Nathan Grube Quotations

When you can do something like this that enhances the facility, I can go to the PGA and pitch a world-class practice facility. There's no guarantee for any city that a golf tournament is going to stay around here.

For Tiger, so much of it is 'How does this course prepare me to try to win my next major.' He's always working on his game to be able to do that. It's an uphill battle, but having Buick is a huge help. We're just going to keep working on it.

We thought we had a complete package, which is why we were all so surprised.

We're a little disappointed because I'd been pretty confident we were going to have a summer date. But our main goal was to keep professional golf in Connecticut so we can give money back to charity, and this gives us an avenue to do that. We'll have a date and a six-year investment, so we're going to move on, hope for the best and do whatever possible to be as successful as we can.

We have a new policy. We're going to report a weekly number instead of a daily number. There are other tour events that don't report attendance figures, such as the Buick Open.

We got the phone call from a tour representative at 4 o'clock Friday afternoon. They asked if we were still interested.

We worked through the weekend. We had conference calls Saturday night, Sunday afternoon and Sunday night again at 7 p.m., when the Masters was wrapping up. We finished everything Monday afternoon.

There are a couple of companies we are looking at for a title sponsor. But there is a lot more flexibility to put together a community ownership. Everybody understands the sense of urgency to put this together as quick as we can. As soon as we get the funding, the better off we will be, but I can?t put a date on it.

There's nothing official. We're still doing our due diligence and looking at all options. We're going to make the best decision possible for the tournament and community.

This community takes this tournament very personal, and we think the Champions Tour can be a home run. There's so much name recognition, including many of our past champions, some of whom called to say they would love to come back to Hartford and play in front of large crowds again.

A lot of it this year I'm watching, paying attention. I don't want to come in here and pretend I know the best way to do something, but I have a thick notebook for '06.

The Champions Tour is thrilled to have this opportunity. They're bending over backwards to get an event in Hartford. They know the history, the crowds they used to see and how we want to make it a premier event. And I think this area will eat up a Champions Tour event.