Ginn Championship Donates $250,000, Returns for 2008

Champions Tour Event Returns to Hammock Beach in March

Off the stunning success of the inaugural Ginn Championship at Hammock Beach, organizers of the Champions Tour event have donated $250,000 to area charities and announced the tourney will return, with almost no changes, to the Ocean Course at Hammock Beach March 24-30, 2008.

The 2007 Ginn Championship was announced only 10 months before it was played and then had to be moved from the Tom Watson-designed Conservatory at Hammock Beach just 60 days before the first tee ball was hit, paid out the second largest non-major purse on the Champions Tour, 2.5-million dollars, and still raised an astonishing quarter of a million dollars for Flagler County charities, including $95,000 for the Florida Hospital Memorial Foundation and the Stuart F. Meyer Hospice House.

Other beneficiaries include the First Tee of St. John’s County, American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life, Stewart-Marchman Center, Matanzas High School Boosters, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of Flagler County, the Friends of the A1A Scenic and Historical Coast Byways, the Art League, Champions Tour Wives Association and Habitat for Humanity.

Keith Fergus made the first Ginn Championship his first Champions Tour win, outdueling “rookie” Mark O’Meara and Hall of Famer Hale Irwin, who each finished just a shot back. Seven members of the World Golf Hall of Fame in nearby St. Augustine teed it up at the first Ginn Championship. Among those who’ll be eligible to play in their first Ginn Championship on 2008 are Hall of Famers Nick Faldo and Bernhard Langer, and newly minted 50-year-olds Jeff Sluman, John Cook and Ian Woosnam.

Tournament Director John Subers says, “As a first-year tournament, we are extremely pleased with the amount of community support we received from the Palm Coast and Flagler County area. We plan to build on those achievements in 2008.”

The purse will remain the same in 2008, as will ticket prices, sponsorship and hospitality packages, and the two pro-ams, one Monday and one Wednesday and Thursday.

For more information on tickets, hospitality, volunteering or the pro-ams, visit www.ginnchampionship.com.