A 15½ hole? How tour pros helped the Travelers Championship launch its unique umbrella challenge

The 40-foot red umbrella at the Travelers Championship wasn’t made to shield anyone from rain. Nor was it supposed to become a bullseye.

Instead, influenced by TV shots from a blimp of the pond surrounding the 15th, 16th and 17th holes at TPC River Highlands, the umbrella was meant as an advertisement for Travelers, which has sponsored the PGA Tour event in Cromwell, Conn., since 2007 and whose logo is a red umbrella.

But golfers had a more creative idea.

Quickly after the umbrella’s installation in 2008, it became a target players yearned to hit—which, if they did, would send golf balls flying nearly 30 feet in the air.

This spurred The Umbrella at 15½ Challenge’s creation, which has become a Travelers Championship staple since 2010. The player who lands their shot closest to the pin at the 85-yard Par 1 hole—which sits on the umbrella floating in the pond between the 15th and 16th holes—is rewarded by having Travelers donate $10,000 to his charity of choice. Though the shot doesn’t count toward a player’s scorecard during the Tuesday practice round, it has added a unique flavor to what is now the final Signature Event on the PGA Tour schedule.

“​​Every [tournament] has something, and I think this is just our thing,” said Andy Bessette, the Executive Vice President and Chief Administration Officer of The Travelers Companies.

While seemingly a simple shot, only about 25 percent of players hit the green, and nobody has made a hole-in-one during the competition. The closest anyone has come was Brian Gay, who was an inch away in 2016. Beyond the players tournament, the Travelers Championship also added a caddie tournament, where the winner is awarded a $500 gift card.

Though the 40-foot umbrella theoretically gives players a lot of wiggle room to at least get their shot on the green, the canopy’s surface only extends about 10 feet, forcing a precise shot to have a chance of landing near the pin. But when the umbrella was first created and purely made of metal, players had no chance.

“It was hilarious, in the early years when you watched it bounce, I'm not exaggerating, the thing would hit it and bounce 30 feet in the air,” Bessette said. “And I'm like, ‘Well, that's gonna suck.’ I mean, nothing's gonna hold on that. It's impossible.”

As players kept trying to hit the umbrella, Nathan Grube, the Travelers Championship tournament director, said discussions began about tying a charitable event to it. Once they realized they could put a green on the umbrella, it went from a concrete idea to an engineering project.

Over the following couple of years, a lot of trial and error ensued. As Grube noted, people don’t just make greens to hold an 85-yard golf shot, and certainly not on a floating 40-foot umbrella in the middle of a pond.

Ahead of the 2010 Travelers, a model with a variety of “floating stuff underneath,” including styrofoam, and an astroturf on top helped create a playable green. Instead of balls walloping 30 feet in the air, the new model effectively held shots as they landed, with some balls even spinning a little bit.

As the challenge approached its official debut, Grube said a permanent mat was put in place, stone surrounding the hitting area and a sign built. But they still needed a name.

“We were joking, we were like, ‘Is this the 19th hole?’ ” Grube said. “No, this is the spot between 15 and 16. It’s 15½.

“I remember when somebody came up with that, we all went, ‘can we do that? Can we say that?’”

They could, and The Umbrella at 15½ Challenge was born.

As players approach the 16th hole after teeing off on 15, they’re permitted one practice shot. Before their official shot, players sign their ball so an official, who travels to the umbrella by canoe, can measure how far a ball that lands on the green is from the cup and who hit it.

With the stakes of donating to a cause they care about, plus bragging rights, Grube has seen players confer with their caddies and bring out a laser to get accurate readings on how far the front and back of the green is before hitting their shot.

“So when we said, hey, it's an 85-yard shot, $10,000 to your charity, you kind of saw [the players] go, ‘Oh, this is like, real money for a real cause,’ ” Grube said.

While quirky golf shots are a fun product, the charitable impact is what stands out most, Bessette and Grube highlighted. Across the competition’s 15 renditions, $10,000 has been won for 15 different charities by 15 players.

After Gay nearly sunk a hole-in-one in 2016, Grube recalls him asking what the Travelers Championship was raising money for throughout the tournament. At the time, then-Travelers CEO Jay Fishman was battling ALS; he would die two months later.. This prompted Gay to donate toward the cause, having the $10,000 go to the Bruce Edwards Foundation Benefit Dinner, which generated more than $1.1 million to support research in the fight against ALS.

Originally created as a brand promotion, the red umbrella has gone on to build a legacy at the Travelers Championship. A fun and healthy competition, it brings out the best in players trying to nail a difficult shot. When adding the charitable component, it gives a platform for players to make a positive difference in the world while taking a shot at glory.

One day, the inaugural hole-in-one will provide a viral highlight while spreading even more awareness toward a cause the player supports—something that can only be found at the Travelers Championship.