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Chrysler money helps Classic raise profile

Chrysler will help the Tampa Bay Classic become a top-level tournament on the PGA Tour with an average purse of $5-million and a late October date that promises to attract the best players. That was the bottom line Monday when the PGA Tour announced its four-tournament agreement with DaimlerChrysler, which includes the Chrysler Championship of Tampa Bay from 2003-06 at the Westin Innisbrook Resort in Palm Harbor.

And Roger Larson couldn't help but think about how far the tournament has come.

Larson is a past general chairman of the event and a founding member of Suncoast Golf Classic, the nonprofit organization that owns the tournament and brought the PGA Tour to Pinellas County in the late 1970s.

The event was the JCPenney Classic, a mixed-team tournament of PGA and LPGA Tour pros that operated below the radar for most of its 25 years.

When JCPenney got out of golf in the late 1990s, Suncoast Golf saw an opportunity to become a regular tour event. Little did Larson know what was in store.

"We were having about three years of heart attacks," Larson said Monday. "In this economy and this marketplace, it's very hard to get somebody to step up to the plate and spend this kind of money for one week.

"You really have to find a corporate partner to get involved at that level. We got a lot of assistance from the tour. And there were a lot of prayers."

The result is a marquee event to be played on national television at a crucial point of the season. DaimlerChrysler will spend about $24-million on this tournament over four years.

A tournament of such magnitude might not have seemed possible five months ago.

After losing JCPenney, the tournament went without corporate support in 2000, and the PGA Tour covered the purse. Then Buick signed on as a presenting sponsor for 2001-02, meaning it would provide limited assistance while the event was played opposite another tournament. Last summer, when the tour's television contract for 2003-06 was announced, Tampa Bay was given the late October dates. And the feeling was an agreement would be reached with Buick as title sponsor.

But fewer than two months after the 2001 tournament was canceled due to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Buick decided it no longer wanted to sponsor the event beyond this year.

"I'd by lying to you if I told you that the moment that Buick told me they would not be doing the tournament that there wasn't a thought in my mind that said it could be over," tournament director Gerald Goodman said.

"I knew how hard we worked to get Buick. And at the time, there were at least six tournaments looking for title sponsors."

Goodman said he knew the climate for finding a title sponsor was not good. The Michelob Championship and Advil Western Open will lose their sponsors after this year. And Buick no longer will sponsor the tournament in Pine Mountain, Ga.

But Goodman, who used to work for the tour, had an ally in Duke Butler, the PGA Tour's vice president of tournament business affairs.

Butler was disappointed Buick pulled out after the tour paved the way for Buick to leave the Pine Mountain, Ga., event and take over here.

And when he learned of Chrysler's interest in sponsoring more tournaments, he helped bring the parties together.

"The PGA Tour had hoped all along to keep an event in Tampa Bay," Butler said. "When it became apparent we needed a different sponsor for the '03 Tampa Bay tournament, they received favorable consideration but not exclusive consideration. There are some premier cities that do not host PGA Tour events -- Minneapolis, St. Louis, Seattle, Charlotte, Birmingham ...

"But I think the fine job that the Tampa Bay Classic had made in overcoming every obstacle helped win the favor of Chrysler and the PGA Tour."

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