It was a long, gruelling and sweltering last week for the LPGA Tour’s first major of the season. After the final round of the Chevron Championship outside Houston, most players would normally have dinner and crash or rush off to a late flight. If they stayed, they’d be ready for a long day of travel on Monday.
Instead, on this Sunday, players streamed from the course via shuttle bus to the Conroe-North Houston Regional Airport to catch one of eight planes bound for this week’s tour stop, a new event on the schedule in the Black Desert Championship outside St George, Utah.
At the airport, waiting for the players was a spread of fruit, waters, mimosas, pastries and comfortable chairs to lounge in for a few minutes. Steps away was a jet from SkyWest Charter, a partner with the Black Desert Resort. Each player and a guest were being treated to the travel at no cost.
“This is the way to travel. Let’s go!” said Spaniard Carlota Ciganda, who boarded the last charter of the evening at 9 after she started her Sunday Chevron round comfortably late en route to a T-9 finish.
Golf clubs and suitcases were taken care of for the players. They boarded the plane after walking a literal red carpet and climbing seven steps. There were cold towels, comfortable blankets and extra leg room for the three-hour flight. In all, 95 players for the Black Desert Championship took advantage of this rare perk, and they could all get used to it.
For the first time in 60 years, Patrick Manning, managing partner of the company that created the Black Desert Resort that softly opened late last year, has brought the LPGA Tour back to Utah, and the star treatment of the players was his idea. The PGA Tour played there for the first time last October, as well, making Black Desert the only host for full-field events on both tours. The $US3 million purse this week ranks among the best for regular LPGA events.
It was Manning who basically cold-called the LPGA and asked for a tournament after hosting Epson Tour events in Utah. Golf tours don’t just hand out million-dollar tournaments to hold, but Manning was persistent. He got officials to the course to check things out, and this week, the LPGA players are the beneficiaries of his vision as they tee it up in the first year of a five-year deal to play there. For many of the players, it was the first time they’d ever taken a charter flight, and they’ll be staying the entire week at the Black Desert Resort for free. Those kinds of perks are rare on the LPGA Tour.
“I became passionate about women because now we have a platform and we can make a difference,” Manning said. “Then having the PGA and LPGA, I started to understand operationally the differences between hosting a men’s tournament versus a women’s tournament. I went from pro women to passionate about women to pissed off. I was, like, We’re not going to host an also-ran type of tournament. We’re going all in for the women to celebrate them.
“My passion around getting the LPGA was around showing them a different experience and elevating women’s golf in general. That’s why we got the jets to pick them up and stay at the resort for free. We want them to know we see their hard work and they deserve to have the red carpet rolled out in a big way. My No.1 goal is for nobody to be talking about this a year from now because other people stepped up and are doing this.”
Casey Ceman, vice-president of tournament business affairs for the LPGA, said raising purses is an obvious way to make an event bigger and better, but Black Desert is setting an example of what it’s like to have a “total package”.
“I think the guiding light, the North Star, is we want to take care of players and their families from the second they get here until the second they leave and have it be a true first-class experience for them,” Ceman said. “And you see that coming to life with the charter flights, bringing them here to the resort, taking care of their accommodation at this brand-new, beautiful resort. It’s really cool that they’re looking at a holistic view as opposed to the little bits and pieces of the tournament.”
Normally, getting to St George isn’t a straightforward trip. The players would’ve had to make a connection via commercial travel because there are no non-stop flights from Houston to St George. If they flew into Las Vegas, they’d have to add on another 120 miles (193 kilometres) by car. In terms of their accommodation, of the 34 LPGA tournaments this season, about 15 will pay for or offer help with lodging. And even then, none would be quite like Black Desert, where the rooms include blackout shades, kitchenettes and an iPad that controls everything from lights to music.
“It was the easiest check-in process I’ve experienced in my whole life,” said Australian rookie Cassie Porter. “We just gave our name, they gave us a room key and directed us to our room. Wow, that’s just fantastic.”
Players are staying in their own section of the resort and have their own dining area. There’s Lava Love, a cafe in the lobby, a 1,300-square-metre sports bar, the 20th Hole, and perhaps the best benefit is the course being steps away from the rooms. Everything is within a five-minute walk.
