The seventh edition of the Healing Place Charity Championship will be a little leaner this year.
Blame the economy for that, but tournament host Stewart Cink and tournament director Chad Parker aren’t expecting participants to have any less fun when they convene at Turtle Point Yacht and Country Club on June 1. Cink and three other PGA Tour pros will play in the tournament, in addition to a variety of Dixie Section club professionals. Proceeds from the event benefit the Healing Place, which offers grief counseling services throughout the Shoals. Missing from the this year’s lineup is the annual Sunday night pre-tournament party and auction, and the PGA Tour professionals are down a few from last year. Cink said the slimmer version of the event is by design. “We’ve toned it down a little bit out of respect for the people who have supported us over the years,” Cink said last week. “Now is not the right time when a lot of people are struggling to go to those people and ask them to pony up donations one more time. We weren’t going to ask them this year and put them in a position to where they had to say no. We want everybody to weather the storm. A lot of people are struggling, and we decided it would be best to scale down a little bit this year.” The event has raised more than $600,000 for the Healing Place in its six-year history.
“Everybody who works on the tournament has been pleased with the response this year,” said Parker, head golf professional at East Lake in Atlanta and a Coffee High School graduate. “Our demographics have changed a little this year with the way things are in the world, and we’ve always fluctuated a little bit in the history of the tournament with what the demand was.”