The tournament came first. In 1971, local organizers in the Quad Cities — the cluster of towns straddling the Iowa–Illinois border along the Mississippi — built a satellite PGA Tour event called the Quad Cities Open at Crow Valley Country Club, with future PGA Tour commissioner Deane Beman as its first two champions. The tournament kept its grassroots identity through decades of small-market sponsors — Miller High Life, Hardee's — while bigger markets came and went, until John Deere, headquartered just down the road, took over as title sponsor in 1998 and renamed it the John Deere Classic the following year.

The course came second, built to give the tournament a permanent home worthy of the sponsor's name. Former Tour player D.A. Weibring, working with design partner Steve Wolfard, laid out TPC Deere Run on a former Arabian horse farm along the Rock River — ground once owned by Patricia Hewitt, John Deere's own great-great-granddaughter — using the property's wooded ravines and river corridor to build a stadium-style course that reads as far more natural than most Tour venues built from scratch. It opened in 2000 at 7,183 yards and a par of 71, and has stretched to roughly 7,250 yards since.

The John Deere Classic has made a habit of launching careers rather than crowning them. Its defining moment came in July 2013, when 19-year-old Jordan Spieth, playing on a sponsor exemption and seven shots back with 17 holes to play, birdied three of his last three in regulation, then beat Zach Johnson and David Hearn in a five-hole playoff — the first teenager to win on the PGA Tour in 82 years. The win sent Spieth straight into the Open Championship, the following year's Masters, and full Tour membership, the first big step of a career that would include three major championships within three years.

The tournament still plays that role. Scheduled the week before the Open Championship, it draws a mid-tier but hungry field of players chasing their first win or a late major invitation, on a course built specifically to reward the kind of low, aggressive scoring that gets a young player noticed — a tradition that has continued through winners like Chris Gotterup, who broke through here in 2026 in front of family who had followed his career from its start.

Museum-quality TPC Deere Run map art, traced from real course data — every bunker, green, and fairway. Home of the John Deere Classic and Jordan Spieth's 2013 breakthrough win. Four designs, six sizes, or personalized with your own round photo.

Course data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)