One year and done. That’s what the LPGA Golf Tour announced last week when it said the tour will not return to Utah for a second event this spring. Last year, the Black Desert Resort in Ivins hosted its first Black Desert Championship, ponying up a $3 million purse (one of the largest for a non-major on the tour), offering players comp rooms and even free chartered flights from the previous week’s event in Houston.
But that wasn’t enough incentive for the tour, which is tweaking its 2026 schedule. Instead of a regular tournament, the tour and resort owners have announced that Black Desert will become a marketing partner with
the LPGA.
“Through this marketing partnership, Black Desert will help advance our mission by increasing opportunity, visibility and growth across the tour for the remainder of our agreement,” Ricki Lasky, the LPGA’s chief tournament and business officer, told Golfweek in a statement.“Their continued partnership represents a powerful step forward in our collective effort to elevate the women’s game globally. We are deeply grateful to Black Desert for recognizing the goals we are working towards as a tour — and for aligning their support to help us achieve them.”
Reports are that tour officials and the resort’s stakeholders will meet in the months ahead to iron what that means. For now, it means no LPGA event in the Beehive State in the foreseeable future, even after last year’s tourney was the first time the LPGA had staged an event in Utah in 60 years.
The LPGA Tour has new leadership, and it announced in October cancellation of the Match Play event at Shadow Creek in Las Vegas. Its sponsor, T-Mobile, pulled out of the event. But the association has partnered with the Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund for an event co-sanctioned with the Ladies European Tour and will be played on Shadow Creek next year. It remains unknown if another event will take the place of Black Desert on next year’s LPGA schedule.
Black Desert is still set to host its third PGA Tour event next October, sponsored by the Bank of Utah. The Tom Weiskopf-designed course, carved through black lava fields bordered by bright red canyon walls, is part of the tour’s fall schedule, which means it doesn’t attract the highest-ranked golfers who’ve already earned their playing cards for the following season. But this year’s event did bring in some top names and drew large galleries over four days.