In the span of a single week, the Grand Strand’s only PGA Tour event lost a title sponsor accused of running a Ponzi-like operation and gained a tournament director with deep roots in Horry County golf. On Thursday, SPORTFIVE — the company that runs the Myrtle Beach Classic — named Steve Mays, the former president of Founders Group International, as tournament director effective immediately [Who’s On The Move / SPORTFIVE release, 2026]. The same day, word came that the PGA Tour had cut ties with ONEflight International, the Colorado private-jet company whose name has been on the tournament since early 2025 [Golf Monthly, 2026].
The official message is reassurance: the 2027 event is on, the purse isn’t shrinking, and Visit Myrtle Beach is staying. That may all prove true. But for Horry County residents, the more important story isn’t who’s running the tournament. It’s who is paying for it — and how a sponsor that local leaders celebrated 20 months ago ended up in federal court.
When ONEflight signed on as co-title sponsor in February 2025, it was billed as a three-year commitment that would rename the event the ONEflight Myrtle Beach Classic. CEO Ferren Rajput stood at The Dunes and pitched a bigger vision, wondering aloud why the East Coast didn’t have its own version of Pebble Beach. Tournament and tourism officials framed the deal as proof of the event’s growing prestige [PGA Tour, 2025]. The company also flew celebrities, including Kevin Costner and Kurt Russell, in for the pro-am.
That picture changed fast. On Sept. 16, 2026, ONEflight paused all flight operations, posting a notice that it would stop flying for at least 30 days while it reviewed its operations [Private Jet Card Comparisons, 2026; WPDE/ABC News 4, 2026]. Lawsuits followed within days. The first, filed in U.S. District Court in Colorado by California customer Jeremy Ricks, alleges the company used new customers’ prepaid deposits to cover older obligations — a pattern the complaint calls characteristic of a Ponzi scheme [Private Jet Card Comparisons, 2026]. By mid-October, at least seven federal suits had been filed, and court records cited in reporting estimate roughly $150 million in customer deposits the company may be unable to return [Post and Courier, 2026]. A trade publication that tracks the jet-card industry reported the company may owe clients more than $300 million in prepaid flights [Private Jet Card Comparisons, 2026].
It’s important to be precise here: these are allegations. None of the lawsuits has been decided, and attorneys for Rajput have not responded to press inquiries [Private Jet Card Comparisons, 2026]. But the PGA Tour’s decision to drop the company speaks for itself.
What matters for locals is a quieter detail. Reporting shows that in the months before the shutdown, the company was still aggressively selling — offering steep discounts and soliciting six-figure deposits as late as summer 2026 [Private Jet Card Comparisons, 2026]. A sponsor’s financial health is the kind of thing a public-facing partner is supposed to check before putting that name on a community’s signature event. Whether anyone at the PGA Tour, SPORTFIVE or Visit Myrtle Beach did that vetting — and what it turned up — has not been publicly explained.
That’s the mess Mays inherits. On paper, he is about as local a pick as SPORTFIVE could have made. According to the company’s announcement, he most recently led Founders Group International, where he oversaw 21 area golf courses, and earlier spent 13 years at Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday, including a stint running the World Amateur Championship [Who’s On The Move / SPORTFIVE release, 2026]. Steve Mays’ a Coastal Carolina University graduate, and SPORTFIVE’s golf events chief called him one of the most respected leaders in Myrtle Beach [Who’s On The Move, 2026]. He replaces Darren Nelson, who had led the tournament since its debut [Yahoo Sports, 2026].
Steve Mays has framed his priorities around the fan experience and bringing more of the local business community into the event, describing it as a community-based tournament he wants to build on after three strong years. He told WPDE his career goal has always been to elevate Myrtle Beach as a golf destination [WPDE, 2026].
Analysis: Hiring a well-known local executive is a smart move in a crisis. Steve Mays knows the courses, the hoteliers and the golf-package operators — the people whose buy-in matters most when a tournament needs sponsors fast. But his résumé is in golf operations and destination marketing, not in vetting corporate partners. The skill set the tournament needs most right now is due diligence, and the community should watch how the next title sponsor is chosen.
And the entire investment into FGI (Yiquan Funding) has been a murky trail at best. Myrtle Beach News has covered this since its inception.
Which brings us to money. Steve Mays told WMBF, “There’ll be no change to the purse or to the tournament” [Golf Monthly, 2026]. He also said ONEflight’s troubles didn’t affect planning or finances for 2027 [Post and Courier, 2026].
The arithmetic deserves a closer look. The purse topped $4 million last year, and ONEflight had contributed roughly $2 million of it, according to the Post and Courier [Post and Courier, 2026]. Mays said it is too early to talk about a replacement title sponsor [WBTW, 2026]. So if the purse stays the same and ONEflight’s share is gone, someone is filling a hole of about $2 million — or ONEflight had already paid its 2027 share, which no one has said.
No official has publicly answered which it is. That’s not an accusation; it’s an open question, and a reasonable one for taxpayers to ask, for reasons explained below.
