Travelers Championship to be honored at 2019 Gold Key banquet

Bubba Watson, left, receives his championship trophy at the 2018 Travelers Championship. (Photo courtesy Tim Jensen, Connecticut Patch Media)

More than six decades of sporting excitement and dedicated service to the Connecticut community has earned the Travelers Championship selection as recipient of the 2019 President’s Award from the Connecticut Sports Writers’ Alliance.

The PGA Tour tournament, which began as the Insurance City Open in 1952, will be honored at the 78th annual Gold Key banquet on Sunday, April 28, at the Aqua Turf Club in Southington.

Since its inception, the event has generated more than $40 million for Connecticut charities. More than $16.7 million has been donated since Travelers assumed title sponsorship of the tournament in 2007, with a record $2 million being distributed to more than 150 charities in 2018.

Memorable charity donations include Bob Murphy contributing his entire $20,000 winner’s check to the Greater Hartford Jaycees in 1970, and three-time champion Bubba Watson giving $200,000 to the Hole In the Wall Gang Camp this past June.

On the course, some of the most memorable moments in the state’s sports history have taken place. Consider these from this century alone:

• Jordan Spieth holing out from a bunker by the 18th green to win a playoff in 2017;
• Jim Furyk’s PGA Tour-record 58 in the final round in 2016;
  Bubba Watson winning his first PGA Tour event in Cromwell in 2010 and tearfully dedicating the win to his father, who was battling cancer;
• J.J. Henry becoming the first Connecticut golfer to win the event in 2006 and;
• Phil Mickelson becoming the tournament’s only defending champion to repeat his victory in 2002.

Past champions include such legendary figures as Sam Snead, Arnold Palmer, Billy Casper, Ken Venturi, Lee Trevino, Curtis Strange, Lanny Wadkins, Nick Price and Greg Norman.

The Travelers Championship regularly attracts some of the largest crowds on the PGA Tour with hundreds of thousands of spectators making the yearly pilgrimage to the TPC River Highlands in Cromwell.

Gold Key Award recipients for 2019 are former college and pro basketball standouts John Bagley and Chris Smith, longtime NFL coach and Super Bowl champion Chris Palmer, St. Thomas More basketball coach Jere Quinn and ESPN founder Bill Rasmussen.

Tickets to the Gold Key Dinner are $75 apiece, and may be reserved by contacting CSWA President Tim Jensen of Patch Media Corp. at [email protected] or 860-394-5091.

Proceeds from the event benefit the Bo Kolinsky Journalism Scholarship, named after a longtime Hartford Courant sportswriter and past CSWA president who died unexpectedly in 2003.