Procore Championship is returning to Napa’s Silverado Resort

PGA Tour golf comes back to California’s wine country in three months as Procore Corporation returns for its second year as the presenting sponsor of the Tour’s Napa stop, at the famed Silverado Resort & Spa, September 8–14.

Practice rounds and pro-am events start tournament week off, Monday through Wednesday, 8–10 September, with competition rounds beginning on Thursday the 11th.

The tournament has a long and varied history, stretching back to 2007 over three venues (Scottsdale, Arizona’s, Grayhawk Golf Club; CordeValle Golf Club in San Martin, California; and the current venue – Napa’s Silverado Resort & Spa) and three previous sponsors – Fry’s Electronics, Safeway, and Fortinet.

While the tournament’s spot in the PGA Tour calendar has remained fairly constant, its place in the scheme of things has not as the Tour veered from a calendar-year schedule to a split-year schedule and back again. Before the switch to a split-year schedule in 2013, this event’s early fall placement made it a post-Tour-Championship staple for newer players and fading veterans looking to boost their bank accounts while the big names took time off before the next year’s season opener in Hawaii. Starting in 2013 the event, as the Safeway Open, became the Tour’s season opener, and the awarding of FedEx Cup points boosted its appeal to players who wanted to get a jump on the year-long chase to the Tour Championship.

Previous sponsor Fortinet, an internet security firm, took over sponsorship from Safeway in 2021 with the openly admitted goal of possessing not only a prime venue in the heart of Northern California’s wine country, but THE prime spot in the PGA Tour schedule – the season opener.

Fortinet Senior VP Jim Overbeck was ambivalent, on the surface, about the change back to the calendar-year season when asked about it at a pre-tournament press conference in 2022, but the handwriting was on the wall, and the network security firm – who I always felt saw the tournament as a combination networking event and corporate party that just happened to have a golf tournament attached – pulled out of their deal with the PGA Tour and left the event’s local organizers scrambling for a presenting sponsor.

Current sponsor Procore, a construction management software company based in Carpinteria, California, is in the second-year of the two-year commitment they signed up for last year. Who knows where the event will go from here – but for now golf fans can once again look forward to enjoying good food, good wine, and world-class golf action at a handsome venue overlooked by the golden hillsides of the Napa Valley.

General admission tickets start at $55 per day and include access to PGA TOUR competition, all fan zones, and public viewing areas. Children 15 and under are admitted free with a ticketed adult (up to four per adult). Daily parking is available for $25 and can be purchased in advance online.

For a $250 daily ticket, fans looking for an upgraded experience can elevate their day at the Redwood Club, an all-new VIP shared hospitality venue behind the 18th tee. Amenities include front-row seating, a hosted daily lunch, beer and wine service, a full cash bar for spirits, and upgraded restrooms.

Ticketing information for the tournament is available online at https://procorechampionship.com/tickets/, and if an up-close, behind-the-scenes PGA Tour experience is what you are looking for, check out volunteer opportunities at https://procorechampionship.com/Volunteer/.

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.

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

PGA Tour season opens in the Napa Valley under orange-tinted skies

 Advocates of a PGA Tour off-season got no satisfaction this week as the 2020–2021 season opener got underway at Napa’s Silverado Resort and Spa on Thursday – hard on the heels of the Labor Day Monday finish of the 2019–2020 Fedex Cup final.

Ominous orange-tinted skies brought back memories of the 2018 event, which closed out its final day in blustery conditions that, later in the evening, played a part in igniting wildfires in the nearby hills that swept across the tournament venue destroying at least one grandstand complex. Though not directly threatened by any of the wildfires currently raging across the state of California, the Napa area, like much of Northern California, is suffering the worst air-quality conditions the region has ever experienced.

This year’s field for the event is a disparate collection of young guns and established stars, with a healthy dose of major winners—Sergio Garcia, Jordan Spieth, Jim Furyk, Shane Lowry, Charl Schwartzel, Keegan Bradley, Jason Dufner, and the ubiquitous Phil Mickelson (whose representing agency, Lagardère Sports, is the event organizer), and one former World Number One, Luke Donald.

You had to look a ways down the leaderboard after the first round to see any of those names, however, as Schwartzel, the 2014 Master champion, Shane Lowry, 2019 Open champion, and Keegan Bradley, the 2013 PGA champion, had the best first rounds of their major-winning peers, all opening at T11 with 4-under 68s.

Dufner and Mickelson were next among the major winners in the field at 2-under and 1-under, respectively, while none of the rest managed to break par: Garcia and Furyk at even par; and Jordan Spieth, whose struggles continue into the new season, at 1-over. Luke Donald, whose tenure as World #1 lasted for a mere four weeks in 2012, struggled to 6-over 78.

The leader after Round One was Scotsman Russell Knox, who opened with a clean-card 9-under 63 on the 7,203-yard North Course at Silverado, followed by Sam Burns, Bo Hoag, and Cameron Percy, all one shot back at 8-under. Two-time Safeway Open champ Brendan Steele opened with what for him was a typical opening round on the wine-country course, a 7-under 65. The 2017 and 2018 champion in the event carded opening rounds of 67 and 65 in his recent back-to-back victories here.