All parties involved in the staging of the PGA Tour’s Myrtle Beach Classic consider the inaugural tournament to be an unequivocal success, and are already looking ahead at ways to make the event better in 2025.
Tournament operator SportFive and title sponsor the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and Convention & Visitors Bureau, through Visit Myrtle Beach, announced Monday that the tournament attracted 41,793 spectators over five days.
“The total number of tickets sold exceeded our expectations,” said tournament director Darren Nelson of SportFive. “The total number of folks that came out was just incredible.
“. . . Certainly Year 1 there’s excitement and it’s really up to us as a team to keep that excitement going for Year 2 and make some tweaks with things we learned.”
Former No. 1 collegiate golfer Chris Gotterup, 24, won the $4 million tournament at The Dunes Golf and Beach Club on Sunday by six strokes with a 22-under 262.
Saturday was the best day of attendance with an announced 15,281 ticketed attendees, followed by Friday, Nelson said. Sunday attendance was likely hampered by it being Mother’s Day, though the weather on Saturday and Sunday was ideal for fans with temperatures in the low to mid-70s, little wind and no rain.
“I think with Mother’s Day people maybe came out on Saturday instead,” Nelson said.
Total attendance included spectators for Wednesday’s pro-am and the four tournament rounds.
“This community has wanted this for over 30 years, and they came out, they showed up,” said chamber and CVB president and CEO Karen Riordan. “And I’m not just talking about the numbers in terms of the fan base and spectators, but the volunteers. Just everything, the support, you felt it. It was real. I think there’s so much pride right now in this community. Next year I think we’ll be bigger and better.”
The tournament is expected to release its 2025 dates in the next month or so.
“The Myrtle Beach Classic had all the ingredients for an incredibly successful event, first-year or otherwise: an engaged sponsor in the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, a golf course in The Dunes Golf and Beach Club that players were extremely positive about, great fan support from the Myrtle Beach community and from afar and a team led by tournament director Darren Nelson that was flawless in its execution all week,” PGA Tour vice president of communications Joel Schuchmann said in an email to On The Green Magazine.
Tournament attendance in 2025 could benefit from Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte hosting next year’s PGA Championship. That means the $20 million Wells Fargo Championship, which was held concurrently with the Myrtle Beach event last week and featured 70 of the tour’s top players, will move to another location for at least one year and should be much farther away.
If the Myrtle Beach Classic isn’t held concurrently with the Wells Fargo tournament in 2025, it will still likely be farther away than a four-hour drive, so it shouldn’t take potential attendees away from the Myrtle Beach Classic, which last week’s Wells Fargo surely did.
Wells Fargo is not returning as title sponsor of the Charlotte event next year, and Sports Business Journal reported last week that Truist Financial, which is also based in Charlotte, will take over title sponsorship.
“We’ll be eager to hear what’s going on with the Wells tournament and sponsorship there, but also will we be playing opposite that again next year? I don’t really know that yet,” Riordan said.
The tournament operator perspective
Nelson found community support of the event to be exceptional with the attendance, corporate sponsorships, and more than 1,300 volunteer positions filling up in just a few hours.
“Everybody I talked to, they were over the moon,” Nelson said. “They were ecstatic, they were excited, whether it was a sponsor, whether it was the players [or fans].”
The Dunes Club as a golf course and host venue received rave reviews from the players, and that plays a large role in getting participants to return and enticing other players to come to the event.
The Dunes Club held up well to PGA Tour talent, with only Gotterup posting a score better than 16-under par over 72 holes, and could play tougher in future years depending on weather conditions and course preparation.
“Unfortunately we had some rain [Friday] night, so the [greens] are on the softer side, so you can kind of attack everything [on Saturday],” said Erik van Rooyen of South Africa, who tied for fourth at 15 under. “I told one of the members [Friday], if this course gets firm and fast with the greens being sort of upside down bowls where everything runs away on all sides, if you start tucking pins with rough and firm greens, it could play sort of like Bay Hill. It could be really, really tough.
“I absolutely love this golf course.”
Nelson said players were also complimentary of their overall treatment that included host lodging at Kingston Resorts, Cadillac courtesy cars, player dining and “all the different things and amenities we offer them that really creates the entire experience outside the ropes.”
“I think the player experience was dialed in,” Nelson said. “I think it’s the fan experience we can look at, and there are certainly some additions we can make.”
Early considerations for the 2025 tournament include additional bleacher seating, additional entertainment such as a concert Friday night added to the two that were held Thursday and Saturday at the conclusion of play featuring the Swingin’ Medallions and Thompson Square, and additional local vendors for food and beverage offerings in the Fan Zone between the 17th green and 18th tee.
“Just to have some more options up there. It seems like that’s an area where people are going to congregate,” Nelson said.
