World's top-golfers will be tested at The Concession in Workday Championship

BRADENTON — Paul Azinger had a few words for the world's top golfers coming this week to The Concession Golf Club for the 2021 World Golf Championships-Workday Championship.

A few words and a number from the former PGA Tour player, current Bradenton resident and lead golf analyst for NBC Sports, who's played The Concession enough times to know the mental and physical test it presents.

The number suggests the 61-year-old Azinger has failed that test a lot more times than he's passed.

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"I'm probably close to 600-over par since I joined here; not exaggerating," Azinger said at a press conference at The Concession introducing the event, set for Thursday through Sunday.  "It's a great test. The average player can get around here and probably enjoy himself, but the greats are going to be tested.

"Quite frankly, I think if the wind doesn't blow, they're going to shoot some pretty good scores here, but I sure can't wait to see it. This is the cream of the crop showing up, and generally the cream rises to the top."

Azinger's "cream of the crop" includes players from the PGA, Asian, European, Japan Golf, and PGA Tour of Australasia tours. Among them will be: world No. 1 and FedExCup champion Dustin Johnson; world No. 2 Jon Rahm; world No. 3 and 2017 FedExCup champion Justin Thomas; world No. 4 Xander Schauffele; two-time FedExCup champion Rory Mcllroy; 2020 U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau; 2020 PGA Championship winner Collin Morikawa; world No. 9 Webb Simpson; and defending champion Patrick Reed.

The field will compete for a $10.5 million purse. COVID-19 forced the first World Golf Championship event of the season to be relocated from Mexico to The Concession, which hosted the 2015 NCAA Men's and Women's Golf Championships. Workday, Inc., a provider of enterprise applications for finance and human resources, will be the title sponsor of the newly-named event.

Opened in 2006 and rated by Golf Digest in 2018 as one of America's top 200 courses, The Concession was designed with the inspiration of the 1969 Ryder Cup Matches and Jack Nicklaus' concession of a 3-foot putt to Tony Jacklin, forcing a tie between Great Britain and the United States, which retained the Cup. It's a Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course, meaning Tour conditions are standard. The 7,470-yard course sits on 520 acres and has a course rating, the evaluation of a course's difficulty for scratch golfers, of a supremely challenging 77.6.

"It's a great second-shot course," Azinger said. "But I believe that Jack really takes into consideration the possibility that the greats will play all his courses at some point in time, and he did that here. It's just bigger. It's more of a brute, you know. That's all. Packs a bigger punch.

"The Donald Ross courses, the Joe Lee courses in the area, some of the Ted McAnlis courses in the area, they're all phenomenal, but on scale, this is just on a bigger scale."

According to Bruce Cassidy, president of The Concession, strategy is needed, meaning "it's not always bombs away, although these guys will do that. The most challenging piece is the green complexes; a lot of undulations in the greens. If you miss on the wrong side, you could go from maybe thinking about birdie or par and making a double pretty quickly."

Said Azinger, "In the 70s, when I was kind of cutting my teeth, there were plenty of good courses around here, but the greens were never Tour quality. It really wasn't until Bruce built The Concession and brought the superintendent, Terry Kennelly, here that I started to believe that this region could really produce killer greens. There were a couple of courses in the area that could get their greens kind of fast, but this really set the standard, I think, for the area and all the superintendents."

And according to Virginia Haley, president of Visit Sarasota County, the area securing an event considered one notch below a Major connects to its history.

"You go back to the Scotsman, John Hamilton Gillespie, came here with his clubs. Sarasota wasn't even a platted community yet. In 1886, he built two practice holes in what is now downtown Sarasota and he had a firm belief that tourism in Sarasota and Bradenton would be tied to the promotion of golf. So you look now, we have probably 70 golf courses in our region."

One, The Concession, will this week host our region's biggest-ever golf tournament.

WORKDAY CHAMPIONSHIP

WHAT: First World Golf Championship event of the season.

WHEN: Thursday-Sunday.

WHERE: The Concession Golf Club, Bradenton.

PRIZE MONEY: $10.5 million

OF NOTE: The field of 72 players will include 48 of the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking.