The soon-to-launch Lake Erie Golf Tour, a mini-tour series for professional and amateur golfers, has announced a 13-event schedule at golf courses throughout Northeast Ohio.
The complete schedule, which can be viewed in the Northeast Ohio Golf Tournament Calendar under events marked “LEGT”, starts May 19th at The Elms Country Club near Massillon and finishes at Signature of Solon on September 8th.
Two additional events are ‘sites still to be determined”, including a season-ending Tour Championship in late September.
Golf courses on the LEGT schedule include Pine Hills, Chippewa, Aurora, Tam O’ Shanter, Hawthorne Valley, Good Park, Sleepy Hollow, Seven Hills, and Raintree.
LEGT Director Chris Marino has also announced two promotional items that should help the interest level for his mini-tour event series:
– a $5,000 hole-in-one prize will be up for grabs on one par-3 during each tournament;
– amateur players will receive their prizes in the form of Visa gift cards instead of golf merchandise certificates, a prize format approved by the USGA.
Also, Marino has made clear that he intends to side-step some of the operational issues that cropped up in last year’s Medalist Tour season by pointing out a couple of event management initiatives:
– groupings and starting times will always be made randomly to ensure the legitimacy of attested scores;
– Marino himself will not play in any of the events himself to eliminate all potential conflict of interest in deciding rules matters;
– the head professional at the host golf course will confer directly with Marino regarding play at the course to cover site-specific rules issues.
Complete information on entering the events of the Lake Erie Golf Tour can be found on its website.
I was personally at the first tournament and the turnout was great. Good weather, great players. Certainly looking forward to next week.
hmmm i agree with JA….let the so-called Pros go play for their own money…and let the Amateurs play for theirs…The Greater Cleveland Skins Game is the best!! The people who play in it are a bunch of classy players and afterwards you can have a few beers split up the money and tell a few lies!! It would me nice to have a Amateur Tour but everyone seems to be hung up on someone making a few bucks running one…so i guess it wont happen…
Oh trust me I will leave the playing to you on the medalist tour, oops I mean the lake erie medalist tour, now under a new name with old managment. Have fun paying marinos bills this summer, and helping him pay Hastings too. [Expletive removed.]
Realistic business man you say? Then you belong in a cubicle, not on the golf course. Leave the playing up to us, you can watch from the sidelines.
Landon990 so you say no valid points huh, how about for starters that this model is based exactly on what the Medalist Tour did last year only with disclosing where the money “supposedly” will go. Unless he is going to provide documentation every week then there is no true way to know.
Secondly, the model as I stated earlier is exactly the same, visa prepaid gift cards which he won’t know how much to put on other than the day of the event as players won’t pay until there on site. So you run into the same problem as you did with the medalist tour.
Third, you say quality players, in my opinion players going out and shooting 70-80 are not “quality” and as you stated this is going to be “way bigger” tell me please what is to entice players lets say from other parts to come play for 800 bucks when they can go south or stay south as many players “professional player” that have actually validated themselves on real mini tours to play in such a small time event. It’s a glorified pot game, a one day shoot out. A real mini tour operates on no less than two days of tournament play. Not a one day shoot out, its a pot game with marino making 20k + for the summer so he has a job. I give the guy credit for trying after the medalist tour fiasco last year, and hasting rapping everyone blind. Hey maybe hastings was trying to pay back the money he owed for his insurance fraud scam and though he could pull it off over time and it turned out to be an EPIC FAIL and unfortunately for Marino he was involved and makes him look just as bad in many’s opinion.
So if you want to talk facts there they are plain and simple unless your a hastings lover and were one of the “elite” players on the medalist tour lmfao!! it’s a glorified pot game with a buy in you’ll never see back. Lets just all get together and have one big skins game oh wait we already do and they call it what it is a skins game not a mini tour. and as for its going to be way bigger, wishful thinking, one sided thinking look at the big picture, not the hey we get a new pot game in town. THeres a reason every tour in ohio fails, because the quality of golf here is lacking and the amount of players is few and far between. I’ m not saying i’m a pro or even thinking about it, christ i’m a 12 handicap at best but a realistic business man with clear thinking and can see the truth when it present itself.
Unbelievable how many negative things people can come up with without even making a valid point. How can you base the success or validity of this tour based on something that happened in the past? This is going to become way bigger than you guys think. Marino did a great job putting everything together and explained thoroughly where all the money is going. This is going to be a quality tour with fantastic players and I’m looking forward to playing in it.
Just some numbers, if a tour gets 100 members and 50 players per event, they aren’t charging too much. Last I checked, there was a tour that was miserably run last year that still attracted a pretty good amount of players. I am guessing that a well run tour will do quite well in this area.
Please don’t me wrong, but I just don’t think you can compare the GCA to a tour of this sort.
Just some simple numbers 100 members, 50 players per event is nearly 20 k in revenue, pretty good for no more than 8 hrs a week work.
The Lake Erie Tour is for more serious players, right, The CGA has past Senior Open Qualifiers, and NOGA Champions, we are all pulling from the same pool of serious amatuers. Come play in a CGA event, you will find a well run event on great courses, for a reasonable fee, and prize pool. In my opinion either pay a membership, or reasonable per event, but not both. You can run a quality tour, without it becoming a cash cow for the organizer. Honestly, amateurs dont need another tour and shouldnt be financing some guys livelyhood. If you pro’s want to play there have at it.
$15 to the tour is quite reasonable compared to many other mini tours. The GCA is not considered a tour. It is a group of am’s that get together and play. The Lake Erie tour is for more serious players. I am just wondering who thinks anyone should run a quality tour for free???
By the way, let’s keep “lol” to chat rooms on yahoo or facebook, I believe most of us are adults here…
Hey Marino has to make a living and help bail out hadrons and there pooch screw last year!! Gotta get that. Gotta get that. Gotta get that CASH CASH CASH!! And it’s the same scam before with a new name visa prepaid gift cards there probably empty when you get them. Lol.
Unbelievable, $150 to join, plus $15 per event for the operation of this tour. I guess the CGA is underpriced