The Match 2022 host Pelican Golf Club: All you need to know about the venue
As darkness sets in the sunshine state of America this Saturday, Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Justin Thomas, and Jordan Spieth will play in the match under the lights of the Pelican Golf Club Course.
The match is worth watching as the 15-time major champion, Tiger Woods, returns to the course after a brief break due to his injury. Meanwhile, McIlroy, Spieth, and Thomas will make their debuts in the made-for-TV franchise. It would be the seventh iteration of the championship, which began in 2018.
The Pelican Golf Club Course shares several similarities with the Augusta National Golf Course. It is pretty popular to organize the LPGA Tour; however, for the first time, PGA Tour players will play on the field.
The Tampa Bay-based area, designed by Donald Ross, has a complicated history of nearly 100 years.
The history of the Pelican Golf Club Course began in the 19th century when an American businessman named Henry B. Plant saw a real estate opportunity in the Belleair area and established a hotel in 1897 with a six-hole winter golf course.
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After his death, Morton Plant took over the company and hired Donald Ross to design two 18-hole golf courses at the previous site. When Morton passed away in 1918, the hotel was sold to the owner of the Bowman-Biltmore hotel, John McEntee Bowman, who created a 18-hole course beside the hotel.
It was also designed by Donald Ross and was named Pelican Golf Club, which was later renamed Biltmore Golf Club. However, in 2009, the hotel was shut down, leaving the future of the historical golf course on a cliffhanger.
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In 2013, the town of Belleair bought the rights to the property for $3.5 million and began work on the course. Four years later, Pelican Golf Course was sold to the founders of Tampa's DEX Imaging, who saw an opportunity to revitalize the property and are working on resigning under the guidance of Beau Weiling.
Pelican Golf Course has a Lamborghini hole
The Belleair-based golf course is best known for conducting several LPGA Tour Championships.
At the 12th hole of the Pelican Golf Club Course, golfers who make a hole-in-one shot receive a racy car, and it is famously known as the "Lamborghini hole." Last year, three players, Austin Ernst, Su-Oh, and Pavarisa Yoktuan, earned Lamborghini Huracan leases for two years.
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There is ample room for the tee, and the bright light will not be a problem for the golfers playing in The Match on December 10.
Speaking about the upcoming tournament, a member of the Doyle family (founder of Tampa's DEX Imaging), Sheehan, said:
“The trouble is really the second shot and onward, the ability to hit your approach shot on the correct section of the green. There's ample room off the tee, and even the holes that have sort of trouble off the tee, it’s kind of fair on the other side of the fairway, for the most part, but starting from the second shot, some of the greens are pretty large with a lot of slopes.
Sheehan added:
"There's a few that are smaller, and if you get on the wrong side, or even miss the green on the wrong side, then the up-and-down becomes incredibly challenging.”