Location Castle Rock, Colorado Course Castle Pines Village Final year 2006 Established 1986 PGA Tour Par 72 | Length 7,619 yards (6,967 m) Month played August Format Modified Stableford Prize fund 5.5 million USD | |
Aggregate 48 points,
Ernie Els, 2000
Phil Mickelson, 1997 | ||
The International (styled as The INTERNATIONAL) was a professional golf tournament in Colorado on the PGA Tour. It was played for 21 seasons, from 1986 to 2006, at the Castle Pines Golf Club at Castle Pines Village in Castle Rock, south of Denver. It had the distinction of being one of two PGA Tour events not conducted at traditional stroke play, the only other exception is the match play event, the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship. The International was the only tournament to use the Modified Stableford scoring system, enacted because of the significant elevation of the venue, which averages 6,300 feet (1,920 m) above sea level.
Beginning in 2007, The International was scheduled to change dates to be played during the first full weekend of July (July 5-8, 2007 and July 4-7, 2008), midway between the U.S. Open and the British Open. Tournament officials hoped this new date would draw even more top-ranked players, such as Tiger Woods, as it would no longer be contested the week before (or after) a major championship (PGA Championship). Even with the change in dates, both tournament founder Jack Vickers and the Castle Pines GC membership were apparently not happy with the overall direction the PGA Tour was taking.
Also (according to the ticker on the FSN Final Score), the tourney has not generated sufficient sponsorship money to pay the purses. The last presenting sponsor (as shown below) was Qwest, in 2002; the last title sponsor was Sprint, in 1999.
On February 8, 2007, the PGA Tour announced the permanent cancellation of the International. This tournament was replaced by the AT&T National, hosted by the Tiger Woods Foundation, and held in the Washington, D.C. area. The new tournament uses standard stroke play rather than the Stableford scoring that the International had used.
The scoring system returned to the PGA Tour in 2012 at the Reno–Tahoe Open, also at high elevation.
Format
The Modified Stableford system gives golfers points on each hole, based on the golfer's score relative to par. It is designed to reward players for taking chances to go for birdies (or better), as the reward for a low score on a hole is typically greater than the punishment for a poor score. The golfer's scores on each hole in his round are added. The scoring operates as follows:
Holes in one are treated as the score relative to par; an ace on a par-3 hole would be considered an eagle and scored as +5.
The International used several different formats throughout its history. Until 1993, final-round scores alone determined the winner; additionally, the event had multiple cuts in every year except 2005.