The Sixth Annual Club Car Championship at The Landings Golf & Athletic Club starts Thursday, March 23 with first round play and concludes on Sunday, March 26 with the final round. The professional golf tournament is the fifth Korn Ferry Tour (KFT) event on the 2023 schedule and is a four-day, 72-hole, stroke-play competition on the Deer Creek Course at The Landings Golf & Athletic Club on Skidaway Island.
There are plenty of reasons for local fans to take advantage, but it is Savannah’s only professional golf tournament annually and the history of the young event suggests it will be another success in 2023.
Tickets for the championship can be purchased at clubcarchampionshipattlc.com/tickets. Several options are available. Daily tickets start at $10 and kids 17-and-under receive free grounds access with a ticketed adult. Free admission will be granted to all approved Active Duty, National Guard, Military Reserve Service Members, Military Retirees, Military Veterans and First Responders.
Last year, the tournament raised more than $340,000 for charitable organizations in the Greater Savannah area. That brings the tournament’s five-year total to nearly $800,000.
“The tradition of giving this tournament has established in the Greater Savannah community is inspiring,” said Cheyenne Overby, Club Car Championship at The Landings Club Tournament Director last spring.
Gates for the public open Thursday-Sunday at 9 a.m. this year. Tee times for the first two rounds (before a cut is made) begin at 7:15 a.m. and at 9:30 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Parking information and more fan need-to-knows can be found on the championship’s website.
TOUR BASICS
Fans are afforded great opportunities at the Club Car Championship, so too are the players competing every week on the Korn Ferry Tour. To say that the KFT is the most direct route to the PGA Tour would be an understatement. In fact, 88-percent of the PGA TOUR’s current membership came from the Korn Ferry Tour.
This year, the Top-30 players in the season-long standings following the 2023 KFT Championship (October 5-8) will earn PGA Tour cards for the 2024 season. Standings are determined by points, which are allocated to players based on finishes at each tournament. The first 22 KFT events – including the Club Car Championship – allocate 500 points to the winner. Each of the final four events of the season award 600 points for first place.
This event began in 2018 as the “Savannah Golf Championship” held at Deer Creek. That year, Sam Burns won it at age 22, still the youngest winner in the championship’s history by a wide margin. Burns, a four-time PGA Tour winner, outlasted the field with a final score of 21-under (267).
In 2019, a Texan named Scottie Scheffler (273) finished second to longshot winner Dan McCarthy (272). It was Scheffler’s first and only season on the KFT before his rise to stardom on the PGA Tour. An American has won four of the five Club Car Championships (Canada’s Adam Svensson shot 267 in 2021). All five championships – each at Deer Creek – have been decided in a playoff, or by a single stroke.
A $1 million purse ($180,000 first place) is on the line in this edition of the Club Car Championship, up from $750,000 in 2022 and double the 2018 Savannah Golf Championship’s purse of $500,000. Korn Ferry Tour members are competing for $28 million in total prize money this season – the highest ever purse total in KFT history.
The Deer Creek Course will play at roughly 7,185 yards this week. A par-72 layout originally designed by Tom Fazio in 1991, Deer Creek is annually one of the favorites for KFT players. It also happens to be a good track for spectators with several solid viewing options. Veterans of the event will tell you that Schooner’s Cove is the place to be, or at least the place to start. And it’s sound advice. Check out the area beyond the greenside bunkers of the short, par-four fifth hole. There, you can enjoy food trucks, birdie beer specials and yes, golf. Lots of golf.
FIELD NOTES
Shad Tuten, 30, is an Armstrong State product who will be in the Club Car, teeing-it-up for a 69th career time on the Korn Ferry Tour. This season, Tuten has three top-20 finishes in four starts. He comes back to Savannah as the No. 9 player on the KFT Points List Standings. Not bad for a guy with a bio page that reads, in part, “Has never had a coach or formal lesson of any kind.”
Georgia Southern product Steven Fisk is a notable semi-local name in the field. The Atlanta native will be playing in his 26th career Korn Ferry Tour event and his fifth of the 2023 season. Fisk, who turns 26 next month, played in the Club Car Championship last year but failed to make the cut at 4-over par. He has made three of four cuts thus far this season and is No. 73 on the KFT Points List.
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This article appears in Mar 1-31, 2023.
