The Booz Allen Classic
was a regular golf tournament on the PGA Tour from 1968 to 2006.
Perhaps more so than any other "regular" PGA Tour stop, the event wandered about, not just from course to course within a given metropolitan area, but along the East Coast. Originally known as the Kemper Open
, the inaugural event was played in 1968 at Pleasant Valley Country Club in Sutton, Massachusetts, before moving to the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina the following year, where it stayed through 1979. (The Wachovia Championship is now held in Charlotte.) The event moved to Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland in 1980. In 1987, the tournament moved to the TPC at Avenel course in neighboring Potomac, Maryland. The "Kemper" name was dropped after the 2002 tournament, which then became the "FBR Capital Open" for a single year in 2003. Booz Allen Hamilton was the main sponsor of the tournament from 2004-06. The event returned to Congressional for a year in 2005 to accommodate renovations at Avenel.
The 2006 purse was $5.0 million, with $900,000 going to the winner. In 1992, Washington Redskins quarterback Mark Rypien was given a sponsor's exemption into the tournament and shot rounds of 80-91. Many up and coming players first won here, as top players often took the week off because the tournament was usually played the week after the U.S. Open. For 2007, the PGA Tour announced that it would reschedule the event for the fall, and Booz Allen declined to renew its sponsorship. The fall date was in turn canceled to make way for the new AT&T National, to take place at the same time as the Classic had.
Also in 2006, the tournament ended on Tuesday due to persistent storms in the D.C. area. It was the first time a Tour event had been played on a Tuesday since 1968. The conclusion of what turned out to be the final Booz Allen Classic was not televised.
A new format (invitation only), new host for the tournament (Tiger Woods), and a return to Congressional Country Club marked the July 2007 stop in Washington for the FedEx Cup, the AT&T National. For record-keeping purposes, it is not a "successor" tournament officially, even though it is the "new" tour stop in the same market.
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KEMPER OPEN TICKETS
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