Discount tickets for locals now on sale; more than 100,000 people expected
To purchase special local tickets for the 2016 U.S. Women’s Open, click HERE
Published in the Oct. 28 – Nov. 10, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Marty Cheek
Photo courtesy Lora Schraft/USGA
Gilroy resident Lucy Finegan won the No. 1 CordeValle Reserve ticket, a week-long pass to next year’s U.S. Women’s Open, during the Tee Off the Tenth event held in downtown Morgan Hill earlier this month to promote the upcoming championship.
The golf world’s attention will focus for seven days on the South Valley starting July 4, 2016 when the U.S. Women’s Open championship is held at the prestigious CordeValle Golf Club in San Martin. Morgan Hill leaders see the competition among the top women golfers as a “golden opportunity” to gain national and global recognition for our region.
The United States Golf Association invited the Morgan Hill community to be part of its launch of activities leading up to the championship tournament. Participants in the Oct. 10 Downtown Brew Crawl discovered that the Third Street Pop-up Park had been transformed into a free “Tee Off the Tenth” party site for the evening, with speeches by local leaders and Sharks General Manager Doug Wilson, followed by residents dancing to music performed by the band KJ All Stars.
“I guess I would say that a really tremendous golden opportunity has been presented to us by having the Open at CordeValle,” said Morgan Hill Mayor Steve Tate. “We’ve done a lot the past few years to make ourselves an even more desirable destination and have an enthusiastic Tourist Alliance ready to do more to welcome folks to our community. The Open is just perfectly timed to connect us with visitors and enable us to ‘strut our stuff.’ We are excited, ready to support the Open and eager to welcome visitors to Morgan Hill ‑— the gem of Silicon Valley.”
The USGA hired Haymaker, an entertainment and sports marketing organization based in Lancaster, Pa., to place two of its employees in Morgan Hill two months ago to help the South Valley region embrace the championship and prepare for the expected 100,000 spectators.
Morgan Hill resident John McKay, a founder of the Tourism Alliance, has been working with Connor Patterson and Ryan Shank from Haymaker in connecting with the community leaders and organizations. Bay Area sports figures such as Steve Young, Jerry Rice of 49ers fame and Doug Wilson are serving as ambassadors. Condoleezza Rice, former U.S. Secretary of State, will serve as honorary chairman.
Photo courtesy Lora Schraft/USGA
Sharks General Manager Doug Wilson spoke at the “Tee Off the Tenth” community engagement launch of the U.S. Women’s Open championship.
“I doubt that we’ll ever have a unique opportunity like the upcoming U.S. Women’s Open again,” McKay said. “We have the Haymaker group engaging us now that has a very different approach to marketing this golf tournament. Not only are they working on marketing the event, but they are helping us understand that if we embrace the event and give them interesting and compelling stories about our community, we can be center stage when the TV cameras aren’t focused directly on event play and get invaluable exposure to the outside world.”
FOX Sports will televise 22 hours of coverage of the Open to 120 countries, Patterson said. During breaks in the game held on the par-72 course, the cable channel will do “cut-away” coverage of South Valley places of interest such as possibly the local wineries, restaurants, and tourism destinations such as Henry W. Coe State Park, as well as performing arts organizations such as the South Valley Civic Theatre and South Valley Symphony. A committee is working with the Haymaker team on developing ways to engage the community and develop tourism marketing.
“You really have this incredible opportunity as the South County to let the world know you’re here,” Patterson said. “It’s partnering with organizations in Gilroy, Morgan Hill and Hollister to put together a group to be the representatives to the Open and make sure this is the South County’s Open.”
To build excitement among locals about the championship, the Open is selling a limited allotment of discounted tickets only available to residents of the region. The tickets are available online through the USGA’s website until midnight Nov. 2 and include the CordeValle Reserve experience for $200 (instead of the $400 price) and two-flex and seven-flex packages.
Photo by Marty Cheek
From left to right, residents Leonette Stafford, Bob Chidester and Kathy Sullivan dance during the Tee Off the Tenth event to promote next year’s USGA Women’s Open Championship at CordeValle Golf Club.
Now online is a limited number of volunteer opportunities for locals to assist the USGA to put on the championship.
“We know the golfers will come from far and wide because this is truly the biggest event that’s going to be happening next year,” Patterson said. “But we want to make this South County’s Open and give residents the best opportunity to attend and the first opportunity to attend.”
The 2015 U.S. Women’s Open was held in Lancaster in July and brought world-wide exposure to the community of about 60,000 people. Patterson described Lancaster as similar to Morgan Hill in that it is a “secondary market” close to the urban center of Philadelphia. Both communities have their own thriving rural culture, he said.
“When we came here we realized there’s this beautiful, incredible story about this community in the South County,” he said. “It was really refreshing to hear about this as going to be their Open.”
The 2016 Open will impact South County with global exposure on a similar scale to Lancaster. That’s why Haymaker is working with Morgan Hill’s Tourism Alliance as well as the Gilroy Visitors Center to build marketing leverage that can potentially have longtime benefit for local wineries, restaurants, shops, and other businesses.
“You’ve got to remember that the Open is a vehicle,” Patterson said. “The golf is going to be played. CordeValle is going to look beautiful. How do we rally community support around that? We can tell its story. The Community Engagement Committee’s mission is to make sure people know about the opportunity and also begin to unpack and tell that story.”
This will be the third time the U.S. Women’s Open is played in California, the other occasions being Sacramento in 1982 and San Diego in 1964, so being hosted in San Martin at the CordeValle Golf Club is a major win for the area, said Jeff Holland, director of sales and marketing at the golf course.
The process of being selected by the USGA took five years. The management had to prove the course, a top-50 ranked course designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr., is worthy and operationally-viable and the local communities will support the championship.
“They typically don’t go to a big market like a downtown Chicago market because they know they’re going to get lost in that noise,” Holland said. “They like to go to a smaller community that really understands what that championship really is going to do not just for golf but for that community – that it does put them on the map.”