“We just roll out of bed and walk over to the course, and that’s pretty convenient,” second-year player Auston Kim said.
Kim played collegiate golf at Vanderbilt University, and the Commodores travelled via charter. “I didn’t really appreciate it at the time,” Kim, 24, said. “Now that I’m in charge of all my stuff and travel and transportation, it was absolutely amazing.”
Every player has a horror story or three of horrific commercial travel days. Kim once handed her driver’s licence to an airline employee to check in for her flight, the person dropped it, and it fell between the tracks of the scale. They wrote her a note to get through security, and when she got home, she had to get a new driver’s licence.
There was none of that, of course, with the Black Desert charter, and Kim estimated she saved at least two hours in her travel day. She ended up taking Monday off and was reading A Time to Kill by John Grisham.
“We’re not really used to this kind of treatment and that should be eye-opening to some parties,” Kim said. “We’re also very appreciative of any tournament that can host us in a hotel. That can make our travel a bit easy or simpler. For us to have an opportunity like this to make our lives easier is amazing. Travelling is really difficult.”
Kate Smith-Stroh, a 25-year-old LPGA rookie from Nebraska, has experience as a traveller on the developmental Epson Tour. Though the purses are smaller, so too are the travel costs compared to the LPGA. She and her husband help cover those with their business, Ground Under Repair Design, which creates logos and other branding. She appreciates having a week like this.
“I think at the end of the day, little things go a long way for us players,” Smith-Stroh said. “If you do things that make us feel like you want us to be there, you want us to be at our best, it goes a long way. If you land at a tournament and you feel really welcomed, it goes a long way for our performance and overall wellbeing.”
For this trip, Porter, 22, was able to file away the colour-coded spreadsheet she has, complete with flights, rental cars, her caddie’s schedule, host homes, hotels, friends in the field, the purse – you name it. The Queenslander could easily have a side gig as a travel agent. So it was a treat to have a concierge service, charter flight and resort covered this time.
Porter recently had a travel nightmare after the Ford Championship. She was trying to get home from Phoenix via San Francisco and on to Sydney. In Phoenix, she sat on a plane for six hours. When it finally left the gate, there was an issue and the flight was cancelled. She tried again the next day and got to San Francisco. There, in the terminal, she said there was a code-red emergency situation where everyone had to get down on the ground, no matter where they were. After five minutes, things were deemed safe and she could carry on, albeit with a travel scare.
You can imagine how luxurious a charter flight felt after that.
Two-time LPGA winner Charley Hull is well known for the strenuous workouts she posts on social media, and the big Black Desert gym with all new equipment has everything she needs.
“Truthfully, I think the gym is unbelievable here,” Hull said. “I went to the gym last night and this morning. They’ve got sled pulls and all different types of machines. All the rowers. The Echo bikes. Spin bikes. Really good weights box jumps. That’s just perfect for me.”
Manning is personally seeing to it that players are taken care of. He took Hull, a Black Desert ambassador, and her friend and manager and dropped them off for a hike on Monday.
The mantra of the resort is “luxury without pretense”, and Hull fit in. At the resort restaurant Basalt, which has a beautiful view of the golf course and red mountains, you can dress up and choose beef tenderloin from Creekstone Farms from Arkansas City, Kansas. Or you can show up in your golf gear after a round and get funeral potatoes, a staple in the area.
Notably absent from the tournament this week is world No.1 Nelly Korda. Manning asked her about coming, but Korda is hosting her Nelly Invitational junior golf tournament in her hometown of Bradenton, Florida this week. He hopes she’ll join the field for the next one.
“Every new sponsor we get they’re trying to do something different and trying to elevate their tournament to be the best,” Korda said at the Chevron last week. “At the end of the day, invest in women’s golf. I think that goes a really long way for the players to see their interest and how much they want to change travel and even the culture out here, so props to them for trying to get us to the event as fast as possible.”
One more absentee from the Sunday charters was Mao Saigo, who is playing in the Black Desert but missed the charter flights because she stayed in Texas for a good reason – to celebrate winning the Chevron Championship. Beyond that, the luxurious treatment and playing in this incredible scenery in the Utah desert seems like the perfect way to enjoy her first LPGA and major title.
