27-05-2025
Pro golf tour adding multi-year stop in Midlands. Here are the details
Professional golf is coming to the Midlands next year.
The Korn Ferry Tour is bringing an event to Woodcreek Golf Club in Elgin, 20 miles east of Columbia.
The Colonial Life Charity Classic will be May 11-17, 2026. An agreement is in place to have the event there for five years with Colonial Life as the title sponsor. It will be held the week after the PGA Tour's Myrtle Beach Classic this year.
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An official announcement was made Friday afternoon with Korn Ferry president Alex Baldwin, City of Columbia mayor Daniel Rickenmann and state senators and representatives in attendance.
'This is going to have an incredible impact across our community,' Rickenmann said. '… We are talking about seven to eight million dollars (per year) in our community. It also exposes our junior golfers that there is an opportunity, allowing them to be next to the next Scottie Scheffler or Justin Thomas or whoever their hero is.
'It also gives people an opportunity to explore the Midlands and get to see what we have in Richland County … and experience what we all know is a great community right here.'
The tournament will also have a charitable element, with proceeds going to the United Way.
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The Korn Ferry Tour, which was started in 1990, is a developmental league for the PGA Tour. In 2024, 30 Korn Ferry golfers earned PGA Tour cards. Some of the notable Korn Ferry Tour alumni include Scheffler, a three-time major winner, as well as Justin Thomas, Bryson DeChambeau, Jason Day, Zach Johnson, Bubba Watson and Tony Finau.
According to Baldwin, 82 percent of current PGA Tour members have played on the Korn Ferry Tour.
'You walk in the room here and five minutes here you can feel the excitement. I know we got a membership that is champing at the bit to be involved. And we couldn't be more excited,' Baldwin said.
This will be the Korn Ferry Tour's second event in South Carolina. The BMW Charity Pro-Am is held at the Thornblade Club in Greer. The also is an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the Tour's 26-event schedule.
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South Carolina also has two PGA Tour events — The RBC in Hilton Head Island and the ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic.
'Love of being a native of Columbia and proud of what is going on in this state. But there is a void in the Midlands for golf and didn't have a significant event,' Eventus CEO/president Gene Hallman said. 'We want to make this more than a golf tournament. We want to make it a social event.'
Hallman, an Irmo High graduate who got his masters at the University of South Carolina, founded Eventus and his company will oversee everything that goes on with the tournament outside of the ropes. He said plans are for various events during the week of the tournament such as concerts, celebrity pro-am and junior golf clinics.
Former PGA Tour and Korn Ferry player Chris Baker will be the tournament's director. Baker, an Iowa native, is recently retired from professional golf and lives at Woodcreek. Baker is thought to be the first former golfer to be a director of a professional golf event.
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Hallman's company has overseen events on the LPGA Tour, Champions Tour and United States golf events such as the U.S. Women's Open, US Senior Open and Walker Cup. His Alabama-based company also brought the Southeastern Conference baseball tournament to Hover, Alabama.
So, Hallman got the ball rolling on bringing the event to the Midlands. He made a phone call to his college buddy and former Hammond basketball coach Mark McClam and then Colonial Life president Tim Arnold on Jan. 11 to kick things off. Things went quickly from there and were wrapped up in April.
Once the sponsorship was secure, talks started with the PGA/Korn Ferry Tour began to ramp up. The Tour has 26 events and won't add any more. So, the Colonial Life Charity Classic will replace a current event on Korn Ferry's 26-event schedule.
The final piece was to secure the course to host an event of this stature. A call went out to Woodcreek owner Harold Pickrel, who bought the course5 1/2years ago and continued to make upgrades.
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Woodcreek Golf Club opened in 1997 and was designed by Tom Fazio. The course has hosted some mini tour events such as Hooters Tour and statewide golf events, but none of this magnitude.
Pickrel was definitely on board with it. He already has invested $5 million in the course and likely $2 million more to fine-tune some things, including building an amphitheater next to the clubhouse.
'I was quite honored to be offered an opportunity to host an event like this,' Pickrel said. 'We call this course one of the best-kept secrets around. To have a chance to show off our course to some of the best players in the world and other people to see it is special. It gives us notoriety.'
