The PGA BMW Championship returned to Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis this weekend after an eight-year hiatus, and the crowd filled every seat. Professional golf was back in a city that had not hosted the PGA since 2018, and the sold-out turnout made the comeback feel immediate.
That is why people were searching for Patrick Cantlay and the tournament on the same day. The pull was not only the field itself but the simple fact that professional golf had been missing from St. Louis for years, a point Brendan Mulqueeny made plainly when he said it was great to have it back and that it was really fun.
St. Louis sports fans had two sold-out events to talk about that weekend, with the PGA BMW Championship at Bellerive and the Savannah Bananas back at Busch Stadium for a two-night series against the Loco Beach Coconuts. The overlap gave the city a rare kind of sports calendar: one weekend, two full houses, and two very different acts drawing the same kind of demand.
For Palmer Masson, the draw was personal as much as it was about golf. He said he had been looking forward to the event all summer, and then added that he wished he had been a little older the last time St. Louis hosted because he was only 9 years old then. This time, he said, the return felt familiar enough to recognize and new enough to matter.
There was a similar sense of making up for lost time around the Bananas, where Stephanie Andersen said fans had heard about the team from last year and were excited to finally get tickets after missing them then. Jeremy Reichert and Ashley Reichert came from Illinois for the show, and Ashley said she followed the players and got involved, while Gina Steimle said the sold-out crowd also carried a different kind of connection, recalling how she once worked in downtown Los Angeles with Kris Thompkins before Thompkins’ son, Reese, became the right-fielder for the Savannah Bananas.
What makes the weekend stand out is not just that both events sold out. It is that St. Louis proved it could still turn a return visit into a full house, whether the draw was Banana Ball or professional golf coming back after a long absence. The open question now is whether that appetite turns into a steady run of big events, or whether this weekend stays a rare double hit.
