Pro golfer Tom Kite visits Birmingham to raise awareness for 2018 Regions Tradition

Professional golfer Tom Kite is in Birmingham today to help promote the upcoming Regions Tradition golf tournament scheduled for May 16-20 at Greystone Golf and Country Club.

Kite, the PGA of America Player of the Year in 1989 and winner of the U.S. Open in 1992, met up with some patients from Children’s of Alabama hospital at the Topgolf facility in Birmingham’s Uptown district to give a few swing tips and talk a little golf.

Kite said he’s very much looking forward to the 2018 Regions Tradition, which is the first of five major tournaments put on by the PGA Tour Champions, which features professional golfers age 50 and older.

“This is the Champions Tour version of the Masters,” Kite said of the Regions Tradition.

The other four major tournaments move around to different metro areas every year, but the Regions Tradition has been held in the Birmingham-Hoover metro area every year since 2011, he said.

The Greystone Golf and Country Club first hosted a PGA tournament in 1992, when it was known as the Bruno’s Memorial Classic. The tournament gained a new sponsor and became the Regions Charity Classic when it moved to the Renaissance Ross Bridge Golf Resort and Spa in 2006.

Then in 2011, the PGA Tour Champions made it a major tournament, renamed it the Regions Tradition and moved it to Shoal Creek Country Club. It stayed there for five years before coming back to Greystone two years ago.

“It’s a wonderful golf course in a great city,” Kite said today.

He has played in the Birmingham area tournament every year since he became eligible for the Champions Tour in 2000, he said. He won The Tradition tournament that year when it was held in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Kite said he has long held a connection to Alabama because his daughter went to school in Alabama and still lives in the Cahaba Heights community in Vestavia Hills.

He’s looking forward to this year’s Tradition but might be a little rusty because he’s just getting started playing again after having surgery for a torn meniscus in his left knee 10 weeks ago, he said.

But the most important thing is the money that the Regions Tradition raises for charitable causes, Kite said.

Last year’s tournament raised more than $700,000 for charities in Alabama, said George Shaw, director of the tournament for the Bruno Event Team. It has raised more than $4.5 million for charities since becoming the Regions Tradition in 2011 and more than $15 million since the tournament’s inception in 1992.

Children’s of Alabama hospital is the largest recipient of donations, but a program associated with the tournament called Birdies for Charities last year raised $486,000 for 75 charitable groups.

Kite, who serves on the board of directors for a children’s hospital in Austin, Texas, said it’s a great thing for these golf tournaments to raise money for charities, especially when children are the beneficiaries.

Some kids go to children’s hospitals for simple things such as broken bones, but “there are kids in there battling some really, really difficult diseases right now,” he said. “Some of them, their families will be impacted for a long, long time, and a lot of them may not ever make it out of the hospital.”

Raising money to help these children battle these illnesses and recover from injuries is just fabulous, he said.

Kite was joined at Topgolf today by Children’s of Alabama CEO Mike Warren,  Hoover Mayor Frank Brocato and Leroy Abrahams, the north central Alabama president for Regions Financial Corp.

Abrahams said Regions tonight will turn on more than 2,000 lights to display golf images on the sides of the Regions Financial tower in downtown Birmingham at night between now and the golf tournament to help raise awareness for the tournament.

Shaw said the tournament will feature 78 professional golfers, including six or seven who played in The Masters this year. That includes Bernhard Langer, who won the Regions Tradition the past two years. Others scheduled to come include Vijay Singh, Angel Miguel Jimenez, Steve Stricker, John Daly, Fred Funk, Jeff Sluman and Colin Montgomerie.

Celebrities scheduled for the Pro-Am on Wednesday, May 16, include Alabama football coach Nick Saban, Auburn football coach Gus Malzahn, Georgia football coach Kirby Smart, former NFL and Major League Baseball player Bo Jackson and former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

To get tickets or more information about the tournament, go to regionstradition.com.