Professional Golf Tournaments in Maine: The Complete History
For one week each June in 2021 and 2022, the best golfers most people had never heard of played a tournament in Falmouth. Chad Ramey, Pierceson Coody, and a field of players a single good season away from the PGA Tour walked a Cornish and Silva course off Route 100 while a few thousand Mainers followed along, many of them seeing tour-level golf in their own state for the first time in their lives. Then it was gone. The Live and Work in Maine Open lasted two years and did not come back.
If you have ever wondered whether real professional golf has come to Maine, the honest answer is: rarely, and never at the very top. Maine is one of a shrinking handful of states that has never hosted an official PGA Tour event. But the state has hosted professional golf, more of it than most locals realize, and the full record is worth laying out because nobody else around here has bothered to.
The clean answer: no PGA Tour, but yes to the tour one rung below
Start with the fact people actually search for. The PGA Tour, the top circuit with the household names and the eight-figure purses, has never staged a tournament in Maine. Not once. The closest the state has come, and it is closer than you might think, is the Korn Ferry Tour, the official developmental tour that sits exactly one level below the PGA Tour and functions as its primary path to a card.
That event was the Live and Work in Maine Open, and it was played at Falmouth Country Club in 2021 and 2022. Falmouth is the only course in Maine ever to host a Korn Ferry Tour event, a credential no other club in the state can claim and one worth understanding before you rank Maine golf by green fees and Google stars.
The Live and Work in Maine Open, 2021 and 2022
The tournament was awarded to Falmouth in 2019 and scheduled to debut in 2020. The pandemic wiped that year out, so the first Live and Work in Maine Open was played in late June 2021, with a purse of $600,000. Chad Ramey won it and took home $108,000. The following June the event returned with a larger purse, and Pierceson Coody won, earning $135,000.
For a Korn Ferry event those are not small numbers, and the choice of Falmouth was not an accident. The course is a Geoffrey Cornish and Brian Silva design that opened in 1988 and stretches to 7,372 yards from the tips, par 72. That length matters: a developmental-tour field will pick apart a short course, and Falmouth is one of the few layouts in the state built at genuine championship scale. If you want to understand why the tour picked it, our guide to golf course architecture in Maine walks through exactly what separates a 7,000-yard modern test from the shorter Golden Age courses that make up most of the state's good golf.
The tournament also did something the state had not seen in a generation: it put Maine golfers a few feet from players who would be on television within a year. That is the real product of a Korn Ferry stop.
Why it did not last
The Live and Work in Maine Open ended after two editions. It was dropped from the tour's 2023 schedule, and the reason given was money, specifically the escalating purse and hosting costs that come with a Korn Ferry event as the tour's economics move upward. The organizers were candid that the numbers stopped working, and they pivoted toward building a different kind of event rather than chasing a purse that kept climbing.
This is the part worth being honest about, because the celebratory version of this story leaves it out. A two-year run is a short one. Maine got a real tour stop, ran it well, and could not sustain the cost. That does not erase the credential, but it frames it.
Where the winners went, and why the tour matters
Here is the payoff that makes a developmental-tour event more than a footnote. The Korn Ferry Tour is a proving ground, and both Maine winners proved it.
Chad Ramey, the 2021 champion at Falmouth, earned his PGA Tour card and won on the PGA Tour in 2022 at the Corales Puntacana Championship, getting into the field as an alternate and leaving with his first tour title. Pierceson Coody, the 2022 champion, stacked up three Korn Ferry wins between 2022 and 2023, finished inside the top 30 of the points list to earn his PGA Tour card, and by 2024 was posting top-10 finishes on the big tour at events like the Charles Schwab Challenge. The men who won in Falmouth were exactly who the tour is designed to graduate.
That is why the credential belongs in any serious conversation about Maine golf. A course that can host and test a field of future PGA Tour players is measurably different from one that cannot, and it is a fact you can verify rather than an opinion you have to trust.
Before 2021: the pro golf Maine had already hosted
The Live and Work in Maine Open was billed as the return of pro golf to Maine, and that framing is basically right, but the state's professional history did not start in 2021. There were two earlier chapters worth knowing.
