[Photo: Icon Sportswire]
Sentry Insurance and its chief executive, Pete McPartland, have never been shy about their commitment to the PGA Tour.
In 2022, when the execs at headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, faced an existential crisis with the arrival of LIV Golf, McPartland approached commissioner Jay Monahan with an unprecedented offer: Sentry wanted to re-up again on a 10-year sponsorship deal when the current pact was a mere two years old.
RELATED: PGA Tour makes Farmers exit from Torrey Pines official. What comes next?
Sentry also agreed to eventually fund what would become, in 2024, the tour’s answer to LIV’s huge star contracts with signature event purses of $US20 million. Understand, the Maui event – literally on an island – just doesn’t draw a very large amount of outside corporate dollars.
“We stepped up without wanting any help or subsidisation,” McPartland said. “We just did it because it was the right thing to do. We asked ourselves what we would want if we were Jay Monahan. I would want a sponsor to step up and be counted on in that moment of time.”
Then another “moment” that was far more wrenching came last January when Sentry and the tour had to make the wrenching decision to pull the plug on Kapalua – and eventually the two-event Hawaiian Swing – because the Plantation Course had gone brown and thirsty due to water issues in a Maui drought.
The tour needed a solution for the future of a coveted sponsor, and Sentry’s brains trust was invited to kick the tyres in late January during what everyone knew would be the final year of Farmers Insurance’s title sponsorship of the 75-year-old tour event at Torrey Pines.
It was kismet. The Century Club of San Diego, the tournament’s organising body, and Sentry felt an instant connection, and though the courtship took months, the two are finally able to affirm what figures to be a long-standing relationship.
It became official in a meeting room at the Lodge at Torrey Pines on Monday when they announced that Sentry will take over as title sponsor and continue the commitment the company made to support the tournament until at least 2035.
“We absolutely love it,” Stephanie Smith, Sentry’s chief marketing officer and lead golf official, told Golf Digest ahead of the formal press conference. “It’s a fantastic place, and so time-honoured. And I gotta tell you, we’re just so proud to have our name associated with it. I can’t tell you how excited we are.”
Sentry Insurance marketing officer Stephanie Smith stands with past tournament executive tournament director Max Novena at an opening ceremony ahead of the 2024 Sentry. [Photo: Ben Jared]
After so many challenges for the tournament in his past 15 years as the Century Club chief executive, Marty Gorsich is feeling better than ever about the future. “You don’t get a chance,” he told Golf Digest, “to go back to the drawing board in this manner and come out even stronger.”
The pairing has been speculated on for weeks, considering that every other West Coast event had announced its dates for 2027. Now, that portion of the schedule is set. The American Express tournament in La Quinta, California, will kick off the season in mid-January, followed by The Sentry at Torrey Pines from January 27-30. For the 60th time, CBS will broadcast the final two rounds of the San Diego tournament .
Most notable for now is that The Sentry will finish on a Saturday (Sunday in Australia) because that Sunday is dominated by the NFL conference championship games. The Farmers was in the same spot for four years and then went back to a Sunday conclusion this year for Justin Rose’s victory.
For fans rolling their eyes at the schedule ping-pong, there is solace: there are probably far more flush times ahead for Torrey Pines.
With new PGA Tour chief executive Brian Rolapp’s push for significant schedule changes and the formation of the Future Competition Committee (FCC), it has become clear that the process has been complicated enough for the tour to concede that much of the rhythm of past seasons needs to remain in place for one more year.
A deeper tilling of the competitive landscape will happen in 2028, and it won’t be long before we have a clearer picture of that. The FCC will meet on June 9, and then again on June 22 ahead of the Travelers Championship in Connecticut to present its proposals to the Players Advisory Council. The next day, Rolapp will hold a press conference to lay out what figures to be a markedly different model of the tour.
In that announcement, it would also seem probable that Rolapp will follow through on his comment in March about wanting to “start big” with an iconic venue on America’s West Coast. That site is expected to be Torrey Pines, which beginning in ’28 would host the season opener that will continue to be a big-money signature tournament.
“It would sure seem that Torrey Pines is set up well,” Gorsich said.
Tour representatives, citing the FCC’s continued work, declined to comment on the schedule beyond the ’27 campaign.
For Sentry’s part, its leaders sound genuinely thrilled in anticipating what they can accomplish in their new home. Smith, the marketing officer, is the executive credited with selling McPartland on spending tens of millions of dollars to be the title sponsor of the Maui event starting in 2018. Smith loved the tournament because her mother, Kay, who lived on Maui, volunteered every year at the former Tournament of Champions.
Sentry Insurance chief executive Pete McPartland presents The Sentry trophy to 2024 champion Chris Kirk. [Photo: Kevin C. Cox]
McPartland added another title for Smith – chief golf partnership officer – and she was an instrumental part of the tournament’s operations every year through the last staging in 2025. Sentry built strong and long-standing relationships with the people on Maui, including contributing $US1 million to local non-profit organisations when this year’s tournament couldn’t be played. It was with heavy hearts that the decision was made to part with Kapalua.
Upon travelling to San Diego last week, Smith told Golf Digest, “After coming to terms with the fact that Maui may not be able to host the tournament again, we asked ourselves, ‘Where would we like to be?’ There was only one answer in our minds: San Diego and Torrey Pines.”
Sentry Insurance is based in central Wisconsin’s Stevens Point (population 25,666) and the company loves golf so much that it developed its own resort and course, SentryWorld. It also covets its small-town sensibilities and community connection, so it was no wonder, then, that when the tour eventually put Sentry’s leadership together with those who represent arguably California’s most relaxed and smallest-feeling big city, they clicked.
And beyond all of the warm and fuzzies, there is this: “We are both battle-tested,” Gorsich said.
Like the tidbit about Smith’s mum on Maui, the Sentry folks have their ties to San Diego. McPartland was working for another company when he settled in San Diego in 2008 for a couple of years and bought a house in the quaint and pricey semi-island city of Coronado. He and his family loved it so much that when they moved to Wisconsin, they didn’t sell the house and continued to visit often. Sentry has also rewarded salespeople with trips to the city and already had scheduled corporate meeting this northern autumn at the historic Hotel del Coronado before the tour deal was done.
McPartland settled back into his home away from home late last week and professed to Golf Digest how much he loves San Diego. He said he fervently followed San Diego State’s basketball team in its 2023 Final Four – “the [Wisconsin] Badgers and Aztecs are my college teams.” He cheers for the Padres, too. “My grandsons are the only two Padres fans in New Jersey,” he said with laugh.
“I know a little about what makes San Diego tick,” he said. “But I really want to understand it more. I absolutely guarantee we will dedicate a tremendous amount of time and enthusiasm in getting to know this community.”
The Sentry executives had all seen Torrey Pines on TV many times and then got a true taste of it on the Monday after the 2021 US Open, when McPartland and Smith were among a company group to tackle the South Course. “It was a full-immersion experience,” McPartland, laughing, said of dealing with the major-championship rough.
The CEO said he’s only played Torrey Pines a couple of times but hopes to do so quite a bit more now. Smith is already making plans for her mum to fly in from Hawaii to be there next January. Of course, Kay is going to volunteer at the new-look Sentry tournament. “Oh yeah,” Stephanie said. “I couldn’t stop her if I wanted to.”
