Hualalai’s golf history might be linked with the Champions Tour in perpetuity.
Last week, the PGA Tour and Mitsubishi Electric announced they were extending title sponsorship of the seniors’ season-opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship through 2020.
Hualalai, which will host its 20th senior Tournament of Champions in January, believes it is in the final phase of confirming its participation for five more years.
"Whether it’s the Four Seasons or the membership or the ownership, all those elements have combined to really embrace this event on an annual basis," Hualalai club general manager John Freitas says. "That’s felt by Mitsubishi, the players and the tour. That sense of ohana, or whatever you want to call it, is what continues to make this so special."
And so … perpetual. The tournament was first announced the day the course officially opened in 1996, after Jack Nicklaus gave his interpretation of all 18 holes he designed — down to the bunker in the middle of the 12th green.
MasterCard sponsored the tournament from its start in 1997 until 2009, when Mitsubishi swept in and built a marketing campaign around the user-friendly senior tour. It created commercials showing the silly side — and air-conditioned cool — of guys like the Freds (Couples and Funk).
"We really enjoy our interaction with the players," Mitsubishi’s Senior VP of Corporate Communications Cayce Blanchard wrote via email. "They understand and appreciate that they’re still able to compete after they turn 50 thanks to the Champions Tour. And the Champions Tour exists because of its sponsors and terrific sponsored events like the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai. It’s a wonderful experience for our customers. And great golf."
Particularly at Hualalai, where scoring records have been shattered with ridiculous regularity.
It didn’t start like that. When Hale Irwin won the first year at Hualalai — one of his nine victories in Hawaii — the average score on an opening day with 40-mph gusts was 76-plus. There were six scores in the 60s all week.
Hualalai has been strangely calm since. In 2008, there were 31 scores in the 60s on Friday — more than half the field. Two years before that, Loren Roberts tied a 54-hole tour record with a winning score of 25 under, firing a Sunday 61.
Mitsubishi also appreciates the hospitality and warmth — by any definition — Hualalai’s off-course setting provides its clients and friends every January.
"The people at the Four Seasons are very customer-focused," Blanchard says. "Our guests have such a lovely time from the moment they arrive till they leave. It’s first class, but low-key, not in-your-face extravagant. Very informal and fun. And there is easy interaction between guests and players all week. It’s a unique experience that’s difficult if (not) impossible to replicate."
Last week, the company that also provides the tour’s scoreboards went all in with the Champions again. It extended Hualalai, already the tour’s second-longest-tenured host site, and took over as title sponsor for the former Greater Gwinnett Championship in Georgia, also through 2020. It is the first time since 2008 a company has been title sponsor for multiple events.
The move should take Hawaii into its fourth decade with the seniors. The first event here was the 1987 GTE Kaanapali Classic — seven years after the Champions Tour began. The tour has been back every year since, holding two events more than half those years and hosting the Senior Skins exhibition all but one of its 24 years.
The next Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai will be Jan. 21-23, ending on a Saturday for the first time to try to bump up TV ratings by avoiding the NFL playoffs.
It will again open the senior season and Angel Jimenez — not coincidentally Mitsubishi Electric’s Global Brand Ambassador — will try to defend his title.
Pretty much everybody who is anybody will try to stop him. Unlike the PGA Tour’s TOC, played at Kapalua every January, the seniors all show up for Hualalai. There are no huge guarantees waiting for them across the world and, really, who wouldn’t show up if they were invited for a week at Hualalai? Tom Watson and his wife like it so much they bought a house.
"In 1996, when the tour came for its first site tour, the grass had barely grown in on the golf course," Freitas recalls. "The hotel was incomplete. On their first visit we had to talk over at Kona Village because we were not able to do it here. We walked them around and shared our story and what we were planning to become.
"They said we’re going to trust you guys because now we can’t see it. … They came back out the week before the tournament and they were blown away. Even that first year some of the tour players were asking ‘Can’t we just play here every week?’ "
