Tiger Asks & Ye Shall Receive: Poppy Hills Likely Out of Pebble Beach Pro-Am

KSBW, a television station in Monterey, California, is reporting that it has found documents that suggest Poppy Hills will be replaced in the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am starting as soon as next season.  Its replacement would be the Shore Course at Monterey Peninsula Country Club.

On Friday, MPCC contacted its 750 members, recommending that they accept the request to use their course for the 2010 Pro Am which could mean drawing up to 10,000 spectators to the private club every day during the tournament.MPCC rejected a similar proposal back in 2005.So what has changed? Supporters said they need the attention to attract new membership since the economy has tanked.

Monterey Peninsula Country Club (Links Magazine)

This topic has come up before with this course in replacing Poppy.  But, the rationale to say yes is now economic in nature.

MPCC rejected a similar proposal back in 2005.

So what has changed? Supporters said they need the attention to attract new membership since the economy has tanked.

There are numbers being floated around that try to make the case that Monterey's Shore Course would mean better revenues for the tournament and, therefore, for charities supported by the event.  I don't know how you can prove that at all.

That leads me to believe this harkens somewhat back to a story we reported in March about Tiger's potential interest in returning to the event.  At that time, AP's Doug Ferguson floated the potential for Cypress Point to return to the rotation by replacing Poppy, which replaced it in 1991.  With AT&T as a sponsor of Tiger Woods now, it would seem imminennt that AT&T would do anything it needed to in order to get Woods to one of the events it title sponsors.

Big hat tip to Geoff Shackelford for this news.