New PGA tournament at home in Boston
September 1, 2003

NORTON, Mass. -- Everywhere he went at the TPC of Boston this weekend, Curtis Strange heard fans yelling, "Welcome back!"

They remembered his 1988 victory in the U.S. Open at The Country Club, but they could have been talking to any of the players at the first PGA Tour event in the area in five years.

"We've got to keep this here. We've got to keep this going," said Brad Faxon, a Rhode Island native who's been the tournament's biggest booster on the tour. "This is awesome."

Adam Scott won the Deutsche Bank Championship by four strokes on Monday, finishing at 20 under for his first PGA victory. But that was almost an afterthought for those who have been waiting for golf's best to return.

"The crowds were nuts," runner-up Rocco Mediate said. "We need a tournament up here."

The CVS Charity Classic pulled out of Sutton, about an hour west of Boston, in 1998 for lack of a sponsor or regular spot on the schedule. The '99 Ryder Cup was at The Country Club in Brookline, where Strange won his first of two consecutive U.S. Opens.

Since then, local golf fans have made do with an annual event on the Champions Tour.

But Tiger Woods doesn't play with the seniors.

"The fact that Tiger was here really, really helped. Hopefully he liked it enough to come back," said Paul Azinger, who was standing next to a banner that noted the tournament's connection to the Tiger Woods Foundation. "Hopefully that makes a difference."

The sponsors have committed to the tournament and to Woods' foundation for four years, but the deal with the site only runs two years. One big factor in whether the event stays in Boston will be whether Woods keeps it on his schedule.

Asked if he was looking forward to coming back, Woods said, "I am."

Seth Waugh, the chief executive officer of Deutsche Bank Americas, said the event can be successful without Woods.

"Obviously, he raises the level. As you know, he's a phenomenon," Waugh said. "But this is an unbelievable sports town and an unbelievable golf town that has proved it deserves a PGA event. ... Boston has done everything it possibly can to show it's deserving."

The tournament easily sold out the 25,000 tickets it printed for each day. Based on the number of calls coming in this week, tournament director Jay Monahan said, they could have sold 10,000 more.

The course -- carved from 355 acres of woods and wetlands -- could handle more fans. But Monahan guessed that they might not be so happy six deep around the greens, craning their necks to catch a glimpse of the action.

"If you sell too many tickets in Year One," Monahan said, "you're off to a bad start."

Clearly, that wasn't the case this weekend. No effort was spared to make the golfers feel at home in a town some of them had never visited.

The draw party for the Pro-Am was at the Massachusetts state house and the banquet after it was at Fenway Park. The players and their wives were given access to a spa and a private plane to Nantucket and tickets for the Red Sox or Jimmy Buffett; for their children, there was a play area and day care.

"Each time I come to the U.S., I find things are run so well. We're treated like royalty," said Phillip Price, a Welshman who mostly comes over for the majors. "This was exactly the same."

The biggest complaint from some of the golfers was the condition of the course.

Woods mentioned early in the week about having to hit out of sand-filled divots. Azinger said the greens were too severe. Jesper Parnevik, for the record, had nothing bad to say about the course: "We're not supposed to say anything bad about the course," he said tellingly.

But Parnevik, a Swede who played for Europe in the '99 Ryder Cup when some American fans got carried away with national loyalty, said the crowds in Norton were enthusiastic but well-behaved.

"I don't know if all the players would be too thrilled at this golf course," he said. "But a tournament needs to be played up here for sure."

Faxon heard the complaints as well: the bare spots where the putting green was cut too short, the divots that didn't heal because the course was shut down just one week before the event, instead of two or three.

"Those are things that aren't going to be done next year," he said. "But this is a 1-year-old golf course. There's a lot of things that can be improved. It's unfair to compare this course, this year, to a course like Riviera that we've played for 70 years."

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Copyright © 2003 All rights reserved.