COVER STORY
TUCSON I
By Greg Hansen
n a 10-year period beginning in 2005, the foundation of Tuc- son’s sports community was rocked like never before. The Arizona Diamondbacks,
Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox abandoned their Tucson spring training headquarters, soon joined by two Pacific Coast League baseball
franchises, the WGC-Accenture Match Play Championships, the LPGA Tour and even the men’s NCAA basketball tourna- ment, which had staged 11 regionals at the University of Arizona since 1975. It was a sports exodus of such force
that it required Tucson to reinvent its sports identity. Would UA Wildcats sports become the only game in town, or would the city of about 1.2 million residents find other pursuits to fill the void? The one constant in Tucson’s on-going
sports recovery -— and in the history of Tucson sports -— has been golf. The Conquistadores, a civic orga-
event, the 18th
nization that raises charitable funds much like the Thunderbirds do for the Waste Management Phoenix Open, quickly realigned with the PGA Tour and now stage the Champions Tour’s Cologuard Classic in late February. When Steve Stricker won the 2018 fairway and loge boxes at
the Omni Tucson National Resort over- flowed with golf fans, almost as if Tiger
18 | AZ GOLF Insider | ANNUAL 2018 Tucson National Resort, Catalina Course, 18th hole
Woods, Phil Mickelson and the Match Play Championships had not departed in 2014. Tucson’s golf revival created mo-
mentum for a rebranding of Tucson sports, soon followed by the Nova Home Loans Arizona Bowl, a college foot- ball bowl game that in its third year drew 39,142 fans, and by the Tucson Roadrunners, a Triple-A affiliate of the Arizona Coyotes, who won the Ameri- can Hockey League Western Confer- ence regular season championship last year, drawing almost 200,000 fans. Recreational sports opportunities in
Tucson also have become robust year- round. The Loop is a 131-mile, shared-use path that circles Pima County and is available for walkers, runners, cyclists, skaters and horseback riders. Atop nearby Mount Lemon, the 19-mile Honeybee Can- yon Loop is one of seven mountain-biking
trails that stretch 84 miles at altitudes from 3,000 to 7,000 feet. The 36th
REBRANDS LOCAL SPORTS SCENE
COLOGUARD CLASSIC, DIVERSE COURSES, FIRST TEE HELP OLD PUEBLO GET BACK ON THE FAST TRACK
annual
El Tour de Tucson, which annually draws 9,000 cyclists in November, circles Tuc- son in competitions from 10 to 100 miles. Tucson’s running community also
has ignited and features 24 annual events, from the socially-festive Meet Me Downtown 5K Night Run to the 50th
annual Saguaro National Park
Labor Day 8-mile run/walk. Visitors also are drawn to the Hilton Tucson El Conquistador Golf and Tennis Resort, which offers a USTA-ranked tennis facility, 45 holes of golf on three courses with up-close views of remarkable Pusch Ridge, as well as five swimming pools and the 143-foot Sliderock. But it’s golf that continues to swing
Tucson’s sports economy. During a dark period in which five pro baseball
www.azgolf.org
VISIT TUCSON
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