SentryWorld golf course in Stevens Point is making an unheard of commitment for the 2023 U.S. Senior Open
STEVENS POINT – The first major championship held in central Wisconsin will be held at SentryWorld in Stevens Point, and the facility owned and operated by Sentry Insurance has had, and will have, one of the more unique run-ups to a major golf tournament in recent memory – or ever.
The course was closed in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic and remained closed in 2021 for renovations in advance of the championship. Those improvements included the installation of a sub-air system under the greens to control moisture and an underground irrigation system.
Seven new or modified tee boxes were created to add 200 yards, two greens were reconstructed and one additional green was renovated.
SentryWorld general manager Mike James then noted at a preview event Thursday that the course will close in late September this year and will not reopen again to the public until after the U.S. Senior Open champion is crowned July 2, 2023.
“The commitment that Sentry Insurance, SentryWorld, is making to this Senior Open in the fact that the golf course is closed – we don’t see that anywhere else in the industry,” said Ben Kimball, the inside-the-ropes director of the U.S. Senior Open.
“That may be a first. Walking into a USGA championship with a golf course that has been closed more than six months or eight months is just unheard of in our industry. For somebody responsible for everything that happens inside the ropes, it’s a dream come true, but again, I just can’t reiterate (enough) the commitment SentryWorld is making to this championship.
"It’s just, it’s unbelievable. This is just something we at the USGA don’t see happen very often, that this amount of time and dedication to that wonderful property out there is going to be given.”
More: What's next for Whistling Straits? After Ryder Cup, course awaits its next major tournament.
The commitment to creating the ultimate tournament experience for the top senior players in the game in 2023 actually began a decade earlier when the insurance company faced a decision on what to do with its golf course.
Sentry Insurance President and CEO Pete McPartland said the decision in 2013 was to go all-in on revitalizing a facility that is credited with starting “destination golf” in Wisconsin.
“The message to Mike (James) and his team was whatever you do, make it the best,” McPartland said. “The goal of the golf course is not to have the most rounds played. It’s not to maximize the potential rounds played in a given year. It’s to be as well maintained a golf course as anyone can find and to maximize golfers, at all levels, experience and enjoyment while they play the course. That’s the goal. It’s not to maximize it fully as a business. We don’t need to do that.”
Originally designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr. and opened in 1982, it hosted state events and its first USGA championship with the 1986 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links. With the renovations in 2013-14, McPartland said the company once again wanted to get into the championship game, and it was awarded the 2019 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship.
Two years later, the USGA awarded the 2023 U.S. Senior Open to the venue.
Sentry Insurance also has become a corporate partner for the governing body.
While the field for the tournament will not be set until 2023, there is a good chance that local favorites Steve Stricker and Jerry Kelly will be in the field in their home state. The last time the U.S. Senior Open was held in Wisconsin was in 2007 at Whistling Straits in Haven.
“It will be a lot of fun,” Stricker said at the U.S. Senior Open at Saucon Valley Country Club in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in late June. “I haven't played SentryWorld since they've redone it but heard nothing but positive things about it.
“It will be fun to go back there. I'm going to try to play it at some point within the year and before we go back there for the U.S. Open. It will be fun to go back there and have kind of a home-field advantage and look forward to it already.”
Stricker won a state high school title at the course in 1984.
“It’ll be great to have him back, it’ll be great to have him hoisting this trophy next year as he did back in 1984,” James said Thursday.
When asked about golfers who meet the playing requirements but who participate on the LIV Tour, a professional golf tour funded by the Saudi Arabian government, Kimball said that as long as they qualify for the championship they will be allowed to compete.
“At the current time the USGA would accept entries from those players,” he said.
SentryWorld is a public facility and is open through September of this year, and tournament volunteers are still being accepted, though the USGA said nearly 2,000 have already signed up.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: SentryWorld in Stevens Point preparing to host 2023 U.S. Senior Open