Visit Myrtle Beach is now the sole title sponsor [Golf Monthly, 2026]. It’s the tourism marketing arm of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce [Post and Courier, 2026] — a private organization, but one heavily funded by public dollars.
The city’s Tourism Development Fee, a 1% sales tax on retail purchases inside Myrtle Beach, raised about $45 million last year. Under the current split, Visit Myrtle Beach receives 80% of it, and the city 20% [WMBF, 2026]. WMBF reported that those funds help attract major events, naming the Classic specifically [WMBF, 2026]. From the start, local tourism leaders made clear the chamber would be the event’s financial backbone, with state tourism money and a chamber marketing partner also expected to contribute [Myrtle Beach Herald, 2023].
The timing is notable. City leaders and Visit Myrtle Beach are currently pushing to change that split to 60% for the city and 40% for tourism marketing, in part because the city’s 20% is fully consumed by a property-tax credit for residents [WMBF, 2026]. If Visit Myrtle Beach is about to receive a smaller slice of the fee while absorbing a larger share of a PGA Tour event, residents deserve to see how that math works.
The return on that investment is also murkier than the headlines suggest. When the tournament was announced in 2023, tourism leaders projected around $60 million in economic impact each year [WBTW, 2023]. The Post and Courier later reported an estimated impact of nearly $16 million tied to the 2025 edition [Post and Courier, 2026], while a separate WPDE report put an edition’s impact above $45 million [WPDE/ABC News 4, 2026]. Numbers that far apart usually reflect different methods. Before more public money flows in, the community should know which method is being used and who is doing the counting.
To be fair, the event has delivered real benefits: more than 40,000 spectators in its first year and $225,000 to nine local charities, including the Boys and Girls Club of Myrtle Beach [Visit Myrtle Beach, 2024]. More than half of recent crowds came from outside South Carolina, according to tourism officials [Post and Courier, 2026]. Those are the kinds of visitors the TDF is meant to attract.
There’s one more reason the next seven months matter. The PGA Tour’s original agreement covered four years at The Dunes, through 2027 [Myrtle Beach Herald, 2023]. WPDE confirmed 2027 is the final year of the deal, though Mays said he is confident the Tour wants to stay [WPDE, 2026].
That makes the May 13–16, 2027, tournament [WBTW, 2026] something of an audition. A smooth event, a credible new sponsor and strong attendance would put Myrtle Beach in a good negotiating position. A visible funding gap or another sponsor misstep would not. Mays has said the evolving PGA Tour landscape is an opportunity for the event [WBTW, 2026] — but renewal talks will also put a price tag on the next four years, and much of that price will likely come from the same tourism fee.
Steve Mays is a sensible, steady choice to run the Myrtle Beach Classic through a difficult stretch, and nothing in the record suggests the 2027 tournament is in jeopardy. But a steady hand on operations doesn’t settle the questions ONEflight’s collapse raised. Who vetted the sponsor? Who is covering its roughly $2 million share of the purse? How much public tourism money supports the event, and what is it actually returning?
Those answers belong to Horry County residents as much as to the PGA Tour.
Steve Mays – ONEflight is out. But Myrtle Beach’s PGA Tour event will continue, officials say — Post and Courier via Yahoo Sports (2026)
Steve Mays – Myrtle Beach Classic announces new tournament director amid sponsor changes — WBTW (2026)
New director for Myrtle Beach Classic weighs in on goals and ONEflight controversy — WPDE (2026)
Steve Mays – Steve Mays appointed new tournament director of Myrtle Beach Classic — Who’s On The Move (2026)
Steve Mays – PGA Tour Drops $4m Tournament Sponsor Facing Federal Fraud Allegations — Golf Monthly (2026)
Steve Mays – Lawsuit accuses Myrtle Beach Classic sponsor of being ‘the hallmark of a Ponzi Scheme’ — WPDE/ABC News 4 (2026)
Steve Mays – OneFlight lawsuit alleges ‘the hallmark of a Ponzi scheme’ — Private Jet Card Comparisons (2026)
Steve Mays – OneFlight took $300 million in payments for future private flights — Private Jet Card Comparisons (2026)
Steve Mays – Fifth OneFlight lawsuit has three six-figure sales in seven months — Private Jet Card Comparisons (2026)
Steve Mays – Myrtle Beach leaders push to change tourism fee split — WMBF (2026)
Steve Mays – ONEflight International sponsoring the Myrtle Beach Classic — Post and Courier (2025)
Steve Mays – ONEflight joins as co-title sponsor — PGA Tour (2025)
Steve Mays – Myrtle Beach will host its first PGA Tour golf tournament in 2024 — Myrtle Beach Herald (2023)
Steve Mays – Myrtle Beach Classic announcement — WBTW (2023)
Steve Mays – Benefiting Local Charities in 2024 Recognized by Myrtle Beach Classic — Visit Myrtle Beach (2024)
