National shotgun event will be at Elk Creek Hunt Club in 2009
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OWENTON - The 2009 U.S. Open of Sporting Clays will be at the Elk Creek Hunt Club and Sporting Clays, the first time the competition has been in Kentucky, Ohio or Indiana, said the man who lured it here.
"This was the fourth time we've made a bid for this thing - it's pretty tough to get," said Curtis Sigretto, the entrepreneur who also owns Kentucky's largest winery, Elk Creek Vineyards.
The competition will be staged during the third week of June 2009, and "We should have 1,000 to 1,200 shooters from every state, and from outside the country," Sigretto said. The Open, put on by the National Sporting Clays Association, is the sport's second-largest annual competition, behind the Nationals, which always are held at the association's San Antonio headquarters.
The event means perhaps "a thousand of the best shooters across America and perhaps even the world will come to Owen County," said county Judge-executive William P. O'Banion. "We're excited as a county, but I'm also excited for the region, being part of Northern Kentucky."
"With guests and everything, there'll probably be 2,000 people coming," Sigretto said.
Shooters using shotguns will compete through the week in several classes. Sporting clays is like "golf with guns": It's like skeet shooting, where clay discs are launched into the air and shot.
Unlike keet shooting, where launchers are stationary, shooters walk a course or ride golf carts with 12-15 stations they shoot from, at targets of five different sizes. Each station is different from the others.
Each competitor will shoot at 200 targets over three days. It takes about two hours to complete a course, and the competition will feature three courses.
"I don't have any (economic) studies, but it's got to have an impact for us, as far as people stopping and spending money in our restaurants, there's a couple of local hotels here and surrounding hotels," O'Banion said. "There's going to be probably more of a regional impact than just a county impact, because we don't have all the facilities to house them here."