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JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE SHRINERS HOSPITALS FOR CHILDREN OPEN MEDIA DAY

September 14, 2010

THE MODERATOR: This is the third year of the wonderful partnership between the Shriners Hospitals, Justin Timberlake and the great city of Las Vegas. In these three years the tournament has helped raise awareness and dollars for charity in the Las Vegas community and on a national level for the Shriners. We help to continue that.
Today in attendance we're delighted to have our defending champion, Martin Laird, a Las Vegas resident, and UNLV graduate, Charley Hoffman, board chair of the JTSHO, Gary Dunwoody, and tournament director, Adam Sperling.
We'll start with our guests here offering some remarks and then followed by a Q & A session with them.
First, I'd like to welcome our defending champion, a player who as you'll recall, defeated George McNeil and Chad Campbell in a playoff last year to capture his first PGA TOUR title. He comes into this week ranked ninth in the FedExCup standings, with a chance to win the Cup at next week's Tour Championship. Ladies and gentlemen, Martin Laird.
MARTIN LAIRD: Thank you. First of all, it's great to be back here. Coming here this fall last year was a big week for me. The year wasn't going like I'd hoped, and then I came in here and had a great week, and everything's kind of changed since then.
You know, Chuck Lombard and his staff take care of us well here, and I'm sure it's been the same for everyone here today. You know, it's good to come back.
Luckily there's a week off on the PGA TOUR schedule this week, not just so that we don't have to play golf this week, but it allows Charley and myself to be here and come talk to everyone and talk about this tournament.
You know, I think as I said, when I want to say it's always great to win any PGA TOUR event, but to win one that is for such a great cause as this tournament is it makes it even more special. That's something that over the year I've really realized how many people have mentioned to me about this tournament and all the great work that Shriners Hospital for Children and how good it is. It really means a lot that this is a tournament that I managed to get my first win on.
You know, as far as that, I'd also like to thank Gary Dunwoody, the chairman of the Shriners Hospital For Children Golf Committee, and thank him for his support not only in this tournament but the PGA TOUR in general and all the great work that he does and the hospitals do around the country.
Talking also, it's such a unique tournament with Justin Timberlake putting his name on the tournament and all the great work he does, not only just the concert, but being out here all week and the amount of money and time he puts into it is fantastic. I know it really makes a special tournament. There is not any other tournament really like this, and I'm sure it will be a great week again this year.
I'd also, adding celebrity Charley Hoffman to have the Monday Pro-Am is great for his foundation and all the help that it does for local charities around here is fantastic. Charley's also had a great year, so I'm sure that will help even more this year for the Monday Pro-Am and everything that's gone on this week.
But, the Fall Series for me the last couple years, I've needed every tournament. A lot of talk is about the FedExCup and all that kind of thing, but the Fall Series is definitely, if you ask the players, it's really an important time of the year.
I came in here last year I was top 125, hoping for a good year and a good finish just to get inside the top 125 and keep my card. Ended up playing good this week, this tournament last year and winning, and.
We were talking earlier. It's amazing just one week like that and all the doors opened for me this year. And I've also had a great year this year and I've been playing well the last couple of months. And now I go into next week into the Tour Championship, which this time last year if someone said I'd be playing the Tour Championship ranked number nine in the FedExCup, I may not believe them.
But it's great to go from winning here in Vegas at this tournament, and it just shows the importance of these events. As my rookie year on TOUR, also I needed all of them to finish 125 on the money list.
It is a great event, and we'll have a lot of excitement around again this year, I'm sure. As I said, it's just great that it's for such a great charity like the Shriners Hospital For Children. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to coming back here in a month. I'll be hopefully rested up nicely.
I was just saying I'd like to end the streak of first-time winners in this tournament. I don't know how many years it's been, but I'm sure I'm not the first person that's probably said that, but definitely hoping to come back and contend and hopefully get the title again and be back here next year.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Martin, and good luck next week. Our next speaker shot a 62 in the final round of the Deutsche Bank Championship. His lowest round on the PGA TOUR. He's a Las Vegas resident and UNLV graduate, and his foundation, the Hoffman Foundation will host and benefit from the Monday Pro-Am tournament on October 18th. To kickoff the 2010 version of this event, ladies and gentlemen, Charley Hoffman.
CHARLEY HOFFMAN: Thank you. It's obviously nice to be back home after being on the road for three weeks doing the FedExCup. Obviously, Vegas is great to me winning the college 1998 National Championship. I know this year the university and the tournament are teaming up and they're doing a Rebel Ranch sort of to bring both of those together. It should be a fun area.
