The Shriners Children's Open: PGA TOUR Golf Comes to TPC Summerlin

For over four decades, the arrival of October in Las Vegas meant one thing for golf fans: the PGA TOUR was coming to Summerlin. The Shriners Children's Open — known under nine different names across its 42-year run — was the only official PGA TOUR event held in Las Vegas, Nevada, and its spiritual home was TPC Summerlin, Bobby Weed's private championship layout tucked into the western edge of the master-planned community.

The tournament's history is as layered as the desert landscape that surrounds the course. It began in 1983 as the Panasonic Las Vegas Pro-Celebrity Classic and spent decades collecting new names as title sponsors came and went. It was the Las Vegas Invitational, then the Invensys Classic at Las Vegas, then the Michelin Championship at Las Vegas, then the Frys.com Open. From 2008 through 2012, entertainer Justin Timberlake lent his name to the event — the Justin Timberlake Shriners Hospitals for Children Open — bringing pop-culture celebrity to a week that had always mixed PGA TOUR competition with Las Vegas showmanship. The Shriners Hospitals for Children branding took over the title in 2013, and in 2021, the organization rebranded to Shriners Children's, giving the tournament the name it carried into its final edition in 2024.

The venue: TPC Summerlin

TPC Summerlin was designed by Bobby Weed — then the PGA TOUR's in-house course architect — with Fuzzy Zoeller serving as player consultant. Opened in 1991, the course was purpose-built as a tournament venue and a private membership facility, and it shows in every detail of the routing. The layout plays through the Mojave desert landscape with native creosote, cactus, and mature pines defining the corridors, while the Summerlin community's Red Rock backdrop frames the skyline on nearly every hole.

In its standard configuration the course measures approximately 7,243 yards. For PGA TOUR competition, the setup plays as a par 71 at around 7,255 yards — a demanding test that rewards precise iron play and penalizes any driver overreach into the desert edges. The bentgrass greens are quick and contoured, and the lack of rough in the traditional sense is replaced by desert waste areas that demand both accuracy and a calculated risk appetite from the field.

TPC Summerlin entered the tournament rotation in 1992, joining a multi-course format that the Las Vegas Invitational used in its earlier years. The event then ran across three courses — including TPC Summerlin, Las Vegas Hilton Country Club (now Las Vegas National), and Desert Inn — across a 90-hole, five-round format. That format was trimmed to the standard 72-hole, four-round structure in 2004. Beginning with the 2008 tournament, TPC Summerlin became the sole and permanent host, giving the event and the venue the kind of consistent identity that PGA TOUR stops depend on for long-term brand recognition.

October 1996: The moment that defined TPC Summerlin

No fact about this tournament is cited more often, and for good reason. On October 6, 1996, a 20-year-old Tiger Woods won the Las Vegas Invitational, defeating Davis Love III on the first playoff hole to claim his first PGA TOUR title. It was just his fifth start as a professional. He had opened the week in a tie for 97th place, eight strokes behind the leader, before shooting a second-round 63 and a final-round 64 to force the playoff. The win paid $297,000 and earned Woods a Masters invitation — the rest, as every golf fan knows, became history.

The 1996 event was still played across multiple courses under the 90-hole format, so TPC Summerlin was one venue among several that week. But the tournament's long association with that victory — and TPC Summerlin's eventual role as the exclusive host — meant that the course became the primary physical address for the story. The connection between Woods, the Las Vegas event, and TPC Summerlin is embedded in the tournament's identity at every level.

Woods opened his professional career with a tie for 60th, a tie for 11th, and three missed cuts before Las Vegas. His victory in his fifth start reset every expectation the sport had set for him.

A record of champions

Beyond the Woods narrative, the Shriners event produced a consistent record of quality winners across four decades. Jim Furyk won three times — in 1995, 1998, and 1999 — making him the most decorated champion in the tournament's history. Kevin Na claimed the title twice, in 2011 and 2019, each time with the kind of precise, course-management game that TPC Summerlin rewards. Other notable names in the winners' roll include Greg Norman, Curtis Strange, and Davis Love III.

In its final years under the Shriners title, the event continued to deliver compelling finishes. Patrick Cantlay won in 2017 in a playoff. Bryson DeChambeau took the 2018 title by a single stroke. Tom Kim won the 2023 edition for his third PGA TOUR title, beating Adam Hadwin by one shot. And J.T. Poston closed out the tournament's 42-year run in 2024, reaching 22 under par and holding off Doug Ghim by a stroke in a tense final round to claim his third career PGA TOUR victory.

The charity mission behind the scoreboard

The tournament's charitable identity was never incidental to the event — it was the founding purpose. Shriners Hospitals for Children, the beneficiary throughout the Shriners-sponsored era, operates a healthcare network providing specialized pediatric care at no financial obligation to patients or their families. The system treats children with orthopaedic conditions, burns, spinal cord injuries, and cleft lip and palate, among other complex conditions. The organization rebranded as Shriners Children's in 2021 to reflect broader trends in healthcare naming, and the tournament name followed accordingly.

Tournament week in Las Vegas was structured around that mission. The week included the four-round professional competition, a championship pro-am, a Women's Day Seminar, and multiple charity activations, supported by more than 1,000 volunteers from the Las Vegas community and beyond. Ticket proceeds, pro-am fees, and charitable fundraising programs — including a Birdies for Charity initiative — funneled money directly to the Shriners network.

The end of an era

In late October 2024, just days after J.T. Poston's victory, Shriners Children's announced it would not renew its title sponsorship for 2025, ending an 18-year run as the event's primary backer. The PGA TOUR confirmed the tournament would not appear on the 2025 FedEx Cup Fall schedule, ending 42 consecutive years of tournament golf in Las Vegas that had begun with the Panasonic Pro-Celebrity Classic in 1983.

Whether a successor event returns to TPC Summerlin remains an open question at the time of this writing. The course itself — private, meticulously maintained, and steeped in PGA TOUR history — continues to operate as one of Las Vegas's most prestigious private golf clubs, open to members and their guests year-round. For spectators who want to walk the same fairways that hosted 42 PGA TOUR editions, the clearest path is through a member relationship or a club-sponsored event during tournament season.

Visitor and spectator notes

TPC Summerlin operates as a fully private membership club at 1700 Village Center Circle, Las Vegas, NV 89134. The course is not open for public tee times. When the Shriners Children's Open was active, the tournament week in October provided the primary public-access window — general-admission tickets were available and allowed spectators to walk the course during competitive rounds. The Hill on the first floor was a ticketed spectator zone, while The Point, overlooking the 16th, 17th, and 18th holes, offered an open-air fan platform. For golfers seeking a PGA Tour Summerlin experience on a public basis, nearby TPC Las Vegas offers an accessible alternative with its own strong PGA TOUR heritage.

Those interested in membership at TPC Summerlin — and the year-round access that comes with it — can explore corporate, personal, young professional, and social membership categories through the club directly. The course has been recognized by Golf Digest as one of America's Best Golf Courses and by Nevada Business Magazine as the top private course in the state.

Sources: Tournament name history, format changes, and charity details: Wikipedia — Shriners Children's Open; winners and history: Sportskeeda winners list and Bleacher Nation; 2024 winner: PGA TOUR official results; TPC Summerlin venue and designer: Bobby Weed Golf Design; Tiger Woods 1996: PGA TOUR — Tiger's first win by the numbers and Sports Illustrated; sponsorship end: ESPN and Las Vegas Review-Journal; charity mission: PR Newswire — Birdies for Charity; private club status: TPC Summerlin official site.