Hideki Matsuyama performs an method through the Genesis Invitational in 2024.
Getty Photographs
The Genesis Invitational shall be performed at a special website subsequent month than its typical host Riviera Nation Membership, following the fires which have ravaged Los Angeles within the final two weeks.
The PGA Tour introduced the choice Thursday afternoon, saying the Genesis Invitational shall be contested “at an alternate location” over the identical scheduled dates of February 10-16. The venue choice “shall be supplied within the coming days” the assertion learn.
The Genesis Invitational, which is hosted by Tiger Woods and the Tiger Woods Basis, has been performed at Riviera Nation Membership, among the finest programs on the planet, for the final 26 years, and most of the years earlier than that, courting again to the late Twenties. However Riviera is positioned within the Pacific Palisades, one of many locales hit hardest by one of many worst fires within the historical past of California.
The golf membership was positioned inside a compulsory evacuation zone for a lot of the final week, with the perimeter of the Palisades Hearth coming inside a pair hundred yards of the course. Video footage quickly trickled out from close to the membership with fireplace and smoke raging within the background. Fortunately for the membership, the positioning of the course was spared.
The Palisades Hearth has been the largest of the multitude of blazes which have destroyed elements of LA County in January. The Riviera-adjacent fireplace has spanned greater than 23,000 acres and, as of Thursday afternoon, was simply 22% contained.
Woods made an announcement concerning the fires earlier this week, alluding to charitable efforts he and his basis plan to make. Then on Tuesday evening, he was requested concerning the impact it might have on the staging of the Genesis Invitational.
“It’s simply unhappy,” Woods stated after his debut TGL look, standing subsequent to Max Homa. “Max and I’ve grown up there. We’re SoCal youngsters. To see what has occurred, I’ve recognized a pair folks that have misplaced every part, so it’s simply arduous.
“So far as the Genesis, we’re attempting to only determine every part out and be sure that everyone seems to be protected and we have now conferences scheduled going ahead. However as of proper now, we’re not likely centered on the match. It’s extra about what we will do to assist everybody who’s struggling, who’s misplaced properties and had their lives modified.”
The PGA Tour has routinely introduced one of the best golfers on the planet to the nation’s west coast for the primary two months of the calendar 12 months, typically culminating within the Genesis Invitational in mid-February, earlier than the Tour heads to Florida. All of which suggests the occasion could have potential properties for this 2025 iteration which are used to internet hosting match infrastructure and spectators. The final time the Genesis Invitational was held away from Riviera was in 1998, when it was hosted at Valencia Nation Membership north of LA, as a result of Riviera was taking part in host to the U.S. Senior Open.
In different years, courting again to the Seventies and 60s, the occasion has been held at Rancho Park in LA and Brookside Golf Course in Pasadena, however these are each municipal programs incapable of internet hosting a contemporary, main sporting occasion. There isn’t any scarcity of elite golf programs within the Los Angeles space, however given how the fires have affected enormous swaths of the county, the occasion could should be moved exterior of the Better LA Metro Space.
