Northeast Ohio offers a wealth of top-notch golf courses, but only one has hosted pros annually for more than 50 years. Teeing off on Thursday, Firestone Country Club in Akron welcomes more than 75 members of the PGA Tour Champions. The Kaulig Companies Championship is in its eighth year hosting the league for golfers 50 at the Northeast Ohio golf course since the PGA Tour moved the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational to Memphis. This year’s tournament is the third of five PGA Tour Champions majors. It features big-name golfers, a chance at history and tons of off-course fun for fans, who can still snag tickets for as little as $26 a day.
Here’s what you need to know about this year’s tournament.
Stars Aligned
While you won’t see the PGA’s hottest players, like Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, the group of 78 includes a few of the sport’s most beloved names. Miguel Angel Jimenez, the long-haired, cigar-smoking Spaniard, sits atop the Charles Schwab Cup standings with three tournament wins this season. Right on his tail is Angel Cabrera, aka El Pato or “the duck.” The 55-year-old Argentinian would be the first senior player to win three major championships in a row. Ernie Els, a World Golf Hall of Fame member and the reigning Kaulig Companies champ, is back to avenge his title, and of course, everyone’s favorite party boy, John Daly, brings his unpredictable game to Akron.
History on Every Turn
Visiting Firestone Country Club is an experience. Nearly every World Golf Championship since 1962 and subsequent PGA Tour Championship tournaments, except for a few hosted on the North Course, have taken place on the iconic South Course. Spectators and players alike walk hallowed grounds, passing plaques documenting Jack Nicklaus’s par on the 625-yard 16th hole, considered the course’s hardest, to pull ahead in the 1975 PGA Championship and Tiger Woods’ “Shot in the Dark” on No. 18 26 years ago.
19th Hole
As if exhilarating golf wasn’t enough, visitors find much more than the game at the Kaulig Companies Championship. Throughout the week, fans enjoy games for kids, putt-putt and concerts from DJ Bobby Booshay, the Michael Weber Show and Red Wanting Blue. (Country singer Conner Smith was supposed to play the show but bowed out after being involved in a fatal car crash that killed a pedestrian in Nashville.) Food and drinks from local purveyors like King Kone ice cream, DeCheco’s Pizza and Hofbrauhaus, which offers half-price beers after each birdie. Look out for celebs like country singer Darius Rucker, who is the tournament’s 2025 golf ambassador of the year.
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