Also, congratulations to Martin for a Tour Championship. Obviously, both of us going into the FedExCup, didn't really look like we were going to be anywhere near the Tour Championship, and I guess that's sort of what the TOUR wanted and created was the FedExCup to have the ability to have a little volatility, and I guess we took advantage of it (laughing).
So we're obviously busy preparing for that. Also, my foundation, my wife and I have been working pretty hard to get this Monday Pro-Am together. It came up pretty fast. We had a meeting with the board. We wanted to get back to the city where I live and local Las Vegas charities -- I have an event in San Diego also -- but wanted to give back to charities here.
There is no better way than to team up with Shriners and Justin Timberlake. To do it on Monday, it's going to be a great time.
There are going to be four local Las Vegas charities -- actually, five, Goodie Two Shoes, Cystic Fibrosis, the local Shriners Fund, Juvenile Diabetes and Blessings in a Backpack, that is the one I'm missing. It will be great to give back to local charities. We'll have fun doing that and we'll have a great group of pros.
There are going to be a lot of Las Vegas guys, guys that play for UNLV, and also some other of my friend that's live around town and obviously play on TOUR. They'll have the opportunity to play with a TOUR professional and have a good day on the golf course.
We do have a few spots available to be able to play and come support the tournament and support my foundation. I can't say enough about what Gary and his team does for this tournament, the Shriners. Obviously, seeing the turnover in title sponsors throughout the year, it's nice to have Shriners believe so much in the community of Las Vegas and this tournament and seeing it go in the right direction and build and trying to move this thing into a regular FedExCup event, which it's nice to have their support here in the Las Vegas community also.
What else do I need to talk about? (Laughing). Just back to Adam and his team. He's got a bunch of good stuff going on. He's got a walk-a-thon for Goodie Two Shoes. He's got a dental clinic for some of the local kids for the Shriners, and a women's day, and a chamber of commerce event also.
So we have a lot of good stuff going on for that week. We definitely need the community's support behind it and all the help anybody can give to the tournament, we'd like to have.
THE MODERATOR: The Shriners Hospitals for Children came on board three years ago, and nobody would argue they haven't injected a great new life into this event. The work they do for children in the Las Vegas area and on a national level is exceptional. Representing the Shriners Hospital is chair, Gary Dunwoody, of the event. Gary, if you wouldn't mind offering some remarks?
GARY DUNWOODY: Yes, thank you. It's a privilege and pleasure to be in Las Vegas. I can tell you to be with talented people gives you an upgrade. I feel like I've gone from coach in a plane to first class sitting here with Martin and Charley and being in Las Vegas. That's quite a good feeling for somebody from Arkansas.
You've got to understand, anything's an upgrade from Arkansas. I'll get that out of the way for you all. Put that on me. Contrary to what you hear when you have 32 women in a room in Arkansas with a full set of teeth, that is not right. I want to get all of those jokes out of the way before we get started on where I'm from.
But the Shriners, we're really blessed and privileged to be able to be a part of this particular tournament. I can tell you it's done tremendous things for us as far as awareness with our partnership with Justin Timberlake. But when Adam came on board in April, last year I came on board in July, so we're both on our second year.
But I can tell you, not because I'm trembling, but I tell you my philosophy is you surround yourself with good people, they do their job, you don't have to do anything anyway. And if they don't do the job, replace those people. You know, that's not a tough decision, really, if you want to think about it.
So my job's really easy this year. Adam is such an inspiration, such a great young man, and I hate to say it. He doesn't really need that kind of kudos, but I'm going to give them to him anyway.
I can tell you, the man cut $1.3 million dollars worth of expenses off our tournament last year. Now that's a big contribution, and I cannot tell you the amount of work and diligence, and due diligence this tournament director has done for our tournament.
But Shriners Hospital For Children, and I'm sure all of you know this, but first of all, they've got to bring the official breeding from our CEO, that being George Mitchell from Toronto, Canada, from our Rameses Temple and our 340,000 members. I wanted to do that officially.
The other thing is to tell you that Las Vegas, let's talk for a second about Las Vegas, and I said a little bit earlier, how can you not have a successful tournament? Number one, you've got a great destination. Number two, you have one of the strongest fields there is in the fall tournament. And these are two examples of people that play in this tournament.
So we've got the quality athletes, we've got a great destination, and nobody but nobody has got a better cause than Shriners Hospital for Children.
We treat over 930,000 people since our inception in hospitals in 1922. So we've done a lot of treatment. In the Nevada area, and I said this earlier, and I know being from Nevada you need to know -- well, Nevada doesn't have a hospital. Well, to be honest we've only got 22, so there are a lot of people that doesn't have a hospital, okay.
But if you want to know the other truth, our budget is $749 million. I'm not sure we can afford 22 hospitals. A budget of $749 million is $2 million a day to operate them. $2 million a day, and we don't have any cash registers, so you can understand the financial burden we have raising the money.
