PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — The annual PGA Tour event at Riviera Country Club that is now run by Tiger Woods‘ foundation will get a big upgrade beginning in 2020, putting it in the same status as tournaments associated with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
Sources told ESPN that the Genesis Open will receive “elevated status,” which means it will have a significantly higher purse, offer a three-year PGA Tour exemption to the winner (up from two years) and will have an invitational field that will be reduced to 120 players. This week’s tournament at Riviera will have 144 players.
According to sources, an announcement on the new status for the tournament is expected to be made Wednesday, when Woods addresses the media after playing in the tournament pro-am.
The Arnold Palmer Invitational, which the late golf legend founded in 1979 at this Bay Hill Club in Orlando, Florida, and the the Memorial Tournament, which Nicklaus began in 1976 at a course he designed near his Columbus, Ohio, home, are events that operate in a similar fashion.
Both have 120-player invitational fields with purses higher than a regular PGA Tour stop.
Woods’ foundation, now known as TGR Foundation, has its roots in the Southern California area and is located in Anaheim. The Genesis Open, which dates to 1929 when it was the Los Angeles Open, is the nearest PGA Tour event to Woods’ boyhood home in Orange.
With the help of his late father, Earl, Woods formed his own foundation early in his pro career, then started a tournament now known as the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas (it had been played in Southern California for most of its time) to help promote the foundation as well as raise funds for it. What began as the AT&T National in Washington, D.C., in 2007, was originally meant to grow into the status of the Palmer and Nicklaus events. Formed as a tribute to the military along with raising funds for his foundation, Woods saw that tournament run into title sponsorship issues; it was not renewed after the 2018 event called the Quicken Loans National.