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Tourism Golf Fest moves closer to sports fans in Del Mar

For the last three years, Golf Fest has been held at the San Diego Sports Arena in July and attracted between 8,000 to 10,000 people.

Although deemed a success by its organizers, they saw room for improvement.

This year, the show is moving north to the Del Mar Fairgrounds and will be held in February, one week after the Buick Invitational golf tournament at Torrey Pines Golf Course and one week before the Accenture Match Play Championship at La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad.

The reason: To piggyback on the national spotlights surrounding the golf tournaments and move to an area surrounded by more golf activity.

“We moved it first and foremost because we had outgrown the space at the Sports Arena,” said Shelly Hall, president of Spear/Hall & Associates , which co-hosts the event with the San Diego Sports Arena. “We had sold it out the second and third years.”

With the move north, organizers expect to attract from 12,000 to 15,000 people.

“We felt we would take ourselves into an area that was a bit more consistent demographically with our show,” Hall said. “We found we were getting a lot of people that were coming from the coast to our show.”

North County is home to major golf manufacturing companies, including Callaway Golf, Taylor Made and Titleist.

Tom Wilson, executive director of the Century Club, which organizes the Buick Invitational, said the move north may not guarantee more fanfare.

Although the area is home to major manufacturers, he said, there is no one spot that can be called the golf capital of the county.

“We have avid golfers and different facilities throughout San Diego County,” Wilson said. “There is no concentrated area (for golf) in the county.”

Another motive for relocating the show, Hall said, was the parking situation at the Sports Arena on weekends because of the weekly Kobey’s Swap Meet.

The three-day event, from Feb. 16-18, is tagged as an interactive golf extravaganza featuring more than 125 vendors, club fitters, travel agencies, private and public golf courses, sporting goods stores and golf publications.

Attendees can enter golf contests, receive golf instruction and play on virtual courses.

“We wanted to create a show where the average golfer off the street could walk in the door and feel and experience everything there is to golf,” Hall said.

The first 10,000 attendees will receive a free round of golf, worth $55, at the Auld Course, the region’s newest golf course, which is located in Chula Vista.

Hall would not disclose financial data about the event or how much it cost to organize the event, but he said it has been profitable since the beginning.

Ticket prices to enter the show are $10 for adults. Children under 12 are admitted free.

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