'This has [been] a dream of ours': Hybl looking forward to bringing Korn Ferry Tour to Norman
Aug. 16—Over the next five years, Oklahoma will have a unique opportunity to showcase the past, present and future of golf in the state.
And Jimmie Austin OU Golf Club will be at at the center of it all.
The Korn Ferry Tour announced a partnership with Compliance Solutions to bring the Compliance Solutions Championship to Jimmie Austin over the next five years. The inaugural event will be held June 23-25 starting in 2023 and will run through 2027.
The event will bring professional golf back to the state of Oklahoma for the first time since the PGA Championship came to Southern Hills in Tulsa this past May. The Korn Ferry Tour is a developmental tour of the PGA Tour in which hundreds of players from countries across the world compete to earn their PGA Tour cards.
Jimmie Austin has previously hosted the men's and women's U.S. Amateur Public Links Championships, a state amateur championship, five men's and women's NCAA regionals, and two Big 12 championships. Still, the Korn Ferry Tour will be a huge step forward for both the golf course and the Oklahoma golf program.
"This has kind of been a dream of ours — to host something of this magnitude at Jimmie Austin," OU golf head coach Ryan Hybl said at a press conference at Jimmie Austin on Tuesday. "We know we have a championship golf course. We've made all the renovations over the last 20 years or so and that's a credit to a lot of different people. We have arguably the best staff in the country. It starts over here with Tyler Woodward, our agronomy staff with Cody Elwood. Everything about our place is championship."
The Sooners currently have eight players competing for PGA Tour cards on the Korn Ferry Tour. The Compliance Solutions Championship will give those players a unique opportunity to compete on their home course.
It will also give Hybl and his staff an invaluable recruiting pitch when looking to bring in new golfers. Hybl said he hopes to see the tournament become one of the highlights of the Korn Ferry Tour season.
"This is gonna become that event that everyone truly looks forward to," he said.
The purse for the 72-hole event will be $1 million, with the top player earning $180,000 of that total.
"Inside the ropes, you'll see a depth of talent and a level of competition that's among the best in the world," Korn Ferry Tour president Alex Baldwin said. "Outside the ropes, we'll see and we're already seeing, this community and the entire Sooner State rally around this championship in order to generate a significant, charitable and economic impact in this community."
Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, who worked with the PGA Championship's tournament committee, spoke about the impact professional golf tournaments can have on local economies.
He estimated that the 2022 PGA Championship in Tulsa had a $158 million economic impact on the state during the four-day tournament.
"We've showed off this state in a way that I don't think we've done before," Pinnell said. "But moving forward over the next decade inside the state of Oklahoma, I think it's primetime for the state of Oklahoma to grow, grow the right way and keep our homegrown talent inside the state."
Ticket information for the event will be released at a later date. Baldwin said that the tournament will require around 300-350 volunteers and that volunteer registration will be open in a few months.
Tarik Masri is a sports reporter for The Transcript covering OU athletics and area sports. You can reach him by emailing tarik@normantranscript.com
