At Its Height,
Sanderson’s Future
Grows Uncertain
For fans not standing directly behind a player, tee shots can be hard to follow at PGA Tour events. Top pros’ ball speeds often move faster than human necks can crane, leaving spectators in the dark about a drive’s destination until it lands with a thud 300 yards away.
But on Friday morning at Mississippi’s Sanderson Farms Championship at the Country Club of Jackson, Will Zalatoris blasted a 320-yard drive down the 16th hole’s right side; with the early morning sun off his left shoulder, Zalatoris’ ball cast a shadow against the warm, cloudless sky, and the few dozen fans following him caught a rare break: a chance to easily track the shot, moving like a bullet across the bright, blue morning sky.
Even if quietly, the morning must have marked a moment of vindication for the tournament’s organizers. In 2020, the event pulled the deepest field in its 53-year history, at the end of which Sergio Garcia emerged as the Sanderson’s first true superstar champion. But in the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic, no fans were on hand to witness the moment, leaving the milestone soaked in paradox: an event, at long last, atop its mountain, with no one there to behold it.
The Sanderson’s 2021 iteration was perhaps even more meaningful: a deeper field (seven of the world’s top 50 players appeared; its strength of field narrowly exceeded this year’s Honda Classic), again in front of fans, and another top-tier winner: this time one of the game’s rising stars, Sam Burns (whose victory brought him within the world rankings’ top 20).
Burns and Zalatoris both made for appropriate contenders: both young stars, and both among the game’s top-ranked players. For years, the Sanderson served principally as the PGA Tour’s island of misfit toys — a battle royal among desperate rookies and starving also-rans. It still attracts a deep field of PGA Tour newcomers — like Zalatoris, who is in his first season of full PGA Tour membership. But the event’s purse has increased massively in recent seasons: $7 million this year, up from $3.3 million in 2018. Like sharks to chum, an unprecedented number of the world’s best players have become regulars at CCJ.
Ironic, then, that at the height of its existence, the air around the Sanderson rustles with the early hint of headwinds.
For most of its history, the Sanderson’s story has been one of struggle. In the mid-1970s, the event nearly shuttered for lack of local support. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina delayed the tournament by a month; in 2009, it rained out altogether. Throughout much of the 2000s, the event struggled to keep title sponsors — until Sanderson Farms, Mississippi’s only Fortune 1000 company, came to the rescue. With Sanderson Farms’ support, the tournament has reached previously inconceivable heights; but more than that, it has enjoyed previously unthinkable stability. For most of the Sanderson’s history, it has always been something. Over the past eight years, though, the reliable support of one of Mississippi’s largest employers has allowed the tournament to grow up from a blip on the PGA Tour calendar to one of the fall’s biggest events.
Maybe that trend will continue forever. But storm clouds loom on the horizon of a tournament that has known more rainy days than sunny. Their implications are impossible to entertain without speculation. But their presence is, at this point, impossible to ignore.
. . .
The key to understanding the PGA Tour is that it does not exist to elevate golf, or the events where its golf is played. The PGA Tour exists to elevate itself. And in pursuit of that goal, everything else is secondary — including, apparently, longtime partners.
Like every PGA Tour event, the Sanderson is more an independent contractor than an affiliate — less a sports league franchise, and more a venue that bids for an annual visit. None of the signs of its growth in recent years — most notably, a standalone spot on the calendar and a full allotment of FedEx Cup points — came without the Sanderson jumping through the Tour’s hoops (namely, new commitments totaling millions of dollars). The Sanderson did not earn its way out of its life as a redheaded stepchild because of the Tour’s benevolence; it bought its way out. A full field and a solo spot on the Tour’s calendar required massive investment in its purse. But with its title sponsor’s support, the Sanderson made it happen: it played by the Tour’s rules, and became a more popular landing spot for many of the Tour’s stars.
Now, though, the world has changed. And the PGA Tour’s hoops appear to be changing in turn.
