AUSTIN, Texas — Keep the Dell at Austin Country Club.
For a non-golfing, non-member who doesn’t have the $100,000 to become a member or the knee cartilage to enjoy said membership if I could survive the eight-year waiting list, it just feels right.
Where else in the state can you walk the course and stand a few feet from former world No. 1s Jon Rahm and Jordan Spieth on the same day you run into Texas golf legends, Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite?
You won’t hear a whole lot of disagreement when it comes to Austin and golf being a great marriage, but that’s never been up for debate.
The biggest question isn’t about what but where the tournament should be.
The breathtaking view from the Pennybacker Bridge is but one reason the 650 members should vote yes sometime this fall, or later, when it comes time to decide on extending the club’s hosting agreement with the PGA Tour.
“We know we’re doing a lot of great things by hosting an event like this,” said the club’s head golf professional, Dale Morgan. “These different kinds of events are hosted all around town, and it’s good to bring things in to keep our city growing and keep it going the way we want. We’ll see what happens. The membership will have that opportunity to make that choice and go from there.”
WGC-Match Play: PGA Tour Live on ESPN+
If they go with a thumbs down, 2023 will be the last time we see the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play on these grounds.
Now, that doesn’t mean the event would leave the 512.
More than one person at Thursday’s second day of pool play told me that the newly designed Hills at Lakeway and Barton Creek Country Club would love to host this annual gathering of the sport’s best 64, and who could blame them? When the best and the brightest of the profession convene in your city once a year for an event that’s not a major, it’s a real boon not only for the club itself but also for the city.
The reported $1 million annual guarantee from the PGA is a drop in the bucket, but one can’t put a price tag on what an event of this magnitude can bring, not only in economic impact but also in further establishing Austin’s reputation as an international city.
Add the $5 million or so in annual charitable contributions each year, and there is plenty of good to be had by keeping it here.
Austin City Limits, Formula One, and South by Southwest bring new faces into town on an annual basis, and this event does the same while producing a tidy live gate in addition to a million-plus eyeballs on television worldwide.
The members can agree on one thing: It’s one of the PGA events outside the four majors that gets a red circle on the calendar. The top golfers in the world meeting up once a year to go mano a mano in one of the five coolest cities in America? Sounds like a win-win.
“It’s a tournament I always look forward to,” Rahm said. “It’s a nice break in the thick of the season. When things are starting to get a little bit more intense, to have an event in which it’s match play, it’s fun; it’s a lot more exciting, at least for me.”
Curt Fisher, a retired IT sales professional, moved here from the Metroplex 22 years ago, took advantage of a drop in the economy in the dot-com bust, and purchased a membership at somewhere south of the $100,000-plus it’s costing nowadays.
Fisher describes his opinion on the tournament as a love-hate relationship. At 78, playing a couple of rounds and hanging out with fellow retirees has become part of his weekly routine, but in October it changes when the course is shut down for a couple of weeks while the groundskeepers overseed the Bermuda grass with rye to make for that pretty green stuff we see each March.
So let’s start with the hate part.
“What I don’t like is the disturbance it does through the year,” Fisher told me outside the popular 1899 Club on Thursday. “It takes us off the course for a month. It’s two weeks in October for overseed and two weeks during the tournament, and we don’t get a reduction in dues.”
When the course isn’t available to members, the club, to its credit, does set up tee times at other local spots such as Falconhead, but it isn’t home.
And the good?
“It’s just tremendous,” he said. “It serves Austin well, and it highlights the club, the course, and the town. That probably brings another 200 people a week moving here.”
So Fisher has given us both sides of the issue from a member standpoint. So how would he vote?
“My preference is that we don’t renew it and that Barton Creek or someone else pick it up to keep as an Austin venue. This is just so great to see these guys play.”
But you would rather them play at another club?
“That’s right,” he said with a chuckle.
University of Texas baseball legend Seth Johnston, 39, has been a junior member for five years but will become a full-fledged member on his next birthday. Johnston and former college teammates Huston Street and Buck Cody have played countless rounds here.
Johnston, who works here in commercial real estate, as does Cody, won’t have a vote until he becomes a full member but understands why the vote gets tighter each time.
“It’s tricky,” he said. “I’ll say it’s great for the city and our businesses, and of course, it’s a great week for golf.”
After Sunday’s title match, things will return to normal at ACC. Hospitality workers and volunteers will compete in the club’s Am-Am tournament next week with the annual Club Championship slated to begin March 31.
And somewhere, Michael Dell, club president Mike McClelland and some really influential people are having important conversations regarding the future of one of the most fun events of the year.
This marriage has been a good one, and this is no time to break it up.
Let’s do another five.