Ten to 12 members of the U.S. Army Golden Knights Parachute Team were scheduled to descend from planes, execute stunts and land on the beach prior to the start of Thursday’s concert, but their appearance was canceled due to weather conditions. That type of entertainment may again be scheduled in 2025.
Nelson said added seating could come from increasing the size of bleachers on the 17th and 18th holes, and adding bleachers at the par-3 ninth hole, par-4 10th green and 16th tee where parts of multiple holes could be viewed.
“Now that we’ve seen the spectator traffic and how it flows, it gives us a better idea of maybe where we can put those additional bleachers to enhance the fan experience,” Nelson said.
The tournament will be examined operationally involving things such as traffic patterns, busing, parking and spectator flow. “For a first-year event you just kind of analyze how it went and tweak a few things and make it better for the following year,” Nelson said.
The title sponsor perspective
Riordan was the driving force behind bringing a PGA Tour event to the Grand Strand.
“We knew it would put us more on a national stage, and that’s what I was looking for,” Riordan said. “My goal since I got here six years ago was wanting to continue to elevate Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. There are a lot of people who don’t know us, we’re not a major city, or they know us from 20 years ago or even 10 years ago.
“I’m excited to see what that long tail of this will be. There’s the ROI [return on investment] and the economic benefit specifically tournament week, but does it do that perception-wise, does it help us with everything we’re trying to achieve here long term?”
The chamber expects to receive an economic impact report on the tournament in the next couple months.
“Year 1 completely exceeded my expectations and I’m bullish for Year 2,” Riordan said. “I don’t have a single thing on my list of like, ‘Hey, this has got to be better for next year.’ Not a single one. From my perspective as a title sponsor, I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of big changes because everything went so smoothly. . . . But I do think there are some opportunities to do more.”
As a chamber and CVB, Visit Myrtle Beach has different objectives than a traditional corporate title sponsor of a PGA Tour event.
“As a DMO (destination marketing organization), our job really is to continue to enhance our visitor experience here, so our return on investment is going to look a little bit different,” Riordan said. “But it is absolutely about the economic impact and that experience. Did we give visitors and local community members an absolutely unforgettable experience and make them want to say, ‘Oh I want to buy tickets for next year?’ “
The tournament received eight hours of coverage on Golf Channel – two hours per day of competition – and as part of its sponsorship of the tournament Visit Myrtle Beach was able to provide promotional commercials for Myrtle Beach that ran frequently during the broadcasts.
“Eight hours on Golf Channel that have been basically a commercial for Myrtle Beach, South Carolina? I can’t pay for that. I really can’t,” Riordan said.
Riordan was pleased with the depth of Visit Myrtle Beach’s involvement in tournament details, branding, marketing and merchandising, including the creation of the tournament logo.
“Because we’re the CVB, we designed the logo for the Myrtle Beach Classic, we designed all of the signage,” Riordan said. “Everything that you’ve seen on the course was designed by the CVB in cooperation with SportFive, then they go and produce it and print it. That level of access to really setting the tone for what this tournament looks like . . . we were intimately involved in all that with SportFive, and I think that goes back to that teamwork and that cooperation.”
Riordan said SportFive and the PGA Tour essentially provided a ‘playbook’ on what to expect and the role and duties of a title sponsor. The Golf Tourism Solutions marketing and technology agency that promotes the Myrtle Beach market and is a significant tournament sponsor also played a role in the tournament’s operation and marketing.
“I can’t say enough about the cooperation,” Riordan said. “I think that’s a big aspect of why this week went well in my mind. The synergy and the work between The Dunes Club, SportFive, Visit Myrtle Beach and Golf Tourism Solutions I think is a winning formula. Everybody is on the same team, we’re communicating constantly, there were really no surprises. All those weekly meetings that then became daily meetings that became hourly meetings in the past month or so really paid off.”
The member perspective
“I thought the first year was absolutely incredible,” said Dunes Club president and member Blair Anderson. “You’re always concerned about the weather, you’re concerned about what the tour players are going to think of the golf course, and by the end of the weekend to hear all the rave reviews from all the spectators, the caddies, the tour players, it was just really overwhelming.”
Anderson believes the tournament has the support of The Dunes Club’s members, who gave up their golf course for two weeks. Each member received two grounds passes for the week, and had first right of refusal to buy any VIP and hospitality passes.
One hundred members had a noon shotgun start to play the course Monday with the same pin positions and maintenance conditions as the final round.
“The members had the same concerns in giving up the golf course,” Anderson said. “You just hope everybody enjoys it and it showcases well not only for the club but also for all of Myrtle Beach, and both of those were definitely accomplished. All of the members I spoke with were just raving about it and having a great time watching all the tour players play.
“One thing that we feel coming off this success is that next year will just be tremendous. I think it will just grow from here. I think you’ll have more spectators next year because the word will spread and people will want to come and watch the event because it was certainly just a wonderful four days of golf.”
