rookie of the Year, Will Zalatoris.

Players of particular interest to Northern California golf fans include 2019 winner Cameron Champ, of Sacramento; Kevin Chappell, out of Fresno and UCLA; former Stanford Men’s golf team members Patrick Rodgers, Brandon Wu, San José native Joseph Bramlett, and Hillsborough’s Maverick McNealy; Cal Men’s golf graduates James Hahn, of Alameda, and Max Homa; former SJSU Spartan Mark Hubbard, and Sacramento native and Fresno State grad Nick Watney.

Fortinet Championship: New kids on the block look forward to their spot on the PGA Tour calendar

It’s a fact of life in the world of corporate sponsorship of sporting events that sponsors come and go, and though not as regular as the changing of the seasons, it is as inevitable as the tide. The time has come, in that irregular cycle, for a much-loved Northern California event—the erstwhile Safeway Open, held at Napa’s Silverado Resort and Spa for the last four years, is turning over a new leaf to become the Fortinet Championship.

The Mansion at Silverado Resort and Spa, on the east side of the Napa Valley, once the home of United States Senator John Miller. (photo courtesy Silverado Resort and Spa)

Fortinet is not a name that you will necessarily be familiar with unless you are a commercial IT professional; they are a 20-year-old Silicon Valley company, headquartered in Sunnyvale, that provides enterprise security services to businesses, and educational and government institutions. The $4 billion company stepped in to take up the sponsorship of the season-opening PGA Tour event when Safeway ended a four-year run as title sponsor in 2020.

Fortinet has committed to a six-year run as title sponsor of the event, with an option for a seventh. Asked during a media day press conference last week if the company is committed to keeping the event at the Napa Valley venue, Fortinet’s Chief Marketing Officer John Maddison said that while they are not contractually obligated to the Silverado Resort and Spa, they consider it an ideal location for the event for their purposes.

The new title sponsor will be conducting a cyber-security symposium during tournament week along with partners IBM and CDW, among others, but while the IT executives and professionals are schmoozing and networking, golf fans who are just looking for a nice day out on a beautiful golf course will still get to enjoy good food, drink, and post-round entertainment, along with some golf competition on the Johnny Miller-designed North Course at Silverado Resort and Spa.

The full list of competitors for the 2021 event isn’t known yet, but Phil Mickelson, who stepped into the role of tournament spokesperson during the Safeway Open period (I’m going to miss those big cardboard Phil cutouts at my local Safeway…) through his association with sports-marketing firm Lagardére is continuing his commitment to the event. The 2019 winner, Cameron Champ, a NorCal local from Sacramento, is also committed to the tournament. Champ’s non-profit, the Cameron Champ Foundation, will hold a pro-am and a charity golf tournament on the Monday of tournament week, September 13th.

More information on the event, including parking, food and drink, volunteer and sponsorship opportunities, ticket sales and the lineup for the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night live music concerts can be found online at https://www.fortinetchampionship.com