‘100% committed.’ PGA Tour commissioner discusses pro golf in Kentucky
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said that his organization is “100% committed” to keeping an annual professional men’s golf event in Kentucky.
Those comments came as part of a wide-ranging conversation featuring Monahan, PGA Tour chief competitions officer Tyler Dennis and Jimmy Kirchdorfer, the chairman and CEO of ISCO Industries, on Friday with a small group of media members, including the Herald-Leader, at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville.
ISCO Industries is the title sponsor of the ISCO Championship, Kentucky’s annual pro men’s golf tournament that’s been held in the commonwealth since 2018.
“We’re committed to creating something really special. And you don’t do that on a two-, three- or four-year basis. You do it over time, and we’ve started that,” said Monahan, who has been the PGA Tour’s commissioner since 2017.
The ISCO Championship, formerly known as the Barbasol Championship, is undergoing a big change this year.
The tournament began in Alabama in 2015 before it moved to Kentucky in 2018. The last six editions of the event — which became known as the ISCO Championship last year — were contested at Champions at Keene Trace Golf Club in Nicholasville. This year the ISCO Championship is moving about 65 miles West to Hurstbourne Country Club in Louisville.
“I think we’ve demonstrated our commitment. As you come into a state, as you come into communities, you continue to refine the event, or the events itself. It continues to evolve. It continues to grow,” Monahan said. “I think this is the most important step in the history, for the PGA Tour, of golf in Kentucky.”
Kentucky continues PGA Tour presence with ISCO Championship
Kentucky is on a roll when it comes to maintaining a consistent presence with high-level golf events.
Over the last 30 years, Valhalla — where Friday’s media event took place — has been home to a prominent list of name-brand tournaments.
It’s hosted four PGA Championships, two Senior PGA Championships, a Ryder Cup and the boys and girls junior PGA Championships. The most recent of these came last year, when Xander Schauffele won the PGA Championship at Valhalla.
(Last year’s PGA Championship was marred by the death of a security guard who was hit by a shuttle bus and the arrest of top golfer Scottie Scheffler, both of which occurred prior to the second round of the event.)
The 2024 PGA Championship at Valhalla set several records on the commercial side, including for attendance (about 200,000) and hospitality sales.
In 2022, Valhalla was purchased by Kirchdorfer — ISCO’s chairman and CEO — along with three other businessmen.
“You pull into Louisville here early in the week of the PGA Championship, you see a community and an area that has been completely inspired by the opportunity to welcome the best players in the world and their families, to showcase their city, to showcase this incredible facility,” Monahan said of last year’s major at Valhalla. “The pride on people’s faces, the pride that they project when you’re here, is a very special feeling for everybody that’s involved.”
The PGA of America — not the PGA Tour — runs the PGA Championship, and that group is the one tasked with deciding which courses get to host the PGA Championship.
Still, Monahan said that he would imagine “it’s just a matter of when, not if,” Louisville gets awarded another men’s major championship.
While Valhalla — which will host the Solheim Cup, the women’s golf equivalent of the Ryder Cup, in 2028 — gets the lion’s share of the attention, the ISCO Championship plays an important role in ensuring Kentucky has a consistent presence in the golf world.
When the ISCO Championship — which is sponsored by Kirchdorfer’s ISCO Industries, a total piping solutions provider that’s based in Louisville — moved to the commonwealth in 2018, it became the state’s first regular season PGA Tour event since the Kentucky Derby Open. That event was held in Louisville from 1957-59.
The ISCO is set to be contested for the seventh time in the last eight years in Kentucky. The only break in this stretch came when the 2020 event was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s not integral, it’s critical,” Monahan said of ISCO’s role in Kentucky’s annual PGA Tour stop. “The event doesn’t happen, the experiences that the event creates doesn’t happen, without having a great title sponsor, a great corporate partner. Where it works in spades is where that company is rooted in the community. That’s clearly the case with ISCO ... Then to have, on top of that, the leader of the company, who’s going to not only activate his employee base, but activate the community around the event, to really pull out the purpose and raise dollars for the community, showcase the community. That’s the perfect formula.”
