Valencia Gets Nissan Open Golf in 1998
Organizers of the Nissan Open will end several months of speculation by announcing today that the PGA Tour event will be moved from Riviera Country Club to Valencia Country Club for 1998.
Riviera, site of the 1998 U.S. Senior Open, does not want to hold two professional events in the same year. The Nissan Open will return to Riviera in 1999.
“It will be a formal announcement of what has been speculated for a long time,” spokesman Toby Zwikel said of today’s media conference.
The Nissan Open, formerly known as the Los Angeles Open, has been a fixture at Riviera since 1973. The tournament was moved to Rancho Park Golf Course in 1983 to avoid a similar conflict with the PGA Championship.
Valencia Country Club has been offered tournaments in the past, but General Manager Ken Kikuchi said the facility wasn’t prepared to handle a major event. But after playing host to U.S. Open Sectional qualifying twice, Kikuchi says the course and his staff are prepared.
“We were able to do [the Open qualifying] and we got a lot of compliments,” he said.
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