The PGA Tour’s AT&T Byron Nelson will in 2021 move to TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney, Texas, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.
It had been announced in January that the tournament would be at Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas for this last time this year, but the event planned for May 7-10 was canceled because of COVID-19. Sung Kang won the 2019 Sung KangAT&T Byron Nelson, the most recent time the event was played.
Next year’s tournament will be the first time the event, which dates to 1944, is held outside Dallas County. Before moving to Trinity Forest in 2018, the event had been played for 35 years at TPC Four Seasons. The event will remain at TPC Craig Ranch for at least five years, according to the report.
The private TPC Craig Ranch is a par-72, 7,438-yard Tom Weiskopf design that opened in 2004. It hosted what is now the Korn Ferry Tour Championship in 2008 and 2012.
Built on a former toxic landfill southeast of downtown Dallas, Trinity Forest was designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and opened in 2016. It is a rugged, linksy course that offers plenty of roll for golf balls, different than the typically softer target courses frequented by the PGA Tour. Trinity Forest was ranked No. 105 in 2019 among Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses for tracks built in or after 1960.
Bad weather in the event’s first two years at Trinity Forest didn’t help attendance, revenue or the fast-and-firm playing conditions, and the Salesmanship Club of Dallas – which hosts the event through its charitable golf organization – decided to pull the plug.
“As the necessary footprint to grow the event continues to expand, collectively, we will be evaluating other facilities in the Dallas area for 2021 to ensure a premium fan experience and allow the Salesmanship Club to continue to do great things through its support of the Momentous Institute,” Tyler Dennis, chief of operations at PGA Tour, told the Dallas Morning News in January.
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