GGOne with the Wyndham: Greensboro's name is no longer on the tournament, but other changes might mean more top pros and fewer no-shows.

• Author: Dell, John
• Position: Special Section

Mark Brazil still remembers the sick-to-his-stomach feeling. The tournament director of what was then the Chrysler Classic of Greensboro was standing on the range at the Wachovia Championship in May 2005 when the rumors about the 2007 PGA Tour schedule hit home in a big way. The shortened season would mean some smaller-market tournaments would die. His was a smaller-market tournament. "If we didn't move fast, our tournament in Greensboro would be history," Brazil recalls thinking that day in Charlotte.

He and other Greensboro tournament and civic officials moved quickly. Talk all you want about upsets--Villanova beating Georgetown for the NCAA basketball title in 1985, N.C. State's 1983 NCAA title or even Rocky Balboa beating Apollo Creed in Rocky II. But the Greensboro tournament, now the Wyndham Championship, achieved one of the bigger upsets in recent sports memory by making the cut on the slimmed-down PGA Tour schedule.

What it took for Brazil and other tournament officials was hard work, money, some more hard work and some more money. In a bold move, the tournament changed its operation, even pushing the volunteer organization that founded the event, the Greensboro Jaycees, to the background. That's because the PGA Tour doesn't want volunteer groups running the show anymore. It wants tournaments to have sound business plans and leaders that carry on from year to year rather than having to quit at age 40.

It wasn't easy to find the money and people to save the tournament, particularly since DaimlerChrysler had announced the fall 2006 event would be its final as title sponsor. Tournament officials recruited more than 20 Triad business leaders to form the Greensboro Jaycees Charitable Foundation Board. The board pledged a $25 million letter of credit to the PGA Tour until a title sponsor could be found. How important was the letter of credit? One longtime event, The International, played in Colorado, was dropped from the 2007 schedule in part because it couldn't find a sponsor.

PGA Tour brass came away impressed by how swiftly the foundation board evolved and how hard it worked to keep Greensboro one of the longest-running PGA Tour tournaments. "This is a group of folks who will continue to push this tournament to bigger things," says Tim Crosby, the tour's director of business affairs. "They aren't going to just sit by and say, 'OK, we've got the tournament now.' They are going to keep going and want to make it even better."

As it turned...