Detroit — Rocket Companies is in negotiations to continue its long-standing business relationship with the PGA Tour as an official marketing partner, and it is not ruling out being a tournament title sponsor again in the future.
But Rocket decided to pull the plug on the Rocket Classic at Detroit Golf Club after this summer’s tournament — as first reported by The Detroit News last week — because of major concerns with timing and value, Rocket Entertainment Group CEO Nic Barlage said this week.
Rocket was facing a deadline to decide before this year’s tournament, set for July 30-Aug. 2, whether to exercise its option for 2027 and negotiate a long-term deal to keep the tournament running. And Rocket, whose tournament was rocked by the fracturing of golf’s landscape amid the PGA Tour-LIV Golf wars and struggled to attract marquee golfers, fans and sponsor dollars in recent years, wasn’t prepared to commit long-term — not without knowing exactly what the future of the PGA Tour looks like, given last year’s change in leadership, and new CEO Brian Rolapp’s looming, significant, but still somewhat unsettled changes to the Tour’s schedule.
“At this point in time, when you start looking at timing and opportunity coming together, it just didn’t make sense for us to lock in for another five years,” Barlage said Monday at Detroit Golf Club in a conversation with The News and two other reporters. “We want a chance to kind of reevaluate.
“I don’t think we’ll ever close on the door (on the PGA Tour). No, we will never close the door. That’s not in our DNA. … We think that’s just bad for business.
“We’ve got a great relationship with the Tour. We anticipate to continue to maintain a strong relationship.”
Dan Gilbert’s mortgage giant — first as Quicken Loans, then as Rocket Mortgage, then as Rocket Companies — is believed to have spent nearly $200 million being a title sponsor on the PGA Tour over 13 years, including five years for a tournament outside Washington, D.C., and the last eight for the tournament in his beloved Detroit. The last several years, it cost about $15 million a year to be a title sponsor of the Rocket Classic, and it would’ve cost double, about $30 million, if Rocket wanted to move into the proposed “first track” of star-studded events that Rolapp plans to institute as early as 2027 but no later than 2028.
The PGA Tour had serious interest in the Rocket moving up into that “first track,” given Detroit is a top-15 media market, and Rolapp’s vision is to play the biggest, starriest tournaments in the nation’s top markets.
But Rocket, after months of debate and discussions, internally and externally, still took a pass. And it wasn’t about the proposed price tag, Barlage insisted. It was about whether the price tag matched the tournament’s projected value. And, at least for now, Rocket decided continuing the investment would’ve been more duff than ace.
“This was not a financial decision for us. This was a value decision,” he said. “Those are very different situations. We can afford to host this golf tournament, to be very clear. … When we look at these things, we evaluate them with a lot of rigor when it comes to: What’s the value that they’re bringing for the dollars that we’re spending? And we just decided that we wanted optionality to deploy those dollars in different ways, at the end of the day.”
Why is the PGA Tour’s Rocket Classic ending?
Rolapp, hired away from the NFL to be the PGA Tour’s new CEO as the company transitioned to the private-equity world, is proposing a two-track system for the PGA Tour’s schedule in the coming years, with a goal of starting that transition in 2027. His vision is for there to be 12 to 16 so called “first track” tournaments, with the biggest names competing in all of them or almost all of them, and then a “second track” that would serve as a middle ground between the PGA Tour and the PGA Tour’s developmental circuit, the Korn Ferry Tour. There’s also a tentative plan for a relegation system, based on player performance.
Rolapp’s plan has been a hot topic at this week’s U.S. Open, and not all the reviews have been positive. One of the game’s biggest names, Rory McIlroy, blasted the idea.
“Track 2 is a glorified Korn Ferry event,” McIlroy told reporters Tuesday. “That’s what Track 2 is going to be.”
And, for the record, Barlage reiterated what Rocket Classic tournament director Mark Hollis has been saying for weeks, while Rocket debated whether to continue sponsoring the PGA Tour: Rocket never had a lick of interest in sponsoring an officially labeled “second-track” tournament. Just because you can more than afford to pay Ruth’s Chris prices for McDonald’s doesn’t mean it makes any sense.
“We’re not a second-brand track,” Barlage said. “That’s not what we aspire to do in anything that we do.
