Move to fall springs new trap for golf tournament.

• Author: Roush, Chris
• Position: Greensboro

When it comes to pro sports, Greensboro has been second-string. Sure, it hosted a National Hockey League team from 1997 to 1999--but only because the Carolina Hurricanes were still building their home arena in Raleigh.

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In 2004, minor-league hockey and arena-football teams closed shop in Greensboro. The city still has a baseball team--the Grasshoppers--but it's Single-A ball, more akin to what you would expect of Kinston. Durham and Charlotte have Triple-A teams. Even Zebulon has a Double-A team.

The one exception has been golf. Major tournaments have come and gone and come back again in Charlotte and Pinehurst, but Greensboro has had a yearly stop on the tour since 1938. Now not even the Chrysler Classic of Greensboro--you're forgiven if you still call it the GGO--is safe. It definitely will be played next year, but the PGA Tour is taking a hard look at its schedule as it starts negotiating a TV contract for 2007. The tour wants to cut back--it hasn't said by how much--from the 48 events it runs and end its season in late September or early October.

That could mean the Greensboro event--held in October the past three years--won't make the cut. "To say we've been battling is a major understatement," tournament director Mark Brazil says. "We're fighting like crazy." He expects a decision from the tour by the end of the year.

The loss of the tour stop would be one more blow to a city that already stands to lose one of its two Fortune 500 headquarters early next year if the $7.5 billion sale of insurer Jefferson-Pilot to Philadelphia-based Lincoln National closes as planned. Among other things, the tournament gives the city television exposure. "You get some residual effect from people hearing about the Greensboro tournament," says Dan Lynch, president of the Greensboro Economic Development Partnership. "That kind of coverage is priceless. I couldn't afford to do that with my budget."

The tournament took action this year to convince the PGA Tour that it should keep its tour card. Long run by the Greensboro Jaycees, it is operated now on a day-to-day basis by a charitable foundation created earlier this year. Members include some of the city's biggest movers and shakers, including J-P CEO Dennis Glass and former Mayor Jim Melvin. That will give the tournament some much-needed gravitas and continuity. Previously, a different Jaycee would come in each year to run things. "The Jaycees kept the tournament where it was, but...