The first was the New England Classic at the Woodlands Club, also in Falmouth, which hosted the developmental tour from 1990 to 1993, back when that same circuit was known as the Ben Hogan Tour and then the Nike Tour. In other words, the tour that visited Falmouth Country Club in 2021 had visited Falmouth once before under an older name, at a different club, thirty years earlier. The 1993 Woodlands winner, John Morse, earned his PGA Tour card that season and went on to win the Hawaiian Open in 1995, the same graduation story the Falmouth event would repeat a generation later.
The second was the Unionmutual Seniors Golf Classic at the Purpoodock Club in Cape Elizabeth, which ran from 1984 to 1996 and drew senior stars of the era, though it was not formally part of the senior tour's official schedule.
And underneath all of it, the Maine Open has been contested since the 1930s, most often at Portland's own Riverside municipal course, which has hosted more Maine Open championships than anywhere else in the state. Riverside is a Wayne Stiles design you can play this afternoon for muni money, a fact we get into in our ranking of the public courses near Portland.
What the record actually tells you
Put the whole history together and a clear picture emerges. Maine has never hosted the PGA Tour. It has hosted the tour directly below it exactly once, at Falmouth Country Club, and hosted that same circuit under an earlier name at the Woodlands Club in the early 1990s. It has hosted a long-running senior invitational at Purpoodock and its own state open at Riverside for the better part of a century.
That is a real professional golf history for a state Maine's size, and it is concentrated in Greater Portland. It also tells you something the star ratings never will: the one course a modern tour was willing to stage a championship on is a private, non-equity club whose owners cannot review their own business online. How that ownership structure works, and why it produces conditioning the public courses cannot match, is its own subject, covered in our guide to equity versus non-equity clubs in Maine. The tournament record is one more measurable fact in that case, and measurable facts are the only ranking currency worth trusting in a market this small.
FAQ
Has the PGA Tour ever played in Maine?
No. Maine has never hosted an official PGA Tour event and remains one of a small number of states that never has. The highest level of professional golf held in the state is the Korn Ferry Tour, the circuit one rung below the PGA Tour, which played the Live and Work in Maine Open at Falmouth Country Club in 2021 and 2022.
What was the Live and Work in Maine Open?
The Live and Work in Maine Open was a Korn Ferry Tour tournament played at Falmouth Country Club in June 2021 and June 2022. It carried a purse of $600,000 in its first year and was the first top-tier professional golf event in Maine in nearly three decades. It was dropped from the tour schedule after the 2022 edition.
Who won the Korn Ferry Tour event in Maine?
Chad Ramey won the inaugural Live and Work in Maine Open in 2021, earning $108,000, and Pierceson Coody won in 2022, earning $135,000. Both players went on to earn PGA Tour cards, and Ramey won a PGA Tour event, the 2022 Corales Puntacana Championship, the year after his Falmouth victory.
Why did the Live and Work in Maine Open end?
The event ended because of cost. It was dropped from the Korn Ferry Tour's 2023 schedule, and organizers cited the escalating purse and hosting expenses that come with a Korn Ferry event as the tour's economics rose. The tournament ran for only two years, 2021 and 2022.
What is the Korn Ferry Tour?
The Korn Ferry Tour is the official developmental tour of the PGA Tour, one level below it, and the primary path players use to earn a PGA Tour card. Its top finishers each season graduate directly to the PGA Tour, which is why the winners of the Maine event went on to compete at golf's highest level.
Where else has professional golf been played in Maine?
Beyond Falmouth Country Club, the Woodlands Club in Falmouth hosted the same developmental tour, then called the Ben Hogan and Nike Tour, from 1990 to 1993, and the Purpoodock Club in Cape Elizabeth hosted the Unionmutual Seniors Golf Classic from 1984 to 1996. The state's own Maine Open has been contested since the 1930s, most often at Portland's Riverside municipal course.
Which Maine golf course has hosted the most professional golf?
Falmouth Country Club is the only Maine course to have hosted a Korn Ferry Tour event, making it the site of the highest level of professional golf ever played in the state. For total tournament volume, Portland's Riverside municipal course has hosted more Maine Open championships than any other course in Maine.