“So that wouldn’t be something we’re interested in.”
The reality is, the Rocket Classic has been treated like a second-tier tournament by the PGA Tour for several years, since the launching of LIV Golf in 2022. With LIV poaching several stars and boosting tournament purses, the PGA Tour responded hastily with a big-money series of elevated, or signature events, in which almost all of the stars (those who remained on the PGA Tour) played. Originally, the PGA Tour, under commissioner Jay Monahan, was going to rotate the tournaments that were elevated so that everybody would eventually get a bite at that apple, but that plan was scrapped, the signature events were locked in, and a winners-and-losers hierarchy was born.
That left the non-signature tournaments, or the losers, like the Rocket, fighting for table scraps, especially when it came to trying to lure big names — and in the Rocket’s case, even securing a consistent and appealing place on the summer schedule.
In the early years of the Rocket, the first annual PGA Tour tournament played in the city of Detroit, there were big crowds (except in 2020, when the Rocket played on during the pandemic, but with no fans) who came out to see some big names, like Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bubba Watson, Bryson DeChambeau (the 2020 Rocket Classic champion) and Patrick Reed. All those guys left for LIV Golf. And of the biggest stars who remained on the PGA Tour, most never made more than a cameo in Detroit, if they came at all. Scottie Scheffler and McIlroy never played in Detroit. The closest McIlroy came was in 2023, when he reportedly flew in for an emergency meeting of the PGA Tour Policy Board at a Dearborn hotel the week of the Rocket amid talks of a so-called PGA Tour-LIV Golf merger that never did come to fruition. Jordan Spieth never teed it up in Detroit, either. Justin Thomas played once, when he desperately needed playoff points. He missed the cut.
Fortunately for the Rocket, they always had an ace in the hole in fan favorite Rickie Fowler, who long has been a Rocket (and before that, Quicken) pitchman and hasn’t missed a Rocket Classic. And, no surprise, there were swelling galleries in 2023 when Fowler birdied the 72nd hole in regulation, then birdied it again in a playoff to win the Rocket and end his long victory drought. It was the signature moment in the Rocket’s eight-year run. Since then, though, the tournament’s pulse has flat-lined. Last year, attendance appeared to be a new low (the PGA Tour doesn’t release official attendance statistics), grandstands and hospitality suites looked like we were still social-distancing, and for the first time, the tournament lost money, leading to a shakeup in the event’s leadership.
Hollis, a Gilbert right-hand man and a marketing maestro from his days as Michigan State athletic director, was tapped as tournament director, after years of working on the tournament behind the scenes. Hollis tried to make things work for a long-term deal, but even the man with a history of making the improbable a reality — many used to joke he’d one day get a basketball game played on the moon — couldn’t get it done.
“I’ve had tears,” Hollis said. “I’ve had shouting about the whole process and aimed in a lot of different directions.
“I love the PGA Tour. I love golf.”
Michigan loves golf, too, but strangely, now faces the very real prospect of going from having all four major tours playing annually in the state to just one, the LPGA, in 2027 and beyond. The Rocket is done after 2026, and LIV Golf, with the Saudis pulling their funding, might not survive into 2027 — and there are serious doubts about whether it even will finish this season, including the team championship set for The Cardinal at Saint John’s Resort in Plymouth Township in August. PGA Tour Champions’ Ally Challenge in Grand Blanc is in the final year of its contract, too.
The PGA Tour told The News last week that it will continue to explore Metro Detroit as a future market for a tournament, though it will have to find another deep-pocket sponsor. Gilbert’s chief business rival, Mat Ishbia of United Wholesale Mortgage, has been rumored to be a potential savior; his office didn’t return a message from The News seeking comment about any possible interest. The PGA Tour also will have to find a new course. Detroit Golf Club, as much as it benefitted financially from hosting the tournament, had a fractured membership about keeping the Rocket, and any long-term extension between Rocket and the PGA Tour might not have survived a club vote. Losing DGC would’ve stripped Gilbert of his only option for doing what he insisted: Playing in Detroit.
What will the final Rocket Classic look like?
