The quality of a major championship venue is determined by its champions, and Valhalla Golf Club, the site of this week’s PGA Championship in Louisville, Ky., has a list of past winners that stands out at every level.
Tiger Woods won the PGA Championship in 2000 at Valhalla and Rory McIlory won it there in 2014. Hale Irwin won the Senior PGA Championship in 2004 at Valhalla and Tom Watson won it there in 2011. During the 2008 Ryder Cup, the American team defeated, led by Paul Azinger, the European team.
Even on the junior side, the course has hosted elite players. Akshay Bhatiawho has two PGA Tour wins at age 22, won the 2018 Boys Junior PGA Championship there. Anna Davis, now 18, won the 2021 Girls Junior PGA Championship at Valhalla and won the Augusta National Women’s Amateur the following year .
What the new owners, a group of Kentucky businessmen who bought Valhalla in 2022, said it didn’t have was a club presence to match its illustrious championship history. So when the PGA of America, which organizes the championship, decided to sell Valhalla, the new owners came in to change that.
“We couldn’t leave it to an out-of-town golf management company,” said David Novak, co-founder and former CEO of Yum Brands, which owns Kentucky Fried Chicken, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. “We thought they would be more interested in making money than building the reputation of Valhalla.”
The “we” in this case is an ownership group made up of community leaders: Jimmy Kirchdorfer, the CEO of ISCO, a pipe company; Junior Bridgeman, a former University of Louisville and NBA basketball player who owns hundreds of franchise restaurants and a Coca-Cola bottling plant; and Chester Musselman, a Louisville hotel owner.
Novak had the golf bona fides to unite the golf world behind him. He had been a member of Valhalla since 1990, when he moved to Louisville to become president of Kentucky Fried Chicken, now KFC. And he had also won the Seminole Pro-Member tournament and was the oldest winner of the club championship at New York’s Shinnecock Hills, a frequent site of major championships.
“In Louisville we don’t have a lot of iconic properties,” Novak said. “There’s Churchill Downs, the [KFC] Yum Centre where Louisville plays and Valhalla. We wanted to make it better. We said, ‘Dwight Gahn built it and founded the club, then the PGA bought it, then we bought it.’
What will fans see differently this year? It’s now a venue that aims to create a Kentucky-inspired golf club that also borrows from the ownership group’s business success. Novak has introduced chicken sandwiches inspired by KFC’s Colonel Sanders, and Bridgeman has helped create a dessert that ties into Wendy’s Frosty treat.
Bridgeman, who also owns Ebony and Jet magazines, compared his participation in the ownership group to those legendary magazines.
“Valhalla was kind of like Ebony magazine,” he told Golf Channel last week. “When we heard it might be for sale, we weren’t looking at it so much as an investment. It was more something that we felt was important to the city of Louisville, important to the community and important to the state. We thought there were some things we could do with Valhalla to get it to where it probably should be and by that I mean in terms of rankings in the top courses in this country.”
There was also an economic factor. The new owners saw a vibrant Valhalla as a path for tourist dollars into the city.
“We felt like we had an opportunity to not only maintain our championship history, but reacquire it,” Novak said. “The PGA Championship brings in nearly $150 million to the city. We know the community supports golf, and we can make it even better.”
The changes started with the club’s image. The partners wanted it to be an example of Kentucky, known for horse racing, bourbon and bluegrass.
The clubhouse was the beginning. It now looks like Churchill Downs. Inside there is a room to commemorate all the champions, such as Woods and Davis, who won important tournaments in Valhalla, but with the name of the horse that won the Derby in the same year as their tournament victory. The gate to the club — along Bluegrass Way — resembles a horse farm gate. And yes, there are horses on the property too.
And the holes on the championship course follow the horse theme. No. 1 is called the Post; No. 18 is Photo Finish.
“I’ve always believed that the most important thing you can do is know what you stand for,” Novak says. “We wanted to build the Valhalla brand. The first thing we did as an ownership group was get together with our team and think, ‘What are we going to stand for?’
Not everyone has embraced the group’s definition of reality. After the group bought the club in late 2022, it was about the rules changed on registration fees, causing some members to leave the club.
Disagreements at private clubs are nothing new. Still, the ownership team, which said it funded the renovations without reviewing members, is ready for the close-up this week.
“I had been complaining about what Valhalla could be,” Novak said. “My daughter convinced me to buy the club. She said you have all these ideas about the course and you love these guys. I’ve had more fun here. We’ve done this together.”
