Hollis Cavner has been on the telephone with PGA Tour officials nearly every day of late, and he wants to know one thing: Houston, is there a problem?

Cavner is in the final stages of a decade-long effort to bring an annual PGA Tour event to the Twin Cities, and the only thing in his way now is the answer to this question: Has the Houston tournament found a sponsor?

The PGA Tour has given the longstanding Texas tournament until June 1 to find one, and if it doesn’t, then the Twin Cities will host a tour event 13 months from now.

“I think we have a very, very, very good chance of getting an event here in 2019. And if not in 2019, then in 2020,” said Cavner, CEO of Pro Link Sports, which has managed the PGA Tour Champions’ 3M Championship in Blaine the past 25 years.

“It’s not if, it’s when,” he said Friday. “The PGA Tour wants to be here.”

The Houston event, founded in 1946 and run by the Houston Golf Association, lost its sponsor in 2017. The 2018 tournament was played without a sponsor in early April. Three weeks after the event, the host course, The Golf Club of Houston, said it would no longer be involved. That has left Houston tournament officials scrambling.

And opened the door for Cavner.

A PGA Tour event here would be sponsored by The 3M Company, headquartered in Maplewood, and played at the TPC Twin Cities Golf Club in Blaine, host of the local 3M-sponsored Champions Tour event since 2001.

By Tad Reeve

Pioneer Press

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