Quail Hollow gets a name

While the Heritage tournament in Hilton Head Island is floundering while awaiting a title sponsor to step up, the Quail Hollow Championship in Charlotte has received what could be considered a vote of confidence from its primary sponsor.
The tournament has been renamed the Wells Fargo Championship. The bank has been apprehensive to attach its name to the tournament since it acquired Wachovia and inherited the title sponsorship contract for the PGA Tour event. The bank's willingness to add its name gives the event hope the bank will want to continue its sponsorship in the future.

“As title sponsor of the Wells Fargo Championship, Wells Fargo is pleased to be a part of a world-class event that both supports our communities and builds our business,” said David Carroll, head of the Wealth, Brokerage and Retirement divisions for Wells Fargo & Company, in a release. “With the Wachovia conversions on the East Coast scheduled for the next 18 months, we believe the time is right to bring the Wells Fargo name to this tournament.”

Wells Fargo/Wachovia has sponsored the PGA TOUR golf tournament at the Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, N.C., since its inception in 2003.

“It is hard to measure how much this tournament means to our broader Charlotte community, including the local non-profit organizations we are proud to support and the hundreds of team members who volunteer their time each year at the tournament,” Carroll added.

Annual proceeds from the Wells Fargo Championship have been donated to Teach For America and other organizations in the Charlotte area for the past eight years. Since 2003, Champions for Education, the non-profit organization which operates and manages the tournament, has generated more than $11 million in charitable donations. The tournament also generates an estimated $50 million annual boost to the Charlotte economy.