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U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP PREVIEW DAY

May 22, 2019

Pebble Beach, California

BETH MAJOR: Good morning. Thank you so much for joining us all today for U.S. Open preview day at Pebble Beach Golf Links. My name is Beth Major and I'm the senior director of championship communications for the United States Golf Association and on behalf of the USGA we are thrilled to have all with us today. Before we get started with the program I would like to introduce USGA CEO Mike Davis for a few remarks.

(Applause.)

MIKE DAVIS: As Beth said, thank you for being here for preview day for the 119th U.S. Open. Let me start out by saying, simply put, we love, absolutely love doing championships here at Pebble Beach. This really is a national treasure and we have had this relationship for roughly 90 years now, it goes back to that historic U.S. Amateur in 1929. We have had a couple Women's Amateurs here, even looking forward beyond this year we have got the 2023 U.S. Open for the women being played, it's the first time we have had women on Pebble Beach playing this again national treasure and then we have got the U.S. Open coming back and then in 2027. We treasure the relationship with the Pebble Beach Company. It's one that they couldn't be more welcoming. The whole Monterey Peninsula and local towns have been incredibly and always been accommodating and the Northern California Golf Association has been a long-time partner and do so many things for the game. But with all that it's going to definitely be a historic 119th U.S. Open and again we could not begin to do that without our partners at Pebble Beach Company and with that let me introduce their CEO, Bill Perocchi, who is a great friend of the game and certainly Bill has been here since 1999 and have done wonderful things for the Pebble Beach Companies. So with that Bill Perocchi.

(Applause.)

BILL PEROCCHI: Welcome everyone. Excited to be here? You see that countdown clock? 18 day, 20 hours, 23 minutes. But it's great to have everybody here. We're obviously pleased that you're here to help us celebrate, begin to celebrate our sixth U.S. Open Championship during our centennial and if you think about it, this is actually our second centennial celebration with the USGA because in 2000 we hosted the 100th playing of the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Whoops, the minutes just changed, that's very distracting.

(Laughter.)

And now here in 2019 we're hosting the 119th U.S. Open during our birthday. So we're just so excited to be hosting our 13th USGA championship and again I want to also thank the leadership of the USGA that's here, Mark Newell, I haven't seen him, there he is in back. Stu Francis, of course Mike Davis, John, haven't seen John, John Bodenhamer, I can't tell you how great a relationship we have with the USGA. I mean they're partners, I know it's been like that ever since I got here in 1999, I'm sure it was like that even before I was here. They're great to work with, we have a very collaborative effort with them, everything that we do, and we're just very much treasure working with them.

An important part of the history of Pebble Beach and one that we're extremely proud of is that we were the first public golf course to host a U.S. Open back in 1972. And when you think about it, we all know what that means, anyone can come play Pebble Beach. Not anyone can go hit a baseball at Fenway Park or shoot a 3-pointer at Boston Garden. I'm sorry, but I got all my Boston teams in there, but it is what it is.

(Laughter.)

Many people have asked, what's changed since 2010? And one of our core values is always improving, always getting better, so I'm going to just quickly mention a few things that have changed around the resort. First of all, new Pebble Beach Golf Academy, practice facility. We finally have a practice facility that's bee fitting the No. 1 golf course, public golf course in North America. It's twice the size of the old facility, over 80 hitting bays, 40,000 square foot short game area. So we're really proud of our practice facility. If you haven't seen it, hopefully you will this afternoon, if you're playing golf.

The second thing is on the left side of the first fairway, it's where we're going to be having lunch, some of you probably already checked in over there and that's the Fairway One facility. 38 guest rooms, including two new golf cottages, Eastwood Cottage and Palmer Cottage. This is a product that never existed before and it opened about a year and a half ago and our guests just love that new facility.

