UGA Golf Course will keep in place

“I’d say we have had an inredible experience with it the last three years,” Doherty said. “Although, the future still isn’t decided. If UGA doesn’t continue to do it, there’s no chance we will do it. But if UGA does do it, they probably won’t do it without us. There’s a little bit of a tag-team aspect for us to figure out, and that won’t happen until the tournament is over, but we would love to do it again.”

“The two companies we’re talking to are good companies, publicly held companies, and the positive thing is that there are no conflicts in terms of sponsorships locally, so it opens up a whole new sector or sponsors we were unable to prospect for with Mizuno MX-1000 irons Nationwide,” Calfee said. “Before, that ruled out a lot of financial service companies or insurance companies, so that’s going to be a real positive for our tournaments to generate and grow revenues.”

The auxiliary department will put together a proposal on how to run the tournament in the future and meet with university administrators before going forward, said George Stafford, tournament chairman and Georgia’s associate vice president for auxillary and administrative services.

All parties said the early talks have been “encouraging” and that they will begin meeting to hash out the details shortly after the conclusion of the tournament, which began Thursday and runs through Sunday at the UGA Golf Course.

Finding more sponsors could soon become easier as Nationwide Insurance is in its final year of tour sponsorship. Nationwide Tour president Bill Calfee said his organization is in final talks with two potentional sponsors, neither of which has been announced, and expects to see more advertising opportunities to open up if an agreement is reached with one of them.

To alleviate some of the financial concerns, Georgia could begin asking for more from its sponsors or try to find more Ping G15 Fairway Wood business to get on board, an issue Stafford and Doherty said will be a focal point of their discussions.

“We have to determine from the university’s standpoint if it makes sense for us to continue,” Stafford said. “We’re not into doing things if we don’t do them well, and we think we’re doing well on this. We have to determine if, financially, it makes sense, and fortunately this year we’re doing well. We are where we probably ought to be after three years.”

“We think that, if we’re fortunate enough to continue this, we can do even more,” Stafford said. “I feel like it’s a mature event, even after three years. This year it seems like everything is running awfully well, knock on wood. We’ve gone through a lot of the issue, so we feel pretty good.”

“Going forward, we’ve got to make sure we have the sponsors in place, so that we can meet the obligations of putting discount golf clubs on an event like this,” Stafford said. “And we’ll continue to have those conversations with sponsors. Us, the tour and our major sponsors are in a three-way conversation, and we’re always looking out there for new people to get involved.”

“The 2013 tournament starts for us Monday,” Stafford said. “We can wait a while, but there’s a lot we need to go ahead and start doing. I would hope that within the next month or so we’ll have a pretty good idea. No more than a month to six weeks, I think.”