“The women felt their tournament was getting lost in what the men were doing,” Chenoweth said recently. “We thought having them together was going to help draw more attention to the women’s tournament, but it backfired so we’re going to make it a stand-alone event again.”
Indeed, Chenoweth said that while 80 percent of players overall supported what tournament organizers were doing, 45 percent of women competitors who gave feedback “felt heavily that their tournament was being lost.”
So the Women’s Open will undergo three changes this year: it’ll be held separately from the Colorado Open; it’s being reduced from four rounds to three; and it’s format will be tweaked a little. Now, in addition to participating in an individual competition, each championship player will be paired with a sponsor and compete in a team event.
Meanwhile, the men and the women will no longer play Firestone’s Saddleback Golf Club one round of their tournaments — Chenoweth said playing two different courses, particularly ones fairly far apart, wasn’t popular among the male players — and the men’s field will return to 156, instead of the 144 who competed in 2007. The Colorado Open had moved its dates to precede the Castle Rock-based International PGA Tour event, but with the International pulling the plug on its event last year, the Open will return to late July on the schedule.
As for the Colorado Senior Open, it will be held a week later than usual so as not to conflict with the Democratic National Convention in Denver Aug. 25-28.