With regards to the golf course, I'm not going to talk too much about that, I'm sure you'll be, having some one-on-ones and other meetings later on, but we renovated the greens on the 9th hole, the 9th green, 13th green, 14th green, 17th green, using pictures, restoring them back to what they looked like originally, having more hole placements, rebuilt to USGA specs. We have SubAir systems to help with the moisture control. Finally, I just want to mention this facility you're in. Has everybody had a chance to just kind of walk around this new visitor center? We opened it roughly six months ago to kick off our centennial. It's a facility that we're really proud of because we have never really had anywhere that tells the history of the company. We have 25 interactive exhibits in here. We got this wonderful video screen, and it's just so fun to come in here and see the people that are coming through every day, just reading the panels, watching the videos or watching some of the different other things. So it's a great facility and one that we sorely missed not having. On the other side we have a retail area, not that we're trying to suggest you buy anything, but we are going to offer you a gift, so at any point in time after this is over you can walk over to the retail side and pick out one item as a gift from the Pebble Beach Company and from the USGA. Just one item. You can decide whether it's for you or your spouse or your kids or whatever, but please feel free to do that. It's amazing what takes place in our little community at Pebble Beach because it turns into a town into a city. And you can see all that as you pull in, you see all the structures going up, you see it on the golf course, it's just so exciting in terms of everything that happens. It's such a wow factor. There will be roughly 250,000 people throughout the week attending the championship. Everybody always asks, especially in the local community about the economic impact we say it's roughly 175 million dollars in terms of hotel rooms, restaurants, retail, and so on. The whole event is supported by 1,800 Pebble Beach Company employees, virtually every employee has some role in the U.S. Open. We hire 800 temporary employees, 5,000 volunteers, and again everybody working side by side, Pebble Beach Company, USGA, volunteers, to put on another historic championship at Pebble Beach. And I do want to introduce just a few key members of the Pebble Beach Company that are here. First is the president and the chairman, president of the Pebble Beach Company and chairman of the 2019 U.S. Open, that's Dave Stivers.

(Applause.) And our championship director, Patrick Freeman. Where is Patrick? Patrick is working. Patrick's out on the course.

John Sawin our vice president and director of golf.

(Applause.)

John just joined the company a year ago and he just made it through local qualifying for the U.S. Open and he has sectional June 3rd at Big Canyon. Not to put any pressure on John. But if he ever made it through that and qualified for the U.S. Open, Mike will have to look this up, but he may be the first head pro or director of golf in the history of the U.S. Open to play in a U.S. Open. I don't know. Mike, is that true? But John, go do it, okay? And then finally the two people that are responsible for the day-to-day operations of Pebble Beach Golf Links, keep in mind we do 60,000 rounds per year, and these two guys do amazing jobs managing that and keeping the course in the terrific shape that it's always in. And that's the host professional, Eric Lippert.

(Applause.) And of course our superstar superintendent, Chris Dalhamer.

(Applause.)

Okay, lastly, I just want to take a minute to acknowledge a person who is synonymous with Pebble Beach, synonymous with the U.S. Open, a good friend to many many people in this room, and that's RJ Harper. RJ passed away from pancreatic cancer roughly a year and a half ago. During RJ's 30 year career with Pebble Beach he served as host professional of the 1992 U.S. Open, he was championship director of the 2000 U.S. Open, he was general chairman of the 2010 U.S. Open, and he was general chairman of the 2019 U.S. Open up until the time he passed away. So we're pleased to be able to honor RJ two special ways during the week of the U.S. Open. Together with the USGA, we decided that RJ will serve as honorary chairman of the 2019 U.S. Open and second we have taken a location on the left side of the 10th fairway and we have built a structure there that is going to be a viewing deck for the general spectators. It has tremendous views of the 10th hole, tremendous views of Carmel Bay, and we're going to call that Harper's, in honor of our dear friend RJ Harper. And this is what it's going to look like.

So I'm sure you're all excited to get out there and play Pebble this afternoon for those of you that are playing and I know there's a lot of other things at that are planned during the rest of the day so thank you for your support, thank you for being here and looking forward to seeing everybody over the next month. Thank you.

(Applause.)

BETH MAJOR: Thank you, Bill. What a wonderful tribute to a truly special gentleman here at Pebble Beach. We echo your sentiments and look forward to celebrating RJ during U.S. Open week. And certainly as Mike said, on behalf of everyone at the USGA, we thank Bill and the entire team here for their warm hospitality for their dedicated collaboration most importantly their genuine friendship it is very much appreciated. Now for a quick breakdown of today's activities, obviously for those of you who have been to a U.S. Open preview or media day in the past this one looks a little bit different and we're hoping that you'll find it to be really interactive and really fun. Obviously playing the golf course will be fun but we think we have a few activities leading up to that will be special for everyone here. So the next 90 minutes give everyone a little bit of a look inside what people will be able to experience during the U.S. Open week.

