It should come as no surprise that the PGA Tour has filed suit against the Ginn Companies, the real estate firm that last week unceremoniously dropped its sponsorships of both a PGA Tour and a Champions Tour tournament.
Ty Votaw, the PGA Tour’s communications director said in a statement:
“We regret having to take this legal action, but feel we have no other recourse than to try to recover what had been guaranteed to our members through existing agreements with Ginn Companies. We also had no forewarning that Ginn was planning to cancel the 2009 Ginn Championship at Hammock Dunes, and only learned of the decision when the company issued a release late Wednesday. In fact, we had been in discussions with them on possible modifications to the agreement. Until this issue is resolved through the legal process, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.”
The Tour is legally correct, of course. But good luck trying to extract blood from the proverbial turnip.
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My guess is that Ginn will lose it’s shirt on this one unless they declare bankrupsy, which they should have done before they tried to cancel the PGA Tour stops.
I made the point of whether FedEx might be looking to get out, but they won’t do so unilaterally, it will be in negotiations or in contractual options.
Certainly these contracts are not written so that the Tour has to rely upon good business conditions for a tournament to take place- that would be like writing in sunny and 70 degrees.
Golfers, support personnel, hotels, restaurants, all are geared for these events well in advance.
Ginn’s move was horrible for the Tour, and the Tour must do this in response. My guess is that Ginn and the Tour were talking and both were interested in some agreement, but that the Tour was holding the contract up and budging as little as possible, because this is only the beginning for this year, not the end of these cancellations.