‘Cincinnati’s tournament’: How professional golf returned to the Queen City

CINCINNATI — It started almost four years ago with an idea and a cup of coffee.

Tom Kempton had an idea and it was a simple premise ‒ bring professional golf back to Cincinnati ‒ but the execution of that idea was far from simple.

Kempton grew up in Athens, Ohio. He spent two decades in Cincinnati as vice president of marketing for Taft Broadcasting, then was head of marketing for the Marriott Corp. in Washington, D.C., before he moved back to Cincinnati to start his own company, which specialized in sports and event marketing.

Kempton met Charlie Mechem for a cup of coffee the day before Thanksgiving in 2018. Mechem, a longtime lawyer for the Cincinnati firm Taft Stettinius & Hollister, was also the head of Taft Broadcasting when it was in control of the LPGA.

“My purpose of having coffee with Charlie was not only to catch up but to ask him about the idea I had of bringing professional golf back to Cincinnati,” Kempton said. “We had a great conversation and Charlie asked all the right questions.”

Mechem introduced Kempton to Mike Whan, who at the time was the LPGA commissioner.

“We met in Toledo at the LPGA event there on a very hot August day and we had a good conversation, but Mike said, ‘Tom, I love your enthusiasm and your ideas and I see how you feel this can be packaged and best marketed, but I have to tell you, I’ve had 25 cities come to me and say they could bring a title sponsor if we could bring the LPGA to their city. Let me tell you, we’re 0-for-25.’ ”

Kempton was taken aback by that, but he wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.

He began engaging with the LPGA and a process began to find sponsors.

“That drives the entire golf tournament. You really don’t have any momentum until you get the sponsors in place,” Kempton said.

‘Where does this tournament best fit?’

Initially, Procter & Gamble wasn’t interested, said Kempton, which made him rethink his idea and how to better package it.

So he decided to package the golf tournament with a women’s leadership program. Around that time, Kempton started thinking about a location.

“Where does this tournament best fit?” Kempton thought. “Lots of golf courses in Cincinnati would welcome such an event. One of my beliefs was it would be stronger if it were inside the (Interstate 275) beltway. I really felt that would make it more of Cincinnati’s tournament.”

Kempton met with Denise Kuprionis, the former president of Kenwood Country Club, and Dylan Petrick, Kenwood’s CEO, “To share the vision and it was very important that we didn’t broadcast this because it wasn’t done yet. It wasn’t going to happen until we had sponsoring parties.”

Through that meeting, Kuprionis connected Kempton with Deborah Majoras, then the chief legal officer at P&G and a current board member of the U.S. Golf Association.

That connection and Majoras’s input helped strengthen Kempton’s idea.

In January of 2021, Kempton went back and pitched the idea to P&G.

“They committed to the tournament and they brought in Kroger as part of the overall program,” Kempton said.

‘This was gonna happen once you had P&G and Kroger’

Finding two major sponsors made it real.

“(Kempton) came back with the LPGA and said, ‘Oh, by the way, the two major sponsors are Kroger and P&G,’” said Petrick. “Then all of a sudden, it’s like this is legitimately going to happen. We want to be tied to the best, those are two of the best in the business. This was gonna happen once you had P&G and Kroger, you knew it was gonna be in Cincinnati. I love Coldstream and Hyde Park and those other clubs, but I wanted it at Kenwood.

“My number one priority is to run a great golf tournament, but one of the major selling points was the women’s leadership piece. When the board was voting, we had a female president, the first female president this club ever had. That was a key element, not just to her but to our whole board.”

With two title sponsors in place, a women’s leadership initiative, and now a venue to host it, a three-year deal was made with Excel Sports Management, which owns the rights and manages all facets of the tournament.

Now, the task became getting the course ready to host the best players in the world. Kenwood has two 18-hole courses ‒ Kenview and Kendale, which will host the Kroger Queen City Championship ‒ on the property.

“When we signed the contract, we did not have a director of grounds,” who’s the leader of all of Kenwood’s outside maintenance, Petrick said. “So here I am, signing a contract, knowing that 380-400 days later I have to have a course ready.”

The course had just gone through renovations in 2019, and what occurred was that by signing the contract to host an LPGA event, the quality of candidates for Kenwood to choose from improved drastically.

The candidate who rose to the top was Nate Herman, whose resume includes six of the top-100 courses in the country, and he brought that experience from Baltusrol, Pine Valley, Crooked Stick, Oakland Hills, Harbor Shores and Victoria National to Kenwood. Herman, who was hired last October, assembled a team to fill other openings on the staff. He found Pat Carroll, Brandon Miller, Jason Skaggs and Evan Rose, all of whom had impressive backgrounds, and filled vacancies for two superintendents, a lead mechanic and a lead assistant.

“So you get the best of the best,” said Petrick. “We built the team, that was first. Second part was our membership stepped up in capital investment. We have a great partnership with John Deere, brought in over a $2 million lease for new equipment. We needed new equipment anyway, but we needed it now.”

Preparing Kenwood Country Club

Last November, Kenwood injected over 200 tons of soil into the greens to create water channels that will help with drainage. They replaced bunker lining, grew the rough out, and polished up all the bumps and bruises following the last renovation.

“I told the staff, this reflects all their hard work, not just this year but in years past,” said Herman. “And the membership as a whole, I want them to feel proud. Their course, their second home will be nationally recognized. That’s the goal.”

Kenwood worked in a partnership with the LPGA to set up the course, which will play at 6,500 yards this week for the inaugural Kroger Queen City Championship.

This first year is really a learning process, seeing how the course plays and what potential changes could be made in the future.

“Let’s take a lot of notes and we’ll go back to the drawing board if there does need to be additional tweaks,” said Herman. “But this year, it was kind of let’s go with the original vision from the renovation and the architect, and let’s try to follow through on this and see how it works.”

This week when the tournament starts, it will be the first time the highest level of professional women’s golf has been played in Cincinnati since 1989 when the Jack Nicklaus Golf Center near Kings Island hosted the LPGA Championship. Built in 1930, Kenwood also hosted the U.S. Women’s Open in 1963.

Grandstands have been constructed around the 18th green, welcoming guests as they enter the property. Fifteen of the top 20 players in the world are in the field.

“You pull in, it’s almost like a Norman Rockwell painting. Kenwood looks fabulous,” said Kempton. “They’re so enthused about this. And I get a little emotional. I think it’s stage of life. It’s just exciting and thrilling to see it come to fruition.”