GoToby.com Covering Ginn Championship at Hammock Beach Ocean Course from Real Estate Marketing Perspective

March 24, 2008 – Palm Coast, FL – The second annual Ginn Championship tournament of the PGA Champions Tour will be hosted this week by Ginn Resorts featuring the Jack Nicklaus designed Ocean Course at Hammock Beach. This is one of the richest events on the Champions Tour.  

 

GoToby.com will be covering the event from the real estate marketing perspective. This is one of four events that Bobby Ginn will be hosting this year on the PGA, LPGA, and PGA Champions Tours. It’s one of two hosted by Ginn in Palm Coast, Florida where Ginn is marketing several amenity rich luxury properties, both completed and under development. Ginn’s Conservatory Golf Course, designed by Tom Watson, will host the Ginn Sur Mer tournament, part of the PGA Fall Tour, later this year. As it did last year, the Ginn Championship will showcase not only the Ginn properties, but also Palm Coast and the Flagler County area. Flagler is the sixth fastest growing county in the U.S. but remains the most affordable warm water location on the east coast.

 

Even with the depth of talent on the Champions Tour, delivering a field featuring all 30 of the top 30 money winners from the previous year is a rare occurrence. It’s a feat so rare that the Ginn Championship at Hammock Beach is the first event in nearly three seasons to produce such a strong field.

 

Mark O’Meara’s commitment to the field means all 30 of the top 30 money winners are ready to face the stellar Jack Nicklaus-designed Ocean Course March 24-30. With such a gilded list of players, the Ginn Championship at Hammock Beach boasts a field that is the envy of Champions Tour majors.

 

In fact, led by Gary Player’s nine major championships and career Grand Slam, the 78 players in the field boast a total of 51 major championships on the PGA TOUR. Those major champions account for 286 PGA TOUR victories and146 Champions Tour wins.

 

All five of the 2008 Champions Tour winners are in the field, a list that includes two-time winner Scott Hoch (Allianz Championship, ACE Group Classic), Ponte Vedra Beach’s Fred Funk (MasterCard Championship), Boca Raton’s Bernhard Langer (Toshiba Classic), Pensacola’s Jerry Pate (Turtle Bay Championship) and Denis Watson (AT&T Champions Classic).

 

“This is something we understandably take a great deal of pride in seeing and something we know golf fans all over the area will take a great deal of enjoyment in seeing,” tournament director John Subers said. “You can count on one hand the number of events that carry a field with such depth and class, and we’re proud the Ginn Championship is one of those events.”

  

You’d have to go back to the 2005 Ford Senior Players Championship to find the last time a Champions Tour event featured 30 of the top 30 money leaders. But from 2007 No. 1 Jay Haas to No. 30 Des Smyth, all will be present and tested by a course ranked among the most beautiful – and difficult — on the Champions Tour.

 

“There was quite a buzz around the tour before we went up there last year, because anybody who knows Bobby Ginn and his organization knows how well they do things,” Nick Price said. “None of us were surprised when we got up there and saw the effort they had all put into the event.

 

“It’s a wonderful golf course. I think it’s truly one of Jack’s best in Florida for sure, with, I think, five or six holes right on the ocean, which gives it a lengthy type feel. Once you get off those ocean holes and you go inland, those inland holes are very good as well, but the condition of the course was phenomenal least year.”

 

The combination of the Ocean Course – the first waterfront course designed in the state of Florida in more than 70 years – and the famous Ginn first-class hospitality is a powerful lure for Champions Tour elite players like Haas (who hasn’t finished outside the top six in six events this season), 2007 major champions Denis Watson, Tom Watson, Lakeland’s Brad Bryant and Loren Roberts (also the 2007 Charles Schwab Cup winner), as well as Hoch and Funk.

 

“I think most of all, the players look at the golf course as No. 1. If it’s a good golf course, they’re going to come back, and it is. The condition of it is outstanding,” Haas said.

 

“I think it’s a combination of everything. One, it’s a good golf course, and another, everything’s on campus,” Funk said. “Everyone stays in the hotel there. It’s kind of fun, because everyone can interact on the golf course, but when they get off the golf course, everyone’s in the same place and can have a lot of fun. They put on a great event. “The bottom line is people really like the golf course. It’s on the ocean there and it’s beautiful.”

 

Defending champion Keith Fergus (No. 11 on the 2007 money list), who picked up his first Champions Tour victory when he edged Hale Irwin (No. 10) and O’Meara (No. 14) by one shot at last year’s inaugural Ginn Championship, obviously likes the 7,113-yard Ocean Course. But such is the respect for the total Ginn Championship package that even golfing icons like Player, who plays in typically only five to six tournaments a year) and players who didn’t play in the inaugural 2007 event have this year’s event circled on their calendars.

 

“Well, it’s a fantastic facility, and I think there was an unknown going into the tournament last year, but everybody absolutely loved the golf course; they loved the facility,” said Peter Jacobsen, who missed last year’s event due to injury. “That’s what’s drawing everybody there – – the facility, which is not only the golf course and the hotel, but the aura of the Ginn Company too. It’s just a very inclusive family.”

 

The Ginn Championship at Hammock Beach is the first of Ginn’s four Champions Tour, PGA TOUR and LPGA events on the 2008 professional golf calendar.

 

It also occupies a key spot on the Florida Swing, which is always one of the most competitive stretches of golf during the season. Hoch owns victories in both previous legs of the Florida Swing and will be going for the third leg.

 

As the host course, the Ocean Course has already earned accolades from professionals and amateurs alike, who marvel at a closing stretch of three holes that earned the nickname “The Bear Claw” for the way they test every ounce of a player’s mettle. The course has already earned “Top 10 New Courses You Can Play” by Golf Magazine and earned a Silver Medal by Golf Magazine in 2004.

 

Televised by Golf Channel, the Ginn Championship will again feature one of the largest purses on the Champions Tour – $2.5 million, with a $375,000 winner’s check.

 

Purchasing tickets or getting involved as a volunteer is the best way to see these golfing

legends up close. For ticket, volunteer, sponsorship and hospitality information, please contact the tournament office at (386) 246-6700.