The Sunshine State is packed with PGA Tour Champions events this season, starting this week at Tiburón Golf Club in Naples for the Chubb Classic presented by Servpro.
In March, the James Hardie Pro Football Hall of Fame Invitational will tee off at The Old Course at Broken Sound in Boca Raton, and in April, the Senior PGA Championship will start a three-year run at the Concession Golf Club in Bradenton. This will be its first return to Florida since 2000.
There’s also a lot of excitement ahead of October’s Constellation Energy Furyk and Friends at its new location in Palm Coast at the Ocean Course at Hammock Beach Resort and Spa.
12-time PGA Tour winner Paul Azinger serves as Golf Channel’s lead analyst on the over-50 circuit and finds himself consistently impressed by the quality of competition each week.
“Every week is decided by a shot or two, and if you like drama in golf and watching who can handle it the best, it’s really a tremendous tour,” Azinger said. “Those guys know each other well. They are in more twilight years with respect to athletics, but they can still perform. They make pressure putts.
The Chubb Classic features a 78-player field competing over 54 holes from Friday to Sunday, Feb. 13-15, for a piece of the $1.8 million prize purse. Golf Channel will televise all three rounds live.
Ten major champions, including Davis Love III and Corey Pavin, are here to compete on Tiburon’s Black Course, along with 16 major winners from the PGA Tour Champions.
Eight former winners of this event, now in its 39th year, have returned, including defending champion Justin Leonard, five-time champion and World Golf Hall of Fame member Bernhard Langer, Stephen Ames (2024), Joe Durant (2018), Lee Janzen (2015), Kirk Triplett (2014), Miguel Angel Jimenez (2019), and Scott Parel (2020).
PGA Tour Champions returns to Naples as the world’s top senior golfers tee it up at Tiburón Golf Club’s acclaimed Gold Course
“The golf course itself is probably one of the tighter courses that we play. There’s trouble everywhere you look, and being kind of a straight driver of the ball, I enjoy that,” 53-year-old Leonard said. “It’s a course where if you’re playing well, you can certainly score. If you’re not hitting it very good, it makes it very difficult.”
Last year, Leonard finished 15 under par, earning a four-shot victory over Billy Andrade, who is ten years his senior.
Two-time PGA Tour winner and local resident George McNeill will make his debut on the PGA Tour Champions. McNeill, who lives in nearby Fort Myers, turned 50 last October and has competed in 324 Tour events over the past 25 years.
Tiburón Golf Club also hosts the LPGA’s season-ending CME Titleholders on its Gold Course, the same layout used for early December’s Grant Thornton Invitational mixed event featuring one PGA Tour and one LPGA player.
The Black Course, opened in 2001, has a unique appearance, featuring pine-straw-lined fairways, crushed coquina waste areas, and rolling greens surrounded by pine trees and native Florida plants. It is recognized as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary by Audubon International, which helps protect and improve its natural environment.
Photo Credits: Tiburón Golf Club, Gold Course – Photo by Dave Sansom