Nothing is finalized set for the future PGA schedule, and while Rolapp — who was on site at the 2025 Rocket and raved about Detroit, having just seen the big D energy up close at the 2024 NFL Draft — has said sponsorship interest is plentiful for both tracks, time will tell if there are more companies like Rocket that are questioning the value. Farmers Insurance, a longtime PGA Tour title sponsor, recently exited stage left, though Sentry Insurance swooped in to take over its tournament and the PGA Tour remains fully sponsored for now.
Barlage wouldn’t comment on what other companies might be thinking, and he said there still is tremendous value in live sports, especially in today’s age, with younger generations gravitating toward experiences.
“Live entertainment, live sporting events, it is so hyper valuable in this economy and in this society right now,” said Barlage, who oversees Gilbert’s vast entertainment portfolio, including the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, and is pumping up coming-soon Cosm Detroit. “This was just kind of timing and opportunity not being in sync.”
Despite challenges through the years, including the fan-less COVID year, Rocket Companies still was able to donate more than $10 million to local charities during the Rocket’s run, even making a donation in 2025 despite losing money — albeit that donation was more in-kind, and less cash. More than half of those charity dollars went to the tournament’s “Changing the Course” initiative, which launched in 2020 with the goal at ending Detroit’s digital divide. Rocket helped Detroit shed its notorious title of being the least-connected big city in America, opening tech hubs and providing access to devices and high-speed internet. Many charity dollars also went to several youth organizations, like Midnight Golf, First Tee of Greater Detroit and the Police Athletic League.
Barlage said Gilbert’s financial commitment to the city of Detroit and charity endeavors will continue, and Gilbert is expected to announce a substantial “legacy gift” the week of the final Rocket Classic. Details of that gift are remaining under wraps.
“We are so proud of what we’ve built together,” said Laura Grannemann, executive director of the Rocket Community Fund and Gilbert Family Foundation. “And I can’t wait to see what this year brings.”
As for this year’s Rocket, tournament officials are pledging to have saved the best for last. The field includes Fowler, world No. 3 Cameron Young and two-time major champion Xander Schauffele, who is playing the Rocket the first time, and it could get better, being the second-to-last tournament before the PGA Tour playoffs — meaning players on the playoff bubble might have to make the Rocket a late add to their schedule. Ticket prices are as cheap as they’ve ever been. The parking situation is improved. There will be a “Par 3 in the D” the Tuesday night before the tournament, with Fowler, Schauffele, Young and others teeing off from a downtown Detroit rooftop to a custom-built, ground-level ground 110 yards away and 50 feet down (Hollis’ idea, surprise, surprise).
Detroit Golf Club also will show off a new course, having just completed a (barely) member-approved $16.1 million renovation project. The Donald Ross greens are bigger, the bunkers are deeper, there are a lot of ditches and heather, and even the pond on 14 is a goner. Playing about 7,300 yards and to a par 70 (down from 72), it should be a bit more of a challenge who’ve torn the Palmer Park grounds up the first seven years. The winning score has been as low as 26 under, in the 20s five times, and never higher than 18 under.
There will be one more Rocket Classic champion crowned. There will be one more bottle of champagne sprayed on the back patio of DGC’s clubhouse as the sun sets on the Rocket Classic, for 2026 and forever. Rocket officials want this eighth and final tournament to serve as a celebration, for what it was — as well as for what’s coming next. And what’s next, at least for now, won’t include professional golf in Detroit.
“There’s some frustration and a lot of sadness and tears. Put a lot into this since 2018 and when something comes to an end, it’s a sad time,” Hollis told The News, standing on the first tee on a sunny day at DGC. “But you also want to celebrate, and what’s what I hope this year becomes, celebrate all that we’ve accomplished.
“But when that last putt goes in and the crowd walks away and I take the last walk off the course,” Hollis continued, choking up, “it’s going to be sad. It is.”
Who’s playing in the 2026 Rocket Classic?
Rocket Classic commitments, as of June 18:
When is the 2026 Rocket Classic?
When: July 30-Aug. 2
Where: Detroit Golf Club
2025 champion: Aldrich Potgieter
Tickets: Starting at $31.30; details at RocketClassic.com
tpaul@detroitnews.com
@tonypaul1984
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: What killed the Rocket Classic? Like the golf swing, it’s complicated
Reporting by Tony Paul, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Tony Paul, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
