What's in a name? Tour stops such as the Travelers have gone by many
This week, CliffSchrock.com will be blogging from The Travelers Championship in Cromwell, CT:
Newcomers to watching the pro golf tour may benefit from the fact they aren’t familiar with all the tour titles that veteran observers have cycled through.
Take this week’s PGA Tour event near Hartford for instance. The tournament is on its eighth name, the Travelers Championship. This year is the 51st playing of the Insurance City event with a name other than its original, which was, well, the Insurance City Open. It was the ICO for 15 years, then the Greater Hartford Open Invitational (six), Sammy Davis Jr. Greater Hartford Open (12), Canon Sammy Davis Jr. Greater Hartford Open (four), Canon Greater Hartford Open (14), Greater Hartford Open (one), Buick Championship (three) and now the 11th year as the Travelers, with its adorable red umbrella logo.
The Insurance City Open was born at a time when most tour events simply went by the town where the event was being held. Made a lot of sense and local civic groups did all the grunt work to run the tournament. But when tour purses went through the roof, corporate money was needed to help foot the bills, so in came sponsors who wanted some bang for the buck, and one of the main methods was getting title sponsorship.
The San Diego Open was another tournament born at a time when the town name was used. If you’re old enough to know it when it started with that moniker in 1952, you are now on the 13th name for the tour stop. It’s been the Farmers Insurance Open since 2010, so recent golf fans have only had to recall one name to associate the tour with San Diego.
The years when tour events were known by their location—Los Angeles, San Diego, Dallas, Colonial—are long gone, swallowed up by the corporate titles. Traditionalists can bemoan it—and still call a tour event the L.A. Open if they want—but the old titles aren’t coming back. According to the PGA Tour media guide, of the non-major tour events on this year’s schedule, the San Diego/Farmers Insurance Open leads with the most titles at 13. Next are the Shell Houston Open and Valero Texas Open with 11 each, the Zurich Classic of New Orleans with 10 and the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by MasterCard, FedEx St. Jude Classic, the BMW Championship, the Tour Championship and the RBC Heritage with nine each. The tour event with the longest span using its current name is the Honda Classic, so named since 1984. Yet it’s on its sixth name since starting in 1972 as Jackie Gleason’s Inverrary Classic.
The only tour events using their original name? Well, it’s a a couple of newcomers: The Greenbrier Classic since 2010 and the Barbasol Championship since 2015.