February 8, 2017
LPGA’s Symetra Tour to Return April 3-9 at Windsor Golf Club
The Symetra Tour is officially returning to Northern California.
On Wednesday, The Symetra Tour, Road to the LPGA, announced that the POCMED Golf Classic, a new professional golf tournament, will be held at Windsor Golf Club outside of Santa Rosa the week of April 3-9.
The 54-hole tournament will be played from Friday, April 7 through Sunday, April 9. POCMED is short for POC Medical Systems Inc., a company based in Livermore that is developing next generation technology for diagnosing breast cancer.
It’ll be the first time The Symetra Tour has been in Northern California since 2001, when the Tour played at Diablo Grande in Patterson.
The POCMED Golf Classic will feature the top 144 rising stars in the game of women’s golf from the United States and 25 plus countries around the globe. The tournament will also include 16 players from the Taiwan LPGA (TLPGA) as part of a co-sanction between the Symetra Tour and the TLPGA.
“We are grateful to partner with POCMED to bring women’s golf back to Northern California,” said Chief Business Officer, Mike Nichols. “When the former NIKE Tour played here and guys like Tom Lehman and Stuart Appleby won before they reached the PGA TOUR, the North Bay could take pride. Now, we are bringing the future stars of the LPGA to Wine Country and we know the community will embrace them and take pride in their success when they reach the LPGA.”
The tournament will offer a purse of $100,000 with winner taking home $15,000. The top 10 players on the Symetra Tour’s Volvik Race for the Card money list at the end of the season earn LPGA Tour membership for 2018.
A number of talented players on the Symetra Tour grew up in Northern California including Emily Childs of Alameda, who played college golf at UC Berkeley.
“I was super excited to see a Nor Cal event on the Symetra Tour schedule this year,” said Childs, who won the NCGA Women’s Amateur Championship in 2010. “I love not having to travel across the country and this gives my family and friends an opportunity to come out and watch me play. There are so many good female golfers from the area, I’m surprised there aren’t more LPGA/Symetra events up here. This is a great way to promote the game for women, especially in a place where the golf is so amazing.”
Windsor Golf Club last held a professional golf tournament from 1990-1995 when the Web.com Tour (formerly Ben Hogan Tour and Nike Tour) hosted the Ben Hogan Santa Rosa Open (which later became the Nike Sonoma County Open). Tom Lehman won the event in 1991 while Stuart Appleby won in 1995.
The event will require approximately 150 local volunteers to help run all facets of the tournament including scoring, leaderboards, operations and more.
For more information about the POCMED Golf Classic, playing in the pro-am and to volunteer, contact LPGA-Sonoma@lpga.com.
-NCGA Staff
