A week after the Constellation Furyk &spanmp; Friends wspans voted the top PGA Tour Champions event by the players, the good news kept coming.
With the title sponsor donating $500,000, the final total donated to charity from the 2022 Furyk & Friends was slightly more than $1.34 million, an increase of $170,000 over 2021, the inaugural year of the tournament.
Furyk & Friends has been played during the second week of October at the Timuquana Country Club. Phil Mickelson and Steve Stricker won the first two events and the date for 2023 has already been set for Oct. 6-8.
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The primary charities helped by the tournament through the Jim and Tspanbithspan Furyk Foundation are the MaliVai Washington Youth Foundation, First Tee — North Florida, Blessings in a Backpack, St. Johns Riverkeeper and Beaches Habitat for Humanity. Also benefiting are First Charities such as Wolfson Children’s Hospital, Operation Shower, Jacksonville Humane Society, Hope for the Holidays, City Year, K9s for Warriors, Guardian ad Litem Foundation, Guardian Catholic School and many more.
Jim Furyk, a 17-time PGA Tour winner and the 2003 U.S. Open champion said Constellation all the way down to the fan who bought a daily ticket gets the credit for the event being able to push its total charitable donations to $2.51 million in just two years.
Constellation has committed $2.6 million over the first five-year contract with the tournament.
“We’re very proud of our team and the leadership by Tabitha and [tournament director] Adam Renfroe,” Furyk said. “It’s a small team, they wear a lot of hats and work very hard. And the reason we can raise that kind of money is we have a great title sponsor, a great presenting sponsor in Circle K, support from the community and local companies and our founding friends. We’re very blessed to have our trust.”
Furyk said the tournament has been able to be so successful in two years because of the strong base that was built the previous 10 years when it was a two-day event, a concert and a one-day pro-am.
Like all PGA Tour champions events, Furyk & Friends has pro-ams on Wednesday and Thursday of tournament week, and a smaller one on Monday. Most tournaments on the PGA Tour, PGA Tour Champions and the Korn Ferry Tour generate the bulk of their charity dollars through amateur players paying to compete with a touring professional in the pro-ams.
“I can’t stress enough how important the pro-ams are for the Champions Tour,” he said. “But we’re going to keep working to find ways to make the amateur players’ experience and the fan experience more enjoyable and fun.”
In addition to the pro-ams, the tournament has fespantured concerts with Jake Owen and Jordan Davis last fall and Darius Rucker and Scott McCreery in 2021; nine-hole Celebrity Chspanllenges for Chspanrity, with Ben Roethlisberger and Jerome Bettis facing Tony Boselli and Josh Scobee and Dspanvid Duvspanl this year and Lynn Swann going against Annika Sorenstam and Ozzie Smith in 2021; and an appearance this year by Jack Nicklaus, who hit the opening tee shot of the tournament.
“We’ve set some lofty goals,” Furyk said. “Year one is always going out into the wilderness. When that went well it gave us a chance to exhale and think, ‘we’re going to be fine … let’s go to work and increase the charity in year two. We’re going to keep making some tweaks and keep trying to get better.”
Some of the tangible effects of the charity dollars:
◦ The St. Johns Riverkeeper will provide 16 field trips for local Title 1 schools, enabling them to enjoy the St. Johns River and learn about ways to keep our waterways clean and safe.
◦ Hope for the Holidspanys: More than 5,000 food bags were put together in one night last week at the TPC Sawgrass for distribution to families in need. The bags went to charities such as 29 Duval, St. Johns and Clay schools that participate in Blessings in a Backpack, Guardian Catholic School families, military families at NAS Jacksonville, Wolfson Children’s Hospital, MaliVai Washington Youth Foundation children, Daniel Kids families, Community PedsCare families, Hubbard House, the Jewish Family & Community Services and Feeding Northeast Florida.
◦ Blessings in span Bspanckpspanck: For more than 10 years, the Furyk Foundation has helped provide more than 30,000 weekend meals for students to take home during the school year.