Tiger’s Congressional Tourney Has New Title Sponsor

The 2013 AT&T National at Congressional Country Club

Tiger Woods’ annual golf tournament at Congressional Country Club has a new title sponsor, as questions remain about the tournament’s future in Bethesda.

The PGA Tour and the Tiger Woods Foundation on Monday announced that Quicken Loans, the country’s third-largest retail mortgage lender, will take over the title sponsorship from AT&T starting this year.

So say goodbye to the AT&T National and hello to the Quicken Loans National, which will run from June 23-29 this year.

It will be the tournament’s eighth year and sixth at Congressional. The PGA Tour stop took a hiatus from the club’s famed Blue Course in 2010 and 2011 as it prepared for and then hosted the 2011 U.S. Open.

Members of the club are voting now on the future of the tournament. Membership was supposed to vote last fall on an extension that would have kept the tournament there from 2015 to 2017.

But a projected late-July date of the 2015 event led to the club nixing that plan. Instead, membership is voting on a plan to host the event in 2016, 2018 and 2020, with votes due March 30.

Woods, the PGA Tour and Quicken Loans held a press conference in D.C. on Monday morning to announce the new title sponsor. Woods also answered questions about his injured back ahead of next month’s Masters Tournament and the future of the tournament at Congressional.

GolfChannel.com writer Jason Sobel reported Congressional will remain the host of the tournament in 2016, 2018 and 2020, with across-the-street TPC-Potomac (formerly TPC Avenel) a potential host site for the other years.

Montgomery County officials and Bethesda hotels are certainly hoping that’s true.

With Woods healthy and in the field during 2012′s tournament, more than 136,000 spectators descended on Congressional in a week, even with the course closed to the public during the third round because of the derecho that hit the night before.

The club gets a $1.275 million site fee each year it hosts the event, the highest on the PGA Tour. Still, the question of continuing to host the tournament is a difficult one for some members, as it requires major disruptions at the club for the weeks leading up to and week of the actual event.

The AT&T event in 2009 generated an estimated $29.1 million in direct and indirect spending in the county, with some 23,000 spectators, golfers and others staying overnight in the county, according to a study commissioned by the Montgomery County Department of Business and Economic Development.

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