Tour Guide 2025: Procore Championship
While this is only David Walter’s third year hosting a Tour event, he has plenty of prior experience from his previous stops.
An Ohio State graduate and Cleveland, Ohio, native, Walter, the director of agronomy at Silverado Resort in Napa, Calif., interned at Oakland Hills in 2008 while the club hosted the 2008 PGA Championship.
“(Then) in 2009, I started going out to Maui to help with The Sentry (at Kapalua Resort) and I’ve been doing that since,” he says. “I also helped a buddy down in Williamsburg at Kingsmill (for the Michelob Championship). Then, when I was an assistant in Maryland, we hosted the Maryland State Amateur at Manor Country Club. So, that’s not professional, but it’s a sanctioned event.”
With 2025 being the 15th straight year Silverado has hosted the Procore — previously the Fortinet Championship and, before that, the Safeway Open — Walter is also blessed with a seasoned crew who have helped him ease into the role of being the man in charge of an annual PGA Tour event.
“Our staff has been here on average for 10 to 15 years, so they’re all well set on what they need to do, making things a lot easier,” he says. “By the time August comes around, everyone kind of whips themselves into shape and knows exactly what needs to be done to achieve our goals.”
No rain til…
Probably the biggest challenge that Walter and the team at Silverado face in the lead-up to the Procore Championship is the lack of rain. Walter says that from April until December, there’s a good chance the course won’t see any precipitation and has to rely completely on irrigation.
“The tap is shut off, and we go 100 percent on irrigation from (April) until December. Depending on what nature shoots our way as far as temperature goes, we could be anywhere from 80 every day to 100,” he says. “So, getting to September with heavy resort play, heavy member play, is probably our biggest challenge. It’s making sure we’re in the condition that the PGA (Tour) expects and that our ownership expects at the right time.”
On top of that, members and guests expect the course to be in championship condition during the months leading up to tournament play. Walter says there’s always a lot of excitement among guests and members who come to play the course in August. Because of that, he says his team works their hardest to have the course as close to tournament ready as they can year-round.
“People come here to visit and experience everything Napa Valley has to offer, and they’re staying here to play golf with the expectation that this is a Tour stop for the 15 last years,” he says. “There’s a certain expectation. We want to make sure that, if nothing else, the greens roll exactly how they expect them to. So, I would say our day-to-day conditioning, minus some of the details, is pretty close to tournament ready.”
What’s new in 2025
According to Walter, spectators and players can expect a few new sights when tournament time comes around in 2025. Since last year, Silverado has renovated the par-3 tees along with some others on the course, widened several fairways and, most notably, changed height of cut around certain bunkers.
“Any bunker inside short-cut grass, instead of having rough around it, they’re all shaved down to fairway height. So, we have fairway rolling right into all these bunkers. All the noses coming down are all fairway height,” he says. “It’s a really cool look and changes these players’ thinking on a couple of holes because they won’t want to end up in those bunkers.”
This will also be the second year that Walter and Silverado host a First Green event during advance week. Walter says this will be the third event he’s hosted overall, but the fact that it’s done during the lead-up to the tournament, with conditions dialed in and all the grandstands and branding on site, makes it extra special.
“It’s a cool atmosphere because we’ll have them down on 18 with all the stands built and everything. It’s a place they might not get to experience again, so that’s a pretty cool experience for them and for us,” he says
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