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PGA Championship hospitality on record pace

The PGA Championship doesn’t come to Wisconsin’s Whistling Straits course until August, but tournament director Jason Mengel spent last week in Chicago promoting golf’s final major of 2015 in a market that will account for 30 percent of the event’s corporate hospitality business and 20 percent of its ticket sales.

Mengel is pushing hard to close deals on the last remaining hospitality inventory which, unlike when Whistling Straits hosted the PGA Championship in 2010, will all be located on the event course. In 2010, some chalets were located outside the entry of Whistling Straits, which is some 140 miles from Chicago in Kohler, Wis.

The event returns to Whistling Straits, where it was played in 2010.
Photo by: KOHLER CO.
The tournament already has sold all of its 30 chalets, ranging in price from $165,000 to $270,000 for Thursday to Sunday, though clients do have use of the tents for practice rounds if they choose. The tents can accommodate between 50 and 100 people and line the ninth, 15th, 17th and 18th holes.

In addition, all but two of the 30 Champions Club tables that cost $35,000 each and seat 10 guests are sold, and all but two of the 30 Gene Sarazen Suites that cost $99,000 each and accommodate 30 people are sold. The Champions Club tables are on the first hole, while the Sarazen Suites are on the 16th hole.

Helping push sales is an incentive tied into the 2020 Ryder Cup, which also will be played at Whistling Straits. Companies that buy hospitality for this year’s PGA Championship gain the right of first refusal to buy hospitality for the Ryder Cup.

Overall, Mengel said, ticket and hospitality sales are on track to break previous PGA Championship sales records, though he declined to comment on specific revenue.

MENGEL
“We are outpacing any previous PGA in history,” Mengel said. “The [hospitality] locations are close to golf and to views of Lake Michigan, and we have a Ryder Cup tie-in, and those factors help.”

This year’s PGA Championship week is Aug. 10-16.

Organizers have made changes to the course from when the tournament was last at Whistling Straits in 2010. The biggest of those changes shifted all the hospitality onto the course after hilly terrain surrounding the 15th hole was leveled, allowing for the additional tents available this year.

“Institutional knowledge helped improve things,” Mengel said. “The large-scale change was to make the change outside the ropes. They lowered the highs and built on it.”

On the ticket-sales front, daily general tickets for the championship’s Thursday to Sunday rounds cost $95, and practice rounds cost $30. Prices are generally flat compared with last year’s PGA Championship, which was held at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky.

“We will sell out the championship rounds, but practice rounds will be available,” Mengel said. “We took a long look at pricing. There has been very little change.”

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