Sahalee Players Championship to Bypass 2016, Renew in 2017
The Sahalee Players Championship Tournament Committee and Sahalee Country Club have announced that the Sahalee Players Championship (SPC) will not be played in 2016 due to the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship being held at Sahalee on June 9-12, 2016. The SPC will return to Sahalee Country Club in 2017 and will be held during its traditionally scheduled time in the first week of July.
This marks the third time in the 25-year history of the SPC that it will not be held due to commitments by Sahalee to host major golf championships. Both the 1998 PGA Championship and the 2002 World Golf Championships-NEC Invitational resulted in the SPC being suspended for the year. In 2010 the U.S. Senior Open, held that year at Sahalee, caused the SPC to be played at The Home Course in DuPont, Wash., which was the companion course for that year’s U.S. Amateur Championship.
“With the considerable amount of resources it takes for Sahalee Country Club to host a major LPGA championship, it is in the best interest of the Sahalee Players Championship to suspend play in 2016,” said SPC Tournament Chairman Mike Jonson. “The short time frame between the KPMG and the SPC doesn’t allow for the championship to be conducted at the exceptional level the committee expects. Our focus will be on 2017, when the Sahalee Players Championship will continue to bring some of the world’s best amateurs to the Pacific Northwest.”
Since 2000 the Sahalee Players Championship and the Pacific Northwest Golf Association (PNGA) have combined to present the Western Swing, consisting of the SPC and PNGA Men’s Amateur Championship being played in back to back weeks at the beginning of July. The 115th PNGA Men’s Amateur Championship will be held in 2016 during the second week of July at a site that has yet to be determined. The Western Swing will return as scheduled in July of 2017. Visit www.thepnga.org for more information.
The SPC is one of the events watched by the United States Golf Association when making future selections for the U.S. team in the next Walker Cup.
Past champions of this prestigious amateur championship include Kyle Stanley, Casey Martin, Peter Uihlein, Nick Taylor, Daniel Summerhays, Ryan Moore, Chris Williams, Arron Oberholser and Jason Gore, among others.
Five of the past 12 SPC champions were winners of the Ben Hogan Award, given to the nation’s top collegiate golfer. More than a dozen SPC participants have gone on to play on the PGA Tour.
In addition to the annual Sahalee Players Championship, the club has also tested the world’s best when it hosted the 2010 U.S. Senior Open, which was won by Bernhard Langer; the 1998 PGA Championship, won by Vijay Singh; the 2002 World Golf Championships-NEC Invitational, won by Craig Parry; and the 1978 Pacific Coast Amateur, won by Mike Gove.
