Flood Law Attorney Works to Bring PGA Golf Tournament to Detroit

PGA Tour could come to Detroit in fall 2011

Lynn Henning / The Detroit News

Detroit, Michigan’s brief exile from the PGA Tour could be history as Detroit Golf Club negotiates to host a tournament next autumn, with mid-year events being sought from 2012-16.

Todd Flood, past president of the DGC and now a member of the club’s board of directors, confirmed Friday the club is doing due diligence in its attempts to restore the Tour to a state that hasn’t hosted a tournament since the 2009 Buick Open.

Currently, the Detroit Golf Club is doing due diligence with regard to a PGA Tour event for the fall of 2011, said Flood, whose attorney practice is based in Detroit and Royal Oak. We also hope to have a PGA Tour event on a regular basis from 2012 through 2016.

We’re looking at the possibility of the Tour being a regular stop here through those years and we’re doing our diligence on that, as well.

Flood confirmed serious discussions have taken place with a sponsor, whose identity he declined to reveal.

Another integral part of any Tour event, a charitable cause also has been discussed. Asked if education might be the beneficiary, Flood said absolutely but he would not elaborate.

Detroit Golf Club, which is just south of Seven Mile Road and just west of Woodward Avenue, is one of Metro Detroit’s venerable golf sites.

Ross artistry was especially prominent on the famed North Course, where any potential PGA Tour event would be played.

The Tour schedule for 2011, while unofficial, has a tentative vacancy in mid-September, one week before the Tour Championship. Flood would not discuss possible dates Friday except to say autumn with mid-September likely qualifying remains the only option for a 2011 Tour stop.

The situation becomes more ticklish for a spring/summer date in 2012 and beyond. The Tour has no immediate vacancies there, but sponsorship has been a coast-to-coast casualty during bad economic times, as was confirmed locally by the Buick Open’s disappearance from Warwick Hills Golf & Country Club in Grand Blanc.

It would be no surprise if a prime-time event disappeared during the next year, providing a midseason spot for DGC.

Detroit Golf Club has not hosted a major professional event since the early 1940s, when World War II canceled the Ryder Cup and a facsimile of the international tournament was played there.

Apart from the renowned North Course, Detroit Golf Club matches up in matters of ambience and convenience with other PGA Tour stops.

The clubhouse, an Alfred Kahn design completed in 1918, is something of a Metro Detroit landmark. Hotel capacity in Detroit and the immediate suburbs is generous, and access to the club is assured by its proximity to surrounding freeways and to Woodward Avenue.

Unlike any other club in the district, or any other club in the country, Flood said, Detroit Golf Club has a unique possibility to do something that no other club could do for its city or its region.

That possibility appears ready to become a probability and no later than next year.

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