The national golf spotlight turns on Benton Harbor this week when the 2014 Senior PGA Championship presented by KitchenAid is played at Harbor Shores.
The legends of the game and the newest members of senior professional golf compete in the most prestigious Major Championship in senior golf.
Defending Champion Kohki Idoki of Japan will be part of a 156-player field competing in the most prestigious event in senior golf. Other competitors in the May 22-25 event include 2012 Champion Roger Chapman, Tom Watson, Fred Couples, Kenny Perry, Jay Haas, Tom Lehman, Bernhard Langer and Mark O'Meara.
The 2013 Senior PGA Championship featured a $2 million purse and $360,000 for first place. The 2014 total purse will be announced prior to the Championship.
Those getting ready for the tournament are already praising the course. In an interview before the event Tom Watson talks about missing the first tournament played at Harbor Shores and why he's looking forward to this year's competition:
"This tournament is played at a facility that is not just a golf facility, it's a facility that's a renovation. It has a lot deeper meaning, this facility, than just a golf course," Watson says. "What it's done for the community and what it's intended to do for the community, is to create new lives for people. I hope that that really comes to fruition here, that it does create that type of community here."
He says it took a huge commitment to reclaim the land that became a golf course. "I hope it bears its fruit for long, long years to come."
Harbor Shores is the golf course at the heart of the 530-acre beach and golf resort development that's reshaping the Southwest corner of Michigan and how people view the region.
The land on which it sits -- abandoned in the mid-'80s when manufacturers took 5,000 jobs and left town, used as an unofficial dump, and in some places so polluted the city couldn't give it away -- has been thoroughly cleaned up and transformed into the rolling hills and sweeping vistas of a Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course.
Gene Fieger, winner of the 2013 Southworth Senior PGA Professional National Championship is another golfer impressed by what he has seen of the course after playing it for a couple of days before competition begins.
"Yeah, it's a beautiful layout, very undulating greens," says Fieger. "It's a beautiful place and the golf course is in just tremendous condition from what- being from Naples, Florida, all my members talk about how the courses up north have really taken a beating this winter, but you don't see any signs of it here, the course is beautiful."
Kohki Idoki, defending the title he won on his first trip to the United States, says Harbor Shores is quite different than the course on which he won his championship. Bellerive has the same grass on its green as that found in Japan, so it was easy for him.
“This course is such a hard course, so I can't relax playing on this course, I have to always concentrates on each shot.” Kohki Idoki says. “So I just have to concentrate a hundred percent and then just play hard.”
For those who want to tune in to the tournament here is the (tentative) television broadcast schedule: Thursday, May 22, Noon - 3 p.m. on the Golf Channel; Friday, May 23, Noon - 3: p.m. on the Golf Channel; Saturday, May 24, 3 p.m. - 6 p.m., NBC; Sunday, May 25, 3 p.m. - 6 p.m. NBC.
For a drone's eye view of the course, click here.
Sources: SPGA, ASAP Sports, KemperLesnik
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.