Arnold Palmer Junior Golf Tour Launches in January With Nearly 400 Events, Built From the Hurricane and Texas Tours

Arnold Palmer Junior Golf Tour Launches in January With Nearly 400 Events, Built From the Hurricane and Texas Tours

David Blitzer's Bolt Ventures is folding the Hurricane and Texas junior golf tours into the Arnold Palmer Junior Golf Tour: nearly 400 events for ages 8 to 18, starting in Orlando.

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Junior golf is getting a new tour with a famous name on it. Starting in January, the Hurricane Junior Golf Tour and the Texas Junior Golf Tour will run as the Arnold Palmer Junior Golf Tour, a schedule of nearly 400 tournaments a year for boys and girls ages 8 to 18, according to Youth Sports Business Report.

The first event is set for Jan. 2 and 3 at ChampionsGate in Orlando. The tour will be based in Ponte Vedra, Florida, with Joshua Press as CEO.

Who Owns the Arnold Palmer Junior Golf Tour

Bolt Ventures, the family office of 76ers and Devils owner David Blitzer, bought the Florida-based Hurricane tour in April and the Texas tour, which partners with the Rocky Mountain Junior Golf Tour, in June. The new brand comes from a partnership with Arnold Palmer Enterprises and the Arnold & Winnie Palmer Foundation, as Golf Channel and the Associated Press reported. An investor group of Weatherford Capital, Heights LLC, Blair Mill Capital, The Team and Blumenfeld Development Group is also involved.

"Good business doing excellent things for kids is a wonderful combination," Blitzer told the AP.

Junior Golf Costs and the Palmer Foundation Player Access Award

The pitch to families is cost, a clearer path to college golf, and character. The Palmer Foundation is launching a Player Access Award to help families cover junior golf costs on the new tour and elsewhere, with details expected in the coming months. The character program is being built with Wake Forest, where Palmer played.

The tour is pitched as a complement to the American Junior Golf Association, which has run for about 50 years and stages roughly 150 events. At nearly 400 events across regional circuits, the Palmer tour is a volume and access play.

The timing tracks the numbers. YSBR, citing Project Play's analysis of SFIA data, reports golf core participation is up 55 percent among kids 6 to 12 and 73 percent among 13 to 17 since 2019. For Florida families, the tour starts in their backyard. More on BallerTube's golf page.

Registration details for the Jan. 2 opener at ChampionsGate are expected from the tour ahead of the launch.