First, if you came in this morning I know it might have been a little foggy this morning for some of you but if you drove by the Fan Central you might have seen that it's still under construction, pretty far along but not something we're going to tour today. What we have done is recreate some of the Fan Central experiences down on the Pebble Beach putting green so the USGA's senior director of marketing. Allison Vartabedian. Allison, where are you. Right over here. She is going to walk everyone through an interactive Fan Central experience. You'll be able to see and experience some of the things that fans here during the week will be able to partake in. So that will be a great thing to check out. If you would like to visit with U.S. Open executives, including senior managing director of championships for the USGA, John Bodenhamer, and David Stivers, president of the Pebble Beach Company, they will be back over in Fairway One where we all registered this morning and they will be really happy to answer any questions and do one-on-one interviews with everyone. And if you are interested in learning more about the technology and the user experience that will go into U.S. Open in a few weeks we invite you to stay right here in the visitor center and our what we demonstrating the latest technology and a lot of the apps that connecting fans around the world at the championship will be able to experience. So Amanda Weiner, who is the USGA's director of digital media and the user experience will be here, she will be able to show you a few cool things on the screen and she will also be able to tell you a little bit about one of the gifts that was in your bag when you arrived this morning, the Roku. So Amanda? She's right over there. So she will be here immediately after this presentation. Then lunch will begin at noon. Back over at Fairway One and the golf outing obviously starts at 1:30. For anyone who is not playing golf this afternoon you are welcome to join us, we will be over in the boardroom in Fairway One to talk a little bit about know before you go. Some of transportation and other things that go into getting our fans here throughout the week. So we'll be happy to share that information with you as well. And certainly representatives from the USGA and from Pebble, I know Katie is here and she's been super helpful with our communications and marketing team getting everything ready so, Katie, we thank you and everyone involved in this effort today for bringing all these people here. We'll be available throughout the day if you have any logistics questions or anything we can assist with we're happy to. Most importantly again thank you so much to our hosts here at Pebble Beach and thank you all of you for making the trip here to be with us for this special day. We're looking forward to working with all of you over the next few weeks heading into what promises to be another special and memorable U.S. Open Championship so thanks very much for being here.

(Applause.

(Video played.)

AMANDA WEINER: Good morning. My name is Amanda Weiner and I'm the director of digital media at the USGA. I'm incredibly passionate about technology and innovation and I can't wait to show you some of the things we have been working on to bring U.S. Open experience to life this year. As we think about the on-site experience our greatest priority is to make sure fans who walk through the gate have the best fans fan experience in golf. I have made it my mission over the last eight years of working at the USGA to make this come to life. I assume most of you here have attended a U.S. Open before or worked a U.S. Open? And by a show of hands how many of you have gone out on the course, couldn't place a call or texted someone due to connectivity? I'm very excited to tell you that we have a much improved experience this year thanks to our new partner, Cisco. So how will we provide coverage for thousands of fans over hundreds of acres, also alongside a giant ocean? Cisco will debut the first ever connected course at next month's U.S. Open. Which means a robust course wide Wi-Fi network which will create a blanket of connectivity to enhance the experience for people watching, covering, attending and working at the U.S. Open. I can tell you this will be the best network and the best connectivity that we have ever had at a championship and this will be the back bone that powers all of our digital experiences for the U.S. Open. This coverage enables the USGA to more efficiently distribute content, engage fans, and more effectively run our championship. So unlike baseball, football that takes place on a single playing field we have the unique challenge of being across 18 holes, practice range, etcetera. With that we're leveraging Cisco vision to place content where people are throughout the course. We will have video ports on the in Fan Central, the 18th green, 10th hole, trophy club, media center and again thank you Cisco we'll be bringing Top Tracer technology to fans on-site at the driving range.

So now that fans will be fully connected and have a much improved experience the next step is to download and utilize the U.S. Open network. This will serve as a mobile caddie for fans all over the world, especially here at Pebble Beach. So as in previous years the U.S. Open app will have live streaming, realtime scoring, highlights and information. But this year we're launching some new features that will truly change the way fans engage with our championship. So the U.S. Open virtual photo booth will feature U.S. Open scenic selfies. Fans can select one of the scenic backgrounds of Pebble Beach. This is called the experience in which we take static images and create a 3D affect behind it. So what you don't see here but you will see in the live product is waves crashing, trees blowing in the wind, fans can then share this experience across their social networks.

Another experience within the virtual photo boot will be an augmented reality trophy. You can be in the picture like Tiger was or place it on your mantle as if you too won the U.S. Open. The feature I am personally most excited about because I am directionally challenged is way finding on the U.S. Open apps on-site map. Think of this as Waze or GOOGLE maps for the golf course. So by selecting a player or hole we're going to give you step by step directions to anywhere on the course. You'll see here this demo. Where to turn, how many steps, and then along your way where near by concessions, bathrooms, nearby locations are. This is truly going to be game changing for the fan on-site.

Another really incredible feature that will be launching this year is with our friends at Deloitte I spent the last few months working with some incredible team and I would like to introduce Allan Cook, managing director of Deloitte Digital who will walk you there you the new U.S. Open AR map. This will show you how we're bringing Pebble Beach to life here and also for those fans at home. Allan.

