ORLANDO (Feb. 2, 2012) – A field of 288 players teed off on Thursday at the Las Vegas Paiute Golf Resort as the Golf Channel Am Tour continued its record-setting start in 2012 with its second Major Championship of the season. The Duel in the Desert, a 54-hole event that attracts amateur players from throughout the U.S. and Canada, will add more than 1,000 rounds to the resort’s three Pete Dye-designed courses.
The Golf Channel Am Tour – the largest amateur golf tour in North America with 6,500 registered members – continues to gain popularity in its eighth year. The 180-player fields for Majors scheduled in the next two months – at Trump International (Rio Grande, Puerto Rico), Horseshoe Bay (Texas), Pechanga (Temecula, California) and Caledonia Golf and True Blue Golf Plantation (Myrtle Beach) – are sold out. The 1,764 total rounds projected for the six tournaments represent a 47 percent increase over 2011, according to Kenny Booth, senior director of events for Golf Channel.
Tour officials attribute the Am Tour’s growth to the quality of the events and the courses on which amateur players of all ages and abilities can play. “This is a professional tour experience played on courses that have been on a lot of players’ bucket lists for years,” Booth said.
The Duel in the Desert is one of 27 Majors on the 2012 Am Tour schedule that also includes TPC Sawgrass, Pinehurst Resort, The Homestead, Chambers Bay, PGA West and Barton Creek. In addition to Majors, more than 700 events in 60 U.S. markets are part of the Am Tour schedule in 2012. Through January, rounds in Am Tour local events were up 24 percent.
The 2012 Am Tour National Championship will be played at TPC Sawgrass and the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club. In 2011 the Golf Channel Am Tour National Championship attracted more than 1,000 players who played nearly 5,000 rounds at PGA West and La Quinta Resort.
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