The Genesis Invitational will be played at a different site next month than its typical host Riviera Country Club, following the fires that have ravaged Los Angeles in the last two weeks.
The PGA Tour announced the decision Thursday afternoon, saying the Genesis Invitational will be contested “at an alternate location” over the same scheduled dates of February 10-16. The venue decision “will be provided in the coming days” the statement read.
The Genesis Invitational, which is hosted by Tiger Woods and the Tiger Woods Foundation, has been played at Riviera Country Club, one of the best courses in the world, for the last 26 years, and many of the years before that, dating back to the late 1920s. But Riviera is located in the Pacific Palisades, one of the locales hit hardest by one of the worst fires in the history of California.
The golf club was located within a mandatory evacuation zone for much of the last week, with the perimeter of the Palisades Fire coming within a couple hundred yards of the course. Video footage soon trickled out from near the club with fire and smoke raging in the background. Luckily for the club, the site of the course was spared.
The Palisades Fire has been the biggest of the multitude of blazes that have destroyed parts of LA County in January. The Riviera-adjacent fire has spanned more than 23,000 acres and, as of Thursday afternoon, was just 22% contained.
Woods made a statement about the fires earlier this week, alluding to charitable efforts he and his foundation plan to make. Then on Tuesday night, he was asked about the effect it may have on the staging of the Genesis Invitational.
“It’s just sad,” Woods said after his debut TGL appearance, standing next to Max Homa. “Max and I have grown up there. We’re SoCal kids. To see what has happened, I’ve known a couple people that have lost everything, so it’s just hard.
“As far as the Genesis, we’re trying to just figure everything out and make sure that everyone is safe and we have meetings scheduled going forward. But as of right now, we’re not really focused on the tournament. It’s more about what we can do to help everyone who’s struggling, who’s lost homes and had their lives changed.”
The PGA Tour has routinely brought the best golfers in the world to the country’s west coast for the first two months of the calendar year, often culminating in the Genesis Invitational in mid-February, before the Tour heads to Florida. All of which means the event will have potential homes for this 2025 iteration that are used to hosting tournament infrastructure and spectators. The last time the Genesis Invitational was held away from Riviera was in 1998, when it was hosted at Valencia Country Club north of LA, because Riviera was playing host to the U.S. Senior Open.
In other years, dating back to the 1970s and 60s, the event has been held at Rancho Park in LA and Brookside Golf Course in Pasadena, but those are both municipal courses incapable of hosting a modern, major sporting event. There is no shortage of elite golf courses in the Los Angeles area, but given how the fires have affected huge swaths of the county, the event may need to be moved outside of the Greater LA Metro Area.
