STEVENS POINT, Wisc. – Pete McPartland calls Sentry Insurance’s decision to align itself with the PGA Tour “one of the smartest decisions we’ve ever made.”
It has been a match made in golf paradise – Maui, Hawaii – and that partnership is going to last well into the future.
The PGA Tour and Sentry announced Tuesday that the Stevens Point-based insurance company, which has been title sponsor of the Sentry Tournament of Champions since 2018, has extended the sponsorship through 2035.
The Sentry Tournament of Champions annually kicks off the calendar year on the PGA Tour and next year’s event will mark Maui’s 25th year hosting on The Plantation Course at Kapalua. Since the event moved to Maui in 1999, the Sentry Tournament of Champions has generated more than $8 million for local community charities.
The 2023 tournament is Jan. 5 to 8 and will feature a purse of $15 million, up from $8.2 million in 2022.
“We thought we were doing the right thing from a branding standpoint, but we didn’t know for sure how right that decision would prove to be,” McPartland, Sentry’s chairman of the board, president and CEO, said of partnering with the PGA Tour to sponsor the event. “But statistically, if you look at all the measurables in terms of measuring brand success, it’s been off-the-charts success for us.”
The original agreement in 2018 was the first foray into major sports sponsorship for Sentry, which has been involved with golf since 1982 when it built SentryWorld — Wisconsin’s first destination golf facility — at its headquarters in Stevens Point.
More than just sponsoring a golf tournament, Sentry has embraced the Maui community and extended community outreach beyond tournament week. It includes creating a scholarship program for graduates of Maui public schools, providing support to the Maui United Way for COVID-19 pandemic relief efforts and helping to address childhood hunger in Maui County.
“It means a tremendous amount to us and the relationship we have on Maui, with the people of Maui, transcends what one would have expected and even we would have expected through a golf tournament sponsorship,” McPartland said. “We have become at one with the island of Maui. We view Maui as important to us as any city we have offices in or have people in, and we commit to it no differently.”
McPartland said the relationship Sentry has built with PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan and his management team since they first…
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