Byron Nelson tourney leaving Trinity Forest

[HitEmTrue]

Can’t find any national coverage on this....

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/sports/pga-tour-says-att-byron-nelson-tournament-will-move-after-2020/2290758/

[Holy Moses]

The players hate the course, but they love Coore and Crenshaw. Will be interesting to see where it moves to.

[HitEmTrue]

On channel 8 news (local ABC)...sports reporter saying he thinks returning to TPC in Las Colinas will near the top of the list. And wondered if new course in Frisco (PGA championship host?) will be a contender after completed in 2022.

[Holy Moses]

Isn’t Trinity Forest hard to get to as a fan or something?

[grm24]

Not as difficult as Shinnecock.

[snizzle]

Good that new course looked terrible on tv. Maybe some of the big names will come back to play the tournament.

[Golfingfanatic]

I think the players would've probably liked it more, if they had set up the course the way it is intended to be.

[wcbjr]

It's bad for a number of reasons

Hard to get to, shuttle takes foreverViewing areas are set way back from actionOne single tree on the course, no shade in the Texas heatNot that great of a field

[FairwayFred]

Definitely alot of logistical challenges that didn't work nearly as well as when the tournament was at TPC.

 

Too bad, Trinity Forest is my personal favorite course to play of any of the PGA Tour venues. Too bad we never saw it firm and fast for the tournament as intended.

[caniac6]

I thought the course looked awful.

[elwhippy]

C&C are like Doak and Fazio. Not everything they design is brilliant. Doak's Renaissance Club is mediocre at best and Trinity Forest is similar. Visually dull and zero atmosphere.

[RJohn12]

I thought it was nice as a viewer to see a course unlike what the Tour plays week in and week out. I wonder what the tournament would look like with firm and fast conditions, but it seems like we'll never know. The move to TF seemed to be doomed from the start with the rainy weather the first year, then the schedule change moving it to the week prior to the PGA. So unfortunately, the bad date, weak field, and the logistical challenges helped doom the move to TF.

[Christosterone]

I live in frisco(near the star)

where are they building the course?

 

-Chris

[HitEmTrue]

PGA is moving headquarters to Frisco, but I don’t know where. Construction should have already started.

[Christosterone]

I know that...but we don’t have any courses (I know of) being built..

 

Craig Ranch hosted a few nationwide events when it opened but I don’t know if it could host a PGA event....

love the course..absolutely love it

 

-Chris

[Darth Putter]

 

That would seem like a front runner for a plan.

 

If the tournament's charity was seeing its fundraising cut in half because of the move, I can see why they changed their minds about Trinity Forest.

 

The PGA Championship is scheduled to be in Frisco in 2027 and 2034. I wonder what they do with the two DFW tournaments those years.

[Darth Putter]

look here...

 

the big empty lot north of Lone Star High School Google Maps says

[Christosterone]

 

cool where is that?

i see the tollway and teal....both of which are a few miles from my house....

 

but I don’t recognize most streets north of el dorado....

 

thanks for the info btw

 

_Chris

[Darth Putter]

They all say future road names, so they must be ruts at the moment.

 

Various articles mention that they did break ground last fall.

[Schley]

How can you put Fazio in the same sentence as Doak and C&C? TF is one course that for varying reasons it isn't a great venue for this PGA tour event. It doesn't say anything about C&C, much less Doak or Fazio so odd post.

[HitEmTrue]

 

West of tollway and south of 380 is all I could find. Supposedly two 18-hole courses at the PGA Hq, plus maybe a short course ?

[FairwayFred]

Even though it's clearly not a great place for the BN it is a fantastic golf course. My second favorite C/C course to play. and imo the best place to play firm and fast, links style golf in the spring/winter/fall where you can expect reasonably good weather. I'm not surprised it wasn't a great Tour venue but the course should not be underestimated because of it.

[jjthomp2]

i think one of the reasons you didn't see a "strong" field is that it is the week before the PGA championship and that course really isn't set up to emulate PGA type conditions. I really enjoyed watching golf at Trinity but agree they've never had that course in the condition it was designed to be firm and fast. it's a bummer it'll be leaving to head to another TPC track.... yawn

[smashdn]

I don't equate a good tournament course as necessarily good architecture. And vice versa.

 

First you got to have a huge site with tons of open ground to get all the traps and trivial things they need for a tournament set up. That in and of itself is not a real efficient use of land the other 50 weeks out of the year.

[thevaporz]

Oh yeah, I remember this course. Even the announcers couldn't find anything to talk about besides their BBQ ribs, one of the weakest strength of field events, one of the least attended events by fans, and lowest TV ratings.

[TM_HOYER]

It has been a quite a while since I lived in Las Colinas but one thing I remember about the week of the tournament is that it was one big party at the Four Seasons. The rich and beautiful would go there and party well into the early morning. Plenty of old guys with their young trophy wives. It was not about golf, it was about being seen and photographed as being there. They raised a lot of money from that. Trinity Forest I would suspect had none of that and that is cause of the reduction in revenues from the tournament.

[fly787]

They should host it at El Dorado .. Play the ball down, they will be playing mud balls for second shot .... and so many three putts if you get above the hole. Also they can bomb it down the middle on 9 and then realize they have to punch out of the trees due to the slope :) what a track!!

[fly787]

agree with you that scheduling is killing this tournament. The field is weak and the course is boring but the timing of the tournament is the biggest issue creating the weak field.

 

[grm24]

This past season (2019) was the first time the Byron Nelson was held the week before the PGA Championaship. To be honest the Byron Nelson hasn't had a really strong field for some time. Moving it to Trinity Forest didn't cause that. Unfortunately the field quality started falling once Byron passed away. Many players didn't like the TPC Las Colinas course even after it was redesigned. Hope the event gets back on better footing as it was one of the top fund raising events on tour before it was moved to TF. AT&T is the presenting sponsor through 2021. Hopefully they don't leave the event.

[smashdn]

(most) Guys don't have to play every tournament, nor even most tournaments to keep afloat. They can afford not to play tournaments for any myriad of reasons including but not limited to logistics, work load, course, field, wife's birthday, etc.

Trinity Forest was an unknown in a rough spot in the schedule in which the tournament was already sliding in prestige regardless of the venue.

 

I want to see the tour at new places, supposedly more sustainable places, places that are a little rough, a little different. But TF was just a bridge too far for these guys. Take a look at the Euro Tour. Even they don't get too far out on a limb regarding the courses they play. Most are fairly "Americanized" representations of golf outside of the open's in the british isles (Irish, Scottish, The Open) and the Dunhill.

Chambers Bay as a tour stop would be interesting.