FRISCO, Texas — In a deal nearly five years in the making, the PGA of America is moving its national headquarters to a raw piece of land on the north end of this booming city 30 miles north of Dallas. The property will include a Gil Hanse designed championship course, scheduled to open in 2022; a second 18-hole course and 9-hole par 3, both designed by Beau Welling; and a sprawling practice facility.
To Texas golf fans, the $520 million deal will also bring something else that has been missing in this part of the state: big-time tournament golf.
The Hanse course is slated to play host to the 2023 Senior PGA Championship, followed by the 2025 Women’s PGA Championship. Two years after that the PGA is aiming to conduct the 2027 PGA Championship on the Hanse course, with plans to return the event there again in 2034. (The PGA had previously awarded the 2027 PGA Championship to Aronimink Golf Club in Newton Square, Pa., but that event will be bumped up to 2026.)
As detailed in a presentation to the Frisco City Council on Tuesday, the PGA’s crown jewel event, the Ryder Cup, is also tentatively scheduled for the Frisco site, though not until 2040.
There has not been a major golf championship in North Texas since the 1963 PGA Championship at Dallas Athletic Club. There has not been a major anywhere in Texas since the 1969 U.S. Open at Champions Golf Club in Houston.
“It’s an unprecedented commitment of championship golf here,” said PGA of America Chief Operating Officer Darrell Crall, who spearheaded the project from the beginning for the PGA and is the former executive director of the Northern Texas PGA. “We like the fact that we have majors every two years here, and we think they will be successful.”
Crall also said the PGA Junior League National Championships will be held annually in Frisco. “We will make Frisco our Williamsport, Pa., like Little League baseball has done there,” he said.
The new course facility will have a Lone Star feel from the start with Texas-bred club pro Jimmy Terry, who currently oversees the PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, Fla., returning home in early 2019 to assume general-manager duties at the Frisco courses.
PGA of America executive John Easterbrook, who began his career as a golf professional in Fort Worth, will also move to Frisco in 2019 to oversee the project. Crall said the new headquarters should be open by 2022 and that more than 100 PGA of America staffers will make the move from Florida to Texas.
