Whether it was Tom Watson reflecting on his impressive run at the British Open, Fuzzy Zoeller promoting his vodka line, Mark O’Meara expressing his passion for fly-fishing, or Fred Funk dominating the course, The Tradition at Crosswater conjures up incredible memories — even 10 years later.
The Tradition, one of five major championships on the Champions Tour, was held at Sunriver Resort’s Crosswater Club from 2007 to 2010, in mid-August each year.
The tournament included some of the biggest names from the PGA Tour who had moved on to the Champions Tour, for pro golfers 50 and older.
Watson, an eight-time major champion on the PGA Tour and 14-time winner on the Champions Tour, was one of the most legendary golfers to play at The Tradition when it was held in Sunriver.
“Any person who follows golf knows Tom Watson and knows he has this reputation for being a great gentleman,” says Zack Hall, who covered The Tradition extensively as golf writer for The Bulletin from 2007 to 2015. “And getting to meet him and talk to him over and over and over again, I realized that he is every bit the real thing. I don’t get star-struck very often, but talking to one of the game’s greatest ever and him giving mutual respect, that was a pretty neat moment for me.”
In 2009, just a couple of weeks before he was to arrive in Central Oregon for The Tradition that year, Watson nearly made history at the British Open. At age 59, he held the 54-hole lead as he vied to win his sixth British Open and become the oldest major champion ever. But he ended up losing to Stewart Cink in a four-hole playoff.
Hall remembers waking up early to watch every shot of Watson’s final round of the British Open that year, knowing he would likely get the chance to talk with him in Sunriver.
“He sat down with me for well over an hour,” Hall remembers. “Just going through the whole experience. What it was like, what it felt like. And he was amazing. I was completely mesmerized. This was his first public appearance after. He didn’t play the week after. It was a week and a half between that final round and when he arrived at The Tradition. What a cool experience that was.”
Hall, who still lives in Bend and now works in public relations, says it was his favorite moment as a sportswriter.
The four-year run of The Tradition helped put Central Oregon on the map as a golf destination, according to Hall. Crosswater Club was already a world-renowned course, but the tournament helped show that the Bend area had become a hotbed for the sport.
“It helped people in the golf world learn more about it,” Hall says. “I think the players loved it and they told other players about it. They talked about it as a very different sort of golf tournament, the smaller crowds plus the setting and all that. They all loved it. I remember Watson telling me that he gets to play in cities all the time and he’d rather play in a place like that. It meant something to those guys. If you have Tom Watson talking about what a nice destination it is, that’s only going to help.”
Josh Willis was the head professional and general manager at Crosswater Club during the four years The Tradition was held there, and he is now director of golf for Sunriver Resort.
Like Hall, Willis recalls the momentous opportunity to meet some of his idols he grew up watching on the PGA Tour.
One of them, Fuzzy Zoeller, was known as one of the funniest and most gregarious golfers on the tour. Zoeller, a two-time major winner on the PGA Tour, was using the Champions Tour as a chance to promote his Fuzzy’s Ultra Premium Vodka and he had a team of promoters around him.
“It was the talk of all the pros and the talk of the club because Fuzzy is such an engaging and downright humorous person,” Willis recalls. “In year two we asked him if he would do a vodka dinner with our members, and he did. To see him at the end of the night, and do a Q and A with members, just stands out to me as one of the most memorable things.”
And yes, Fuzzy had a few vodka drinks that night, Willis adds.
Willis also remembers Mark O’Meara, also a two-time major champion on the PGA Tour, talking about his love of fishing. Willis and other Sunriver employees introduced O’Meara to the Lower Deschutes and the steelhead fishing there.
“To this day, Mark still comes here every fall to steelhead fish on the Deschutes,” Willis says. “There’s just so many little stories like that.”
On another fishing note, Willis says that Crosswater stocks the lakes on the course with rainbow trout, allowing its members to occasionally fish there. Willis recalls taking some of the Champions Tour pros fishing on the lakes after their rounds at The Tradition.
“To be able to go down in the afternoons with some of these golf pros after the event was over and take them fishing … to spend time with these guys was just super cool,” Willis says. “And to watch it evolve every year … By the last year you had guys who had never fished wanting to do it.”
Winners during the four years of The Tradition at Crosswater were Mark McNulty in 2007, Funk in 2008, Mike Reid in 2009, and Funk again in 2010.
While Funk was a fan favorite and a fun golfer to follow, Reid’s victory in 2009 really stands out for Hall. John Cook held a one-shot lead on Reid going into the 18th hole but he missed a par putt that would have won the tournament, and Reid made birdie. On the first playoff hole, Reid made a 12-foot birdie putt to win the title.
Cook has seven top-10 finishes in major championships on the PGA Tour without winning one. In 2008, he lost the Senior British Open in a playoff to Bruce Vaughan. And again in 2009, a major championship slipped from his grasp.
Hall recounted the raw emotion of Cook that day in Sunriver.
“He had famously in his career had several opportunities to win majors but never did, and he had the lead going into the 18th hole,” Hall recalls. “He was absolutely broken-hearted afterward. Here’s a guy who had won millions and millions of dollars and was a great player for decades. And it still meant so much to him, and he still couldn’t get over the hump. Watching how real that was for him was sort of a reminder that, maybe it wasn’t the U.S. Open, but some pretty great players took it really seriously.”
On a lighter note, Hall says one of his favorite moments of The Tradition was one of the last moments, in 2010, when the then 54-year-old Funk won the tournament for the second time in three years, closing with a 3-under 69 for a one-stroke victory over Michael Allen and Chien Soon Lu. Funk was 47-under par in the four Tradition tournaments at Crosswater.
“Attendance was never great,” Hall says of the The Tradition’s run at Crosswater. “It was certainly not the best attended event I had ever seen. But towards the end, the last day and the last few holes, seeing all those people, it was a legitimate professional golf crowd. It was like, we basically knew it going to be the last round played, but it really felt like the tournament had arrived.”
Jeld-Wen, a manufacturer of windows and doors that was founded in Klamath Falls, ended its run as title sponsor of The Tradition in 2010, and the event moved to Birmingham, Alabama, where it remains one of the five major championships on the Champions Tour.
So, could a major tournament like The Tradition ever return to Crosswater?
Willis says yes, and all that is missing is a committed title sponsor.
“You have to have the championship golf course, the ability to house the professionals, house the patrons, as well as the ability to recruit volunteers,” Willis says. “Today, we would meet that criteria, and we have grown significantly.
“The thing that is necessary is a title sponsor. You need big companies like (Jeld-Wen) that are able to take part of their marketing budget and say we’re gonna conduct an event like this.”
Hall agrees with Willis.
“It was the smallest market on either the Champions or PGA Tour,” Hall says. “It probably would be still, even though Bend has grown a lot since then. But if you get the right circumstances, which is what Jeld-Wen used it for … a place that they could host their customers and business partners and have an incredible time. If you combined a title sponsor like that again, it’s definitely possible.”
Hall notes that Portland does not even host a PGA Tour or Champions Tour event.
“These aren’t easy,” he says. “It was a pretty special time. If you love golf, it was a pretty special time for Central Oregon.”
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