How Travelers Championship Became Signature Event On PGA Tour Calendar

New England golf fans of certain ages grew up on the Travelers Championship. They just probably knew it by a different name.

Those of us who experienced golf coming of age in the 1990s might always know it as the Canon Greater Hartford Open — the GHO, for short. An older generation likely remembers the Sammy Davis Jr. Greater Hartford Open and their fathers might recall the Insurance City Open, a tournament won by the likes of Arnold Palmer, Ken Venturi and Billy Casper.

The Travelers Championship is a PGA Tour institution and the longstanding, enduring cornerstone of professional golf in New England. It has evolved in its seven decades, no doubt, but as the Tour makes its annual stop in the 860, the tournament has never been bigger.

To earn designated event status is no small achievement. The PGA Tour added designated events as a way to put more money on the table to increase the frequency with which the best players in the world tee it up at the same tournaments. The majors and playoffs were obvious choices for designated-event status, but it’s telling that the Travelers is one of just 10 regular Tour starts to get a designated event. It puts the tournament in lofty company, too, alongside tournaments like the Genesis Invitational (hosted by Tiger Woods), the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Memorial Tournament (hosted by Jack Nicklaus).

“When the calling came last August at the Tour Championship, the commissioner, Jay Monahan, announced that they were going to have these designated events, we immediately put our hat into it,” Travelers executive vice president Andy Bessette said in May at the tournament’s media day. “(We) started strategizing and talking about how we could be one of the selected events to be designated, so we’ve been negotiating with the PGA Tour ever since.”

Obviously, the Tour liked what Travelers was selling. By the end of the year, the designated schedule was set with the Travelers making the cut, getting the stamp of approval from two of the sport’s biggest superstars: Woods and Rory McIlroy.

“I was at a Tour meeting in late October, early November, and Tiger and Rory were there, and they both came up and said, you guys have earned this,” Bessette said. “To have Tiger and for Rory to say you have earned this, meant the world to me and our entire team.”

It’s a great reward for a lot of hard work, dedication and focus on making this the best possible tournament it can be. TPC River Highlands obviously is one of New England’s premier courses, but it frankly doesn’t have the same allure or history of Tour mainstays like Riviera, Torrey Pines, Pebble Beach or Muirfield Village.

 To have Tiger and for Rory to say you have earned this, meant the world to me and our entire team.

Travelers executive VP Andy Bessette 

Because of that, tournament organizers have had to work even harder to make this an attractive spot for the world’s best players. There’s an attention to detail that hasn’t gone unnoticed by Tour members who have kept this on their annual schedule.

“It is a tournament I like,” world No. 2 Jon Rahm said earlier this week ahead of his first trip to Cromwell since 2020. “It’s one of those events that, again, you start as an amateur, they had faith in me, so every time I can I try to come back. I really get along with everybody involved with the organization of the event and the people in charge have been really good to me and my family, so it’s always a spot I try to make time for.”

That’s reciprocated by the underserved local golf fans who go out of their way to make the Tour’s lone New England stop one of the best-attended events on the Tour’s calendar.

“Playing here last year and the atmosphere and the amount of people that come out and enjoy the tournament makes for a fun vibe for us to come play,” Tour veteran Adam Scott told reporters. “Exciting to come play golf here every day.”

The $20 million purse obviously goes a long way in getting the top players on Tour to come tee it up, but tournament organizers and Travelers earned that right.

“What the Travelers has done to this tournament since the first year I played in 2011 to now is remarkable,” New England native Keegan Bradley told NESN.com earlier this week. “They’ve turned it into one of the premier PGA Tour events in the world. This was the first PGA Tour event that I ever came to, it was called the GHO back then.

“It’s something that, it’s an event that I always really cherish and look forward to.”