AUBURN – The Maine Open, one of the larger golf tournaments in New England and the crown jewel on the golf schedule at Fox Ridge Golf Club in Auburn, will merge with another tournament and relocate to Riverside Municipal Golf Course in Portland, effective this year.

“It’s purely an economically driven decision,” Maine State Golf Association Executive Director Nancy Storey said. “We really want to stress how Fox Ridge is definitely a quality golf course, and a true championship golf course, and how much we enjoyed being there. We love it, and we’re going to work to get the Maine Amateur there as soon as we can.”

The Maine Open, sponsored every year by Charlie’s Motor Mall in Augusta, will merge with the Greater Portland Open, which lost its sponsor this year, and was in danger of folding up shop, leaving the state’s largest city without a major tournament.

“You see it happening at all levels of golf right now,” Storey said. “Look at the LPGA, they’re down about half their tournaments, and the PGA has restructured the way they deal with sponsorship requirements.”

The merger will create one tournament – in June, instead of August – that will simply be called The Charlie’s Open, named for it’s title sponsor.

“The GPO lost its sponsorship, and we lost a number of smaller sponsors for the Maine Open,” Storey said. “Charlie Shuman (president of Charlie’s Motor Mall) was still willing to remain on as the title sponsor. He’s been great through all of this.”

Storey said the tough financial times have hit Maine golf courses – and by association, the MSGA – pretty hard.

“For the first time in the 12 years I’ve been executive director, we didn’t meet budget last year,” Storey said. “Golf is down 10 percent across the state, and the number of golfers is down 10 percent. Last year, we had a lot of clubs really feel it, and we have a lot of clubs who didn’t pay their bills to us because of that. We’re working hard with them, because for us to survive, the clubs need to survive.”

While the most noticeable cut will be the tournament merger, Storey said that the MSGA will also trim $10,000 from its publication and production budgets, and will move more toward digitizing much of the organization’s paperwork.

Fox Ridge’s loss will be Riverside’s – and Portland’s – gain.

“While we love Fox Ridge, this doesn’t mean we’re not excited to return to Riverside, either,” Storey said. “Logistically, it’s a lot easier to host the tournament in Portland than it is in Auburn.”

Officials at Fox Ridge are sad to see the tournament go after just three years, but said Tuesday that the move may, in the long run, be better for the club.

“We enjoyed hosting it, and we really loved working with the MSGA on it,” part owner and course superintendent Ed Michaud said. “It was a great challenge for us to host it. The publicity it generated was great, and something you can’t really measure. But at the same time, we stand to gain revenue during one of the peak tourist weeks of the year. So how do you weigh what you get in publicity against being able to charge greens fees for a whole week? It’s a hard thing to measure.”

All of the details of the new tournament have yet to be finalized. The MSGA Web site’s special events schedule lists the Charlie’s Open pro-am on June 29, but does not list anything beyond that date. Traditionally, a golf tournament’s pro-am precedes the actually tournament by one day, which would mean that a three-day Charlie’s Open would run from June 30 through July 2.