When Saudi financiers behind a new rival golf tour broke their silence in early 2020 and began courting the game’s biggest stars, the PGA Tour rightly sensed the effort as an existential threat. Among its efforts to snuff out the uprising was a new “strategic alliance” with the money-strapped European Tour — which, to that point, had been seen as a potential partner to the Saudis. The details of the new relationship are still being worked out. But the principal benefits to both sides are, by now, clear: the European Tour scratches the PGA Tour’s back by shunning the Saudis, and the PGA Tour returns the favor by massaging its schedule to make certain European Tour events more attractive to American stars.
But remember: the key to understanding the PGA Tour is that it exists to elevate itself. And in pursuit of that goal, everything else is secondary, except for one thing: FedEx. The global shipping powerhouse soaks the Tour’s annual playoff events to the tune of $60 million, and the points series leading to those playoffs serves as the principal mechanism of retaining PGA Tour cards. Any event offering a shot at FedEx Cup points is an opportunity at job security. That makes the 500 points that the Sanderson distributes just as valuable as prize money.
That also makes the Sanderson — and the rest of the Tour’s fall events — problematic for any effort to share the spotlight with the European Tour.
The golf press corps is a small bunch, and whispers travel quickly. The PGA Tour has confirmed nothing — but for months, rumors have swirled that the Tour plans to strip its fall events of their FedEx Cup points. If that happened, then the PGA Tour’s top stars could skip fall events for newly cash-infused European Tour events without sacrificing job security. Effectively, the PGA Tour would be rewarding the European Tour’s service by throwing its own fall tournaments under the bus, by making them less attractive to the star players that those events — the Sanderson and others — have worked for years to lure.
It is wildly unfair. But it is also outside the control of the Sanderson or any other fall event. As Darth Vader once rebuked a dissatisfied Lando Calrissian: “I am altering the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.” Remember: the key to understanding the PGA Tour is that it exists to elevate itself. And in pursuit of that goal, nearly everything else is secondary.
. . .
Taking fall events out of the PGA Tour’s points series would injure more tournaments than just the Sanderson, of course. But of all the fall’s PGA Tour events, the Sanderson appears particularly vulnerable — because at the same moment its future in the FedEx Cup series seems tenuous, the long-time stability of its title sponsor no longer appears so stable.
The lynchpin of Sanderson Farms’ loyalty to its home state’s PGA Tour event has been the company’s CEO, Joe Sanderson — a loyal Mississippian and a golf nut. In August, though, Sanderson Farms agreed to be bought for $4.5 billion. When the sale is finalized, Sanderson Farms will become a private company under the umbrellas of two large food companies. Joe Sanderson will no longer be calling the company’s shots. And although Sanderson Farms agreed in 2016 to a 10-year sponsorship deal, the contract will not trail along to its new buyers. They still might agree to continue the sponsorship. But to hear Joe Sanderson describe the possibility, the new buyers clearly haven’t agreed to it (“There are no guarantees, but I am optimistic,” he told Mississippi Today). The price of chicken is through the roof; undoubtedly, that — and not the chance to sponsor golf tournaments — is what drove the sale.
This event has had to find new title sponsors before, of course. If it must do so again, then the silver lining is that the tournament is a much more attractive opportunity for would-be sponsors in 2021 than it was in 2013. But when Sanderson Farms came on board as the tournament’s title sponsor, the event had (if nothing else) enormous room for growth. Selling a sponsorship for an event whose importance the PGA Tour is intentionally diminishing is a heavy lift.
Publicly, at least, the Sanderson’s organizers are putting on a brave face. “We’re hopeful to meet the new management team,” tournament director Steve Jent told The Clarion-Ledger, “and I think if they’re watching this event means a lot to the city of Jackson, the state of Mississippi and to our children’s hospital. All we are going to do is put our best foot forward.” There is no other choice, of course: PGA Tour events are year-round operations, and all the Sanderson’s organizers can do is to proceed under the assumption that everything will work out.
And maybe it will. But it would be a cruel irony if a tournament that fought for decades merely to exist, then finally reached a balance that is perhaps unique on the PGA Tour, fell victim to another setback over which it had no control — and crueler still if part of that setback were dealt by the PGA Tour itself.
But the PGA Tour exists to elevate itself. And in pursuit of that goal, everything else is secondary. If the Sanderson is to weather the storms on the horizon, then it will need endurance, creativity, and a little luck — again.
. . .
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