It will be another star show on the banks of the St. Johns River for the fourth Constellation Furyk & Friends Oct. 4-6 at the Timuquana Country Club.
Players in the field of the PGA Tour Champions event hosted by Jim and Tabitha Furyk have won every significant tournament in the world. They’ve won the Masters and slipped on the green jacket at the end of a stressful spring day at Augusta National, and captured U.S. Open titles at Shinnecock, Oakland Hills, the Olympic Club and Oakmont. They’ve won golf’s oldest championship, the British Open, at St. Andrews, Carnoustie and Muirfield.
They have won PGA Championships, Players Championships, Ryder Cups both as players and captains and been enshrined among golf’s immortals at the World Golf Hall of Fame.
To study the Furyk & Friends field is to get a history lesson of worldwide professional golf over the last four decades.
Led by Schwab Cup points leader, four-time major champion and Hall of Fame member Ernie Els, there will be seven Hall of Famers, 16 major champions who have combined for 27 titles and before the playing of the Pure Insurance Championship Sept. 20-22 at Pebble Beach, 14 of the top-20 players on the Schwab Cup points list had committed to the tournament.
There are also two past FedEx Cup champions (Furyk and Vijay Singh of Ponte Vedra Beach) and five past Players champions (Davis Love III of St. Simons Island, Ga., Jacksonville native David Duval, Jacksonville resident Fred Funk, Stephen Ames and Lee Janzen.
Furyk had a theory for why the fields for the first four tournaments have been consistently loaded.
“Usually, I like to play at my favorite golf courses and it had to have a great title sponsor,” he said. “Our players love coming, they’ve got a great golf course, the food is incredible, our sponsors take care of them … it just has a big feel. One by one, they come up to me and rave about the event.”
The players did more than that. After only two Furyk & Friends, they voted it the best tournament on the PGA Tour Champions Tour.
“It was an honor to get that award but it also makes you want to work that much harder to stay at that level,” Furyk said.
The top-five players on the Schwab Cup points list (prior to the Pure Insurance Championship), Els, Ames, Steven Alker and Steve Stricker, along with eight of the top 10.
Multiple major champions Padraig Harrington, Bernhard Langer, Retief Goosen, Singh, Janzen and John Daly. Langer also will be trying to add to his record as the all-time PGA Tour Champions victory leader. And if anyone’s wondering how much gas is left in the 67-year-old Langer’s tank, he took a streak of five top-10 finishes to Pebble Beach, beginning with a tie for fifth at the Senior Open, and he forced a playoff at the Ascension Charity Classic, then tied for second at the Sanford International.
Fourteen of the 16 players who have won the Champions Tour this season.
It was announced late last year that the Timuquana membership had voted to not renew the five-year contract to host the tournament. That means 2025 will be the final year Furyk & Friends will be at the historic course that two years ago celebrated its 100th anniversary.
Tournament officials have stressed that the event will stay on the First Coast and if possible, in Duval County. If their desire is the latter, the options for courses able to host a major event, with the infrastructure and potential volunteer base, are limited to the Glen Kernan Country Club, where Furyk is overseeing a redesign and renovation for the new ownership group, or the San Jose Country Club, like Timuquana, a Donald Ross-designed course.
If the tournament has to venture outside Duval County, the best options would be the Sawgrass Country Club (which hosted Furyk & Friends for 10 years from 2010-2019 when it was a two-day event), the TPC Sawgrass Dye’s Valley (which hosted the Kaulig Companies Championship in 1988 and 1989) or either the Slammer & Squire or King & Bear, the two courses linked to the former World Golf Hall of Fame that combined to host the Liberty Mutual Legends of Golf four times between 1999-2002.
An announcement is expected by the end of the year, but no one connected with the tournament was willing to comment.
Constellation, an energy company based in Baltimore, has had a relationship with Furyk as an individual sponsor and tournament titles sponsor for more than 20 years and has helped Furyk & Friends raise more than $3.5 million in charity in the first three tournaments, which has benefited 42 non-profits on the First Coast.
No one believes Constellation is going anywhere and an extension could be announced as soon as tournament week.
“Our relationship [Furyk and his foundation] spans over two decades now and we both so deeply value the importance of giving back … a share value in this partnership,” said Jim McHugh, executive vice-president and chief commercial officer of Constellation.
Combine that with a presenting sponsorship with Circle K and other local sponsors, individuals who play in three pro-ams during tournament week and Furyk & Friends is a prime example of how sponsorships work from the title to the pro-am level.
“They’ve been amazing,” said Tabitha Furyk, who is the President of the Furyk Foundation. “Considering [Constellation] is located [in Baltimore] but they’re helping us do amazing things in Jacksonville … we’re proud of that. We’re proud of Circle K and so many groups here in Jacksonville that have supported [the tournament].”
Tournament director Adam Renfroe was optimistic the relationship with Constellation would go another five-year term.
“We’re having very productive conversations about the future,” he said. “I fully anticipate we’re going to remain with them. They’re a golf-savvy company and they know how to leverage the partnership. They’re also very good people.”
Furyk & Friends has had solid ticket sales and attendance, mainly because the tournament doesn’t try to fight football.
The tournament has occupied an early October date all four years so far, with an expectation that it will remain in that slot. Fans can mix football with golf by catching their favorite teams on big-screen TVs in private hospitality venues, the Tailgate Village, a large, open-air spot near the 17th and 18th holes and the Circle K ParTee Porch, which also has views of the seventh, 11th and 12th holes.
The Furyk & Friends field also is strong because it’s in the stretch run to the Schwab Cup Playoffs. There’s only one more tournament after the Furyk & Friends for players to make the top-72 on the points list, the SAS Championship in Cary, N.C., Oct. 11-13. The three-tournament Schwab Cup Playoffs begin Oct. 18-20 with the Dominion Energy Charity Classic in Richmond, Va.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: PGA Tour Champions Furyk & Friends back on the banks of St. Johns River
