The last putt had dropped hours ago. The leaderboard was settled. And there I was on the rooftop of The Westin Sarasota, a cocktail in hand, a crab and mango salad in front of me, and the kind of view that makes you stop mid-sentence and just look. The bay was catching the last of the evening light. The city hummed quietly below. That moment told me something a golf scorecard never could: Sarasota, the coastal Florida city often overshadowed by the larger Tampa metro area to the north, is not just a tournament backdrop. It is itself a destination.
Photo: Suncoast Aerials /Shutterstock
Where to Eat, Explore, and Unwind During the Senior PGA Championship in Sarasota
The Senior PGA Championship has found a home here. The Concession Golf Club in Lakewood Ranch is hosting the tournament in 2026, 2027, and 2028, part of a three-year agreement that gives this corner of Florida’s Gulf Coast an extended spotlight. The 2026 edition, held April 16-19, drew legends of the game and up to 7,000 fans a day. Stewart Cink claimed the Alfred S. Bourne Trophy with a 19-under performance that validated what the club’s ownership had believed for years: this course belongs on the biggest stages in golf. But the visitors who arrived for the golf and looked no further missed the better half of the story.
A course that earns its reputation
Photo: The Concession Golf Club
The Concession Golf Club carries a name with a history. It honors a moment from the 1969 Ryder Cup at Royal Birkdale, when Jack Nicklaus conceded a short putt to Tony Jacklin, halving their match and resulting in the first tie in Ryder Cup history. That act of sportsmanship gave the club its name. The course itself, a Jack Nicklaus Signature design created in collaboration with Jacklin, opened in 2006 to immediate acclaim as one of the best new private courses in America.
As a spectator venue, The Concession holds up exceptionally well. The course is immaculately maintained, and the grounds have been thoughtfully configured for tournament crowds. Wide, even pathways make it easy to move between holes without the usual scramble of major event foot traffic. Viewing areas are positioned to give fans genuine proximity to the action, not a distant glimpse from behind a rope line.
What separates the Senior PGA Championship from many larger tour events is how personal the experience still feels. The galleries are engaging without being overwhelming. You are not watching players from three fairways away through a sea of raised phones. At The Concession, fans can walk the course comfortably, settle into viewing areas without fighting crowds, and stand close enough to hear conversations between players and caddies. There is something refreshingly intimate about watching legends of the game in this setting. These are players whose careers shaped modern golf, and here, the experience feels accessible in a way that larger PGA Tour events often no longer do.
For 2027 and 2028, the club’s leadership is already focused on deepening the connection between the championship and the surrounding communities of Sarasota and Bradenton. Attendance continues to build. The tournament is finding its footing as a regional institution, not just a one-time event.
Tickets for the 2027 Senior PGA Championship are available through SeatGeek, the official ticketing provider for the PGA of America. Interest registration is already open. If you are planning to attend, it is worth booking well ahead of the April dates.
Sarasota’s culinary scene is worth planning around
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Sarasota’s dining scene does not announce itself the way Miami’s does. It earns its reputation quietly, through restaurants that have been doing their thing for decades and newer spots that understand the assignment. Two distinct experiences define the culinary geography for a tournament visitor: St. Armands Circle and the Westin Sarasota’s own rooftop.
St. Armands Circle is a short drive, or a Westin shuttle ride, from the heart of downtown. The open-air shopping and dining district has a relaxed elegance, the kind of place you find yourself lingering longer than planned. The Columbia Restaurant, a Florida institution with roots going back to 1905, anchors the circle with Spanish-Cuban cuisine and a dining room that knows how to set the tone for a long, unhurried meal.
For breakfast, the Cafe on St. Armands is worth building your morning around. The cafe sits in the building John Ringling constructed nearly a century ago, where he kept his office, and that history settles over the space in a way that feels earned rather than performed. Dining al fresco here, surrounded by fresh pastries and the unhurried pace of a European sidewalk cafe, it is easy to forget you are in Florida.
The eggs Benedict is served as a trio: one lobster, one mushroom, and one traditional. The Quiche Lorraine is equally worth ordering. These are dishes that invite a second cup of coffee and a rearranged itinerary.
