LPGA Tampa Open St. Petersburg Open Pelican Women’s Championship

Last updated on July 10, 2021

Seventy plus years ago. Charles Schulz wrote and illustrated the first Peanuts comic strip. Nat King Cole’s “Mona Lisa” was the country’s favorite tune, and Truman was president. When the LPGA inaugural tourney was first played in Tampa, it was called the Tampa Open. The year 13 women players founded the LPGA.

The same year LPGA inaugural event was held at the Palma Ceia Golf Course in Tampa, a magnificent golf course founded in 1916. The Palma Ceia Golf Course was and is one of Tampa’s premier golf and country club. Offering the best of what the game offers coupled with the magnificent tradition that is Tampa’s oldest private golf club.

The year was 1950. Polly Riley, an amateur with over 100 tournament wins in her long career, won the first-ever LPGA Tampa Open. Polly remained an amateur throughout her career, won the first LPGA Tour match.

LPGA’s St. Petersburg Women’s Open played its yearly event for another 76 years. At three different courses, including the Sunset Golf and Country Club, Pasadena Golf Club, and Seminole Lakes Country Club. The last time the LPGA held an event in the Tampa Bay area was in 1989.

Until this year. When the successful father-son business-minded team became the new owners of the previously town-owned Belleview Biltmore golf club. Now the Pelican Golf Club.

Provided the means and implementing in a few short years what will be a major sporting event in recent memory.

The new owners have turned their Pelican Golf Club, once a semi-private town-owned golf course. Making the all-new Pelican Golf Club. One of the most blue-blooded, exclusory, and invitation-only private golf courses in the state. A fact not lost to some residents’ Who ask if town officials made a good financial decision?

The Doyle’s paid the Town of Belleair 3.8 million for the 153 acres of green land and invested over another 18 million in improvements. The Pelican can already boost a President ate here. When President Trump visited the Pelican to raise campaign funds.

Bring a LPGA Tour event to any town is no small feat. So, good luck and congrats to the new owners and the Belleair officials that, without their help and blessing. The whole Pelican Golf Club development would have been impossible.

Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, the Pelican Golf Club website was down.