ALLAN COOK: Thank you, Amanda. As mentioned my name is Allan Cook, I'm managing director with Deloitte Digital Realities. This year we're really excited to work very closely with our friends at the USGA as part of our sponsorship agreement to create a 3D augmented reality experience focusing on the iconic holes, 6, 7 and 18. Each one of these holes will be an experience which will be able to be on your smart phone, tablet device or from a heads up display provided. We're highlighting the last five championship winners at Pebble Beach. This is Jack Nicklaus here, 1972. How he played hole No. 6. This one I believe is going to be Tiger Woods now showing how he played hole number 7 in the year 2000. Great first shot, unfortunately, he then 2-putted on the green which was a little bit of a shame for him I'm sure. Not only will you be able to see this at the actual U.S. Open but fans can actually download this experience at home as well. They will be will able to print out an AI image marker we have actually got them on the back table which we can show you in a minute. This one was a little bit better and managed to get out in two, so made birdie on that shot. So two of the other experiences that we have created is one is live play. So as the players are actually playing on each one of these holes you'll be able to see in live where and when they hit the ball, we have also created heat maps of how they played against the other players on the hole. So you'll be able to see the names of the different players in realtime. Be able to choose from the different course cameras as they're actually going along on the course. All of this is going to be in 3D as I mentioned. The final experience which will be coming up in a moment, this is actually all being built on top of our cloud managed services using analytics and augmented reality. You can choose any two of the players and see how they would have played against each other had they been playing on the hole themselves as well. So for instance you can choose the name and then relive the experience. We're genuinely excited about this app it's actually already open and available on the eye tunes Apple store as well as on the Android app store at the moment. It can be down loaded. So obviously live play experience isn't working yet but you can actually be doing the championship experiences themselves. With that as I mentioned the software is in the back and be happy to show you how it all works and I'll hand back to Amanda now who will talk through the usopen.com. Thank you.

AMANDA WEINER: Thank you, Allan. I think it's safe to say for those fans here we have got you covered. What about the millions of fans following us from home, around the world? Whether you're sneaking in that second screen at work, which I know we all do, or at a Father's Day barbecue or on your couch for the weekend, we have got you covered. We will once again have three live streaming channels of coverage with exclusive covering rag on Thursday and Friday from 7 to 9:30 a.m. local time. The that means the only place to watch golf on Thursday and Friday morning will be our channels, usopen.com, the U.S. Open app on iPhone and Android, as well as Apple TV and Roku. The web site will feature live streaming, live scoring advanced analytics, history experience and the ability to participate in the virtual U.S. Open. With our partners at World Golf Tour, which they are here, we provide fans with the ability to play Pebble Beach virtually just like the pros, via a virtual replication. So in our 11 years putting on a virtual U.S. Open there have been over a hundred million holes of virtual golf played and over four million entries into our championship. So I want to go back to that fan I talked about who is sitting on his couch and glued to the TV. We along with our partner in Cisco have launched an OTT app for Apple TV and Roku. This officially launched this morning, we are so excited and I'm thrilled to showcase today our Roku app. Roku is a leader in the TV streaming space with over 29 million active accounts and over nine billion hours of coverage being watched. So I'm going to take you through a little tour. Okay. So this is what we call our hero, here we'll be able to showcase four premier pieces of content. So we're streaming live at five championships this year. If you are not interested in live coverage, we have over 100 hours of other programming that you can watch. Content such as final rounds, this launched this morning. So we're talking the full telecasts of all U.S. Opens, including the five U.S. Opens played here at Pebble Beach. The Brooks Goes Back-to-Back film. Which only aired on YouTube so this will be the first time that it makes its way to this type of platform. Highlights. We all love highlights. How about three hours of continuous highlights of all U.S. Opens dating back to 1920. So by clicking this red button up here the hero, it's called binge mode in which you can literally binge three hours of U.S. Open highlights.

Lastly we are featuring in advantages of our Women's Open next week a U.S. Women's Open signature moments. So as you scroll down this is all of the content in which we're offering, just wanted to show you the breadth of coverage from again live to highlights all the way down to original programming that's coming out of our studio out of New Jersey as well as on-site at championships. So I urge everybody, this is my Oprah Winfrey moment, you get a Roku, you get a Roku. Everyone gets Roku's today and I urge you to download the USGA app. Please peruse a hundred hours of programming and we welcome any questions after the presentation and I want to thank we have got some friends from Cisco here today who can certainly answer any additional questions on the connected course, we have got Deloitte here, and of course I'm happy to answer any other questions. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

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