There’s been no shortage of drama delivered by the tournament since it relocated to Kentucky eight years ago.
Three editions of the ISCO at Keene Trace (2018, 2019 and 2022) were decided by a one-shot margin. The event went to a playoff to decide the winner in 2021, 2023 and 2024.
That 2021 playoff between winner Seamus Power and runner-up J.T. Poston lasted six holes. Last year’s ISCO Championship was won by Harry Hall from a five-man playoff, which was just the 12th playoff of that size in PGA Tour history. The 2024 ISCO also set a PGA Tour record with an 8-under-par cut score, which is the lowest 36-hole cut-line score in an individual, stroke-play event in tour history.
This year’s ISCO Championship is just around the corner. The tournament will be held from July 10-13 at Hurstbourne, which is a private, member-owned club on Louisville’s east side. Louisville is now one of only 36 cities worldwide with a regular season PGA Tour stop.
“Being in Louisville, I think you’ve got just a perfect mixture between the sports culture, the business community, the charitable aspect and a lot of other fun tourism things, the Bourbon Trail and all that kind of stuff,” said Dennis, the PGA Tour’s chief competitions officer. “This is the right place to be in Kentucky, and I think it’s going to shine.”
All indications are that this year’s ISCO at Hurstbourne will attract a significantly better crowd than last year’s tournament in Nicholasville, where decreased attendance was noticeable.
Kirchdorfer said one of the new hospitality options available for this year’s ISCO — winner’s circle tables — are already sold out. He also said that spots in the Wednesday pro-am, which is held the day before the tournament begins, are almost sold out.
“I’m really pleased (with) how our business community has stepped up and bought hospitality,” Kirchdorfer said.
What is the future of the PGA Tour’s ISCO Championship in Kentucky?
Kirchdorfer — an avid golfer and golf fan who made a hole-in-one at Valhalla shortly after Friday’s media event ended — has repeatedly stressed that ISCO’s sponsorship of the tournament is directly tied to the event being held in Kentucky.
“We wouldn’t be interested if this event was not in Kentucky, if the PGA Tour wanted to move it or whatever. That’s not something we would support,” he previously told the Herald-Leader in April.
And there’s the chance that plenty of locations around the commonwealth could get the chance to host the state’s annual PGA Tour event.
Kirchdorfer — whose ISCO Industries has the title sponsorship rights for the event through 2027 — has floated the idea of moving the ISCO Championship around to different courses in Kentucky. The event had its run in Central Kentucky at Keene Trace in Nicholasville. Now, it’s Louisville’s turn to host with Hurstbourne, which was founded in 1966 and originally designed by Chick Adams.
“If that’s a model that’s going to work on a long-term basis, I’m sure those are conversations that we’ll have,” said Monahan, whose tenure as PGA Tour commissioner has overlapped with the tour’s return to Kentucky. “Our commitment here is to create something special, and that doesn’t have limitations.”
The ISCO Championship has a three-year contract at Hurstbourne, starting this year.
The switch in venue from Keene Trace to Hurstbourne represents the biggest change this year for Kentucky’s annual pro golf event.
Other parameters of the ISCO Championship will remain the same from 2024 to 2025. Once again, the tournament will feature a field of 156 players, including 50 players from the DP World Tour. The ISCO will award 300 points toward the FedExCup, and it will carry a $4 million purse.
The ISCO remains an opposite field event for the PGA Tour. It will take place at the same time as the Genesis Scottish Open. The majority of the best golfers in the world will be playing in the Scottish Open, which is considered a tune-up event for The Open Championship. The Open is the final major of the year and takes place one week after both the ISCO Championship and Scottish Open.
“When you’ve got the right people behind this event, wanting to showcase their city and their area, people will follow,” Monahan said. “And we have every confidence that’s what’s going to happen here at the ISCO Championship.”