Back at the Westin, the rooftop is where a post-tournament evening belongs. The Roof Bar and Eats has the combination that is harder to find than it should be: genuinely good food and a view worth looking at. On my last evening there, after a long day on the course, the crab and mango salad was light and sharp, and the herb-crusted chicken sandwich was exactly what the moment called for. The city spread out below. Nobody was in a hurry.
The Westin’s main restaurant, EVOQ, operates at its own pace, unhurried and a step more formal than the rooftop. The space is elegant and sleek without feeling cold, the kind of room that manages to be both polished and genuinely comfortable. After a long travel day, the all-natural beef cheeseburger with sauteed mushrooms is exactly what it should be: honest comfort food, straightforward and satisfying without trying too hard. For breakfast, the avocado toast is a strong option, and the house-made granola parfait from the Eat Well Menu threads the needle between health-conscious and actually satisfying.
The city the circus built
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Most visitors arrive in Sarasota thinking about the beach. That assumption is understandable and not entirely wrong. But it misses something significant about what this city actually is. The influence of John Ringling, of circus fame, is woven through the fabric of Sarasota in a way that takes first-time visitors by surprise. Ringling chose Sarasota as his winter home in the 1920s and proceeded to reshape the city’s cultural identity in ways that have outlasted him by a century.
The Ringling, the museum complex on the bay, warrants a full day to explore. The Museum of Art houses a serious European collection with particular depth in Baroque painting. Ca’ d’Zan, the Ringling mansion, is a Venetian Gothic property on the waterfront that manages to be both over the top and genuinely beautiful. The Circus Museum closes the loop on history, chronicling the spectacle that made all of it possible.
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens deserves its own afternoon. The gardens sit directly on Sarasota Bay as a research institution with serious horticultural credentials and grounds serene enough to slow anyone down. The focus is on epiphytic plants, particularly orchids and bromeliads, and the collection is extensive without feeling like a catalog.
On any given day, you are likely to encounter students from Ringling College of Art and Design sketching on the grounds of both The Ringling and Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. The college’s presence is a reminder that the arts tradition Ringling set in motion is still actively producing the next generation of working artists. The same institution Ringling founded to train artists is still producing them, and they are still drawing from the same sources he left behind.
Photo: Mariusz S. Jurgielewicz /Shutterstock
The gardens connect to the Legacy Trail, a paved multi-use path that winds through Sarasota County and makes for one of the more scenic ways to arrive. The on-site cafe, The Green Orchid by Michael’s on East, serves regionally sourced food and holds a distinction worth noting it is the first net-positive-energy restaurant.
The beaches here are what the photographs suggest, which is not always true of famous beaches. Lido Key Beach, the closest option to the Westin and to St. Armands Circle, has the pure white sand the Gulf Coast is known for. It is clean and well-maintained, and the expanse of it is wide enough that it rarely feels crowded, even during peak season. The water is calm. The sand is soft. There is not much more to say, which is the best possible review.
Where to base yourself in Sarasota for the Senior PGA Championship
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The Westin Sarasota, with rooms from just above $400 per night, is not directly on the beach. That is the trade-off, and it is worth making. The location puts you close to downtown and close to St. Armands Circle and Lido Key Beach via the hotel shuttle. The rooftop pool delivers outstanding views, and the onsite spa handles the rest. Complimentary bike rentals make the Legacy Trail practical. For a tournament week that involves early mornings, long afternoons on the course, and late dinners on the rooftop, the Westin functions as the right kind of headquarters. I would go back without hesitation.
Sarasota has spent years being underestimated by visitors who arrived for one thing and left without understanding the rest of the city. The Senior PGA Championship is, among other things, a correction to that. It is one of the finest private golf courses in the country, in a city that also boasts world-class museums, exceptional dining, botanical gardens on the bay, and beaches that live up to their reputation.
Two more years of hosting remain. That is two more Aprils, two more chances for visitors to show up for the golf and leave having discovered everything else. The ones who stay curious, who walk St. Armands or Lido Key Beach in the morning and end the evening on a rooftop with the bay below them, those are the ones who will understand what Sarasota actually is.
In an era when many professional sporting events feel larger, louder, and more distant, the Senior PGA Championship in Sarasota still feels remarkably close to the game itself. The tournament is the reason to come. Sarasota is the reason to stay. 