IVINS — For at least one weekend a year, Southern Utah will be the center of the professional golfing universe.
After already gaining a stop on the LPGA Tour, St. George News has learned that the Black Desert Resort in Ivins will be announcing Friday that it will be hosting a stop on the PGA Tour.
The full details will be announced in a news conference at the Ivins course Friday with Utah Gov. Spencer Cox expected to be in attendance. Black Desert Resort officials said back in March it will either be the fall of 2024 or 2025, depending on when the under-construction resort’s hotel and shopping district are completed.
The likes of Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler, Rickie Fowler and, if he’s still playing at age 49, Tiger Woods will be playing below the red mountains of Ivins.
The PGA Tour solidified its place as the biggest professional golf league in the world after its merger earlier this month with the LIV Tour – a move that has generated some controversy because it would give the government of Saudi Arabia partial ownership of the league.
According to Patrick Manning, managing partner of Black Desert Resort developer Enlaw LLC, while the course was the last designed by former PGA pro and architect Tom Weiskopf before his death last year and was worthy of the pros, the idea of the PGA Tour coming to Southern Utah didn’t seem likely.
But Manning said he was convinced by Black Desert Resort golf director David Viveiros that it wasn’t an impossibility. Even so, when PGA Tour officials were invited to take a tour of the about-to-open course in February, the visit was meant to just be an introduction and a look-around.
By the end of it, Manning received a surprise.
“We got the PGA to come out and visit the course. They loved it and they gave us a term sheet,” Manning told St. George News. “ I think there was probably just some good timing involved but they said yes.”
By March, the agreement was reached between the PGA Tour and Black Desert Resort but held from the public until the announcement Friday.
It will be the first time the PGA Tour has come to the state since the Utah Open in the Salt Lake City area was last a PGA Tour stop in 1963.
It will also put the nation’s eyes on Ivins and the St. George area as the event is likely to be televised worldwide and nationally by either NBC, CBS or ABC/ESPN.
“We’ve already had the PGA’s event coordinators out and they’ve identified the spots where the grandstands, the TV towers, all the scaffolding that’s gonna be needed for the event,” Manning said.
Like the LPGA Tour event announced last month, the PGA Tour stop at Black Desert Resort will be a long-term contract with a stop in Ivins for at least the next five years and beyond.
And that will also draw an annual economic influx in tourism dollars to the area in the tens of millions.
According to the PGA Tour, most tournaments generate a $60 million to $80 million impact per year for a community. But that impact can be much larger. A recent Arizona State University study determined that the PGA Tour’s 2022 event in Phoenix added over $450 million annually to the Arizona economy.
In comparison, the LPGA Tour stop is expected to generate $20 million yearly for the local economy, while the Greater Zion Convention and Tourism Office says the one-time event Ironman World Championship last year generated $62.1 million.
Vivieros said usually a PGA Tour event draws golf fans from a 250-mile radius.
“Whenever a PGA tour or a professional tour event is implemented in an area, regardless of where you are from Albany the Pebble Beach, the 250-300-mile radius is in effect,” Vivieros told St. George News. The pool where you can expect will come from Vegas, Northern Utah, Mesquite and maybe even Southern California.”
Like the LPGA tournament, a plan is already in place for a system of shuttle busses and park-and-rides throughout Southern Utah to minimize the local traffic impact.
“We are just doing everything we possibly can to keep cars off the road. That is a No. 1 priority for us,” Manning said. “We care about the community. We live in the community and we have some of the same frustrations, but in the end, I think that we should be embracing our visitors and we should be welcoming them to our town and share with them everything that we have here.”
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