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This Day In Sports…July 7, 2015, 10 years ago today:
The Albertsons Boise Open announces a move back to September in 2016, and with it, new status as one of the four tournaments that make up what are now the Korn Ferry Tour Finals. What started as a $100,000 event in 1990 would see its purse increase to $1 million and help decide PGA Tour membership the following season. The Boise Open was played in September for its first 23 years but spent the next three on the July schedule after being left out of the original Web.com Tour Finals lineup in 2013. (The schedule was revised for the 2019 season and the start of the Finals moved to late August.)
After nine years as the part of the Korn Ferry Tour Finals, the Albertsons Boise Open has been switched to the last event of the regular season and will be played August 14-17. It’s been replaced in the Finals lineup by the Simmons Bank Open in Franklin, TN. It’s not easy to find out exactly why (AI provided me some misinformation), but on we go. The Boise Open purse last year was $1.5 million (with $270,000 going to champion Matt McCarty). This year the purse reverts back to $1 million. There will still be drama up and down the leaderboard as numerous golfers in the field of 156 are facing a last chance to qualify for the Korn Ferry Finals—and for many a shot at a 2026 PGA Tour card.
The event at Hillcrest Country Club remains a cherished stop on the Korn Ferry Tour, as it is one of only four original tournaments remaining from the first Ben Hogan Tour in 1990. Albertsons has been involved all 35 years and just extended its Boise Open sponsorship through 2028. The tournament has always been able to tout its alumni list. Recently it includes current PGA Tour stars Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Victor Hovland, Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Justin, Max Homa and J.J. Spaun, the reigning U.S. Open champion who had what was perhaps a career-saving second-place finish in Boise in 2021.
Today’s feature gives me the chance to pull this out of the archives. The club currently known as Hillcrest was actually created in the 1920s with a nine-hole course and a Spanish-style clubhouse. It was called the Idaho Country Club, but that was done in by the Great Depression. A group of investors gave it another try in 1935 and revived it as the Boise Country Club, changing the name to Hillcrest in 1940.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
