Welcome Mr. Wagner! Not to fulfill RJ's prophecy on some touchy aspects, but I'd love to get your thoughts and opinions on what it's like acting as club president and interacting with a high profile tournament such as the Target World Challenge. I'm a partial marketing major by trade (probably more due to interest rather than really wanting to work in the field) and I have a sizable interest in the details of event marketing and operations. If this is too touchy of a topic to discuss in a forum, perhaps we can discuss offline? Thanks!
Hi CJ,
This forum might not be the best place to discuss some of this but I can give you some info here.
In general, hosting the Target World Challenge is beneficial for Sherwood. From a marketing perspective the TV exposure, brand connection with Tiger, and patron exposure is all good. There is also the goodwill in helping raise millions for Tiger's foundation which benefits kids. Good for the corporate soul.
The members benefit by watching the world's best play a course they are familiar with and to a small degree with player/member interaction.
On the other hand... members lose their course for a week and the setup and tear down time is a little distracting for golfers.
The Tiger Foundation really runs the whole thing from start to finish. They are very organized and very professional. We work together on course setup starting about 4 months before the tourney. I noticed that some here were critical (gasp!) of some longer tees that we added for this tourney. The 'protecting par' comments weren't quite right IMO. Back in August we discussed ways to put a larger variety of clubs in the pros hands and we achieved that goal by our tee changes. For the next tourney I may recommend some forward tees to tempt the players into risk/reward shots. After all we are putting on a show. As with any TV show you want to engage the viewer and you want some excitement. Course setup plays a role in that.
As far as 'protecting par' goes... nobody was more excited than I was at seeing Tiger shoot a course record 62 in his Friday round of the last tourney. In fact, after begging like a spoiled child for 2 days, Tiger finally recanted and gave me his official scorecard from that round. I argued that it should be part of Sherwood history and he agreed. Sa-weet!
Please send me an email if you'd like more than that.
Best,
Peter