You do not have a hospital here, but you do have clinics here. We examine the kids here. You do have Los Angeles which is your closest hospital. And I just want to give you some statistics about Southern Nevada right quick. We have 543 children currently being treated at Shriners Hospital from Southern Nevada. We have, in Southern Nevada there are more than 4,000 children on our patient roles for Shriners Hospitals For Children.
The Shriners Hospital Outreach Clinic which we have in Nevada is held at the Health Care Partners of Nevada at Russell Road and Galleria in Las Vegas, and the next clinic, by the way, is scheduled for November 6. That's where we bring doctors from our Los Angeles hospital and the parents bring their kids there to be examined to see if they've got something we can treat and be admitted to our hospital in Los Angeles. So you've got that going on.
Then currently we have clinics that start at 7:00 am and go to 4:00 p.m. So they see approximately 100 to 150 kids at this clinic, so we are connected to Southern Nevada. Shriners Hospitals are connected. And we have our Shriner center here, very supportive of the tournament and very active.
You know they have a circus and they have a lot of fundraisers and they pay for the kids' transportation to and from Los Angeles, which is Charley's Pro-Am tournament. One of his charities this year is to help support the transportation of the kids back and forth so they don't have to pay for that.
So it's a really big effort. And I cannot tell you sitting up here how much better communicated and better integrated we are with the charity groups in the Las Vegas area this year versus last year. We have a great group in Kevin, our publicists up here. They do a super job for us. And we have a super advisory board, just absolutely super advisory board.
We have several members here, we have Terry here, Kevin here, and Chuck of course is on it, he's here. And we have Debbie Franklin, and Debbie's a principal in the school system for 30 years. And you know Las Vegas has one of the largest school systems in the country. Why not tap into that? So Debbie is on our advisory board and represents the education part.
And Barry Thigpen, you have military, a heck of a military presence here. The history of the Thunderbirds. Barry brings a lot to the table from that organization to help us connect to the military. So we have a lot of good connections there, and the advisory board does a super job. So just keep that in mind.
So we have the local interests, you have a great facility here at TPC Summerlin. Nobody's got one any better. It's like Charley said earlier, they'd much rather make birdies than bogies, so there you are. This course gives them a chance to make some birdies. It makes them feel good about themselves. Because as you and I know they need all the help they can get there.
I've asked several golfers and Bobby Jones this -- I don't know much about golf because I don't play it very well -- but he said the greatest distance in golf is five inches between your ears, and that might be true too.
But, again, thank you, thank you, thank you from the bottom of my heart and from Shriners Hospitals for your support of this tournament. We are the title, and we are the host, and we're proud of it. We have in our last board meeting last year, signed a contract to go to the next level to the FedEx Tour when it becomes available.
So Shriners Hospital is committed, committed for this tournament, committed to make sure it succeeds from our end, and make sure it raises money for us in order for us to treat more kids.
Speaking of more kids and treating, we're very fortunate today to have one of our patients here to be honest with you. She's been present for both years that we've been involved out here. And she actually plays golf and plays it good.
At this time I'd like to introduce to you one of our Shriner patients, a great success story, mainly because she had a guy that was in charge of PR when she was introduced in our convention as a great speaker and super person, that was me, because she was my patient success story in Baltimore in 2005. So it's a pleasure to welcome Katie Walker from Bakerville, California.
Thank you for all the help the TOUR gives us in this tournament.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, and on behalf of the TOUR and its players thank you very much for your partnership in the tournament and the Las Vegas community.
There are many exciting things going on this year at the event. Here to speak to that is a man who I recently read was profiled in Las Vegas weekly as quite the voracious reader. The man who makes it all come together, Adam Sperling.
ADAM SPERLING: Thank you. I think when we all sat here last year we all had a pretty good idea of where the event was, different ideas on what we needed to do to take it to where it belongs for the TOUR and for Las Vegas and for the Shriners.
But I can sit here a year later and say that I'm pleased that our staff, and our wonderful team in our office and new community partners have done everything they can over the last 12 months to achieve what we set out to.
We had three goals coming into this year's event. One was to create a true community event that engages every aspect of the community, charities, school system, our local business partners. One was to educate southern Nevada and the city of Las Vegas about the amazing work that Shriners Hospitals for Children do both locally and abroad. And also to get back to the what the core product is and has been for so many years, and that is world class championship caliber golf.
So I think as we sit here today we're on the cusp of achieving and realizing those goals and will continue to work in the years to come to build upon that and make this event better and better every year for all who are involved.
With that our staff has worked tirelessly over the course of the 12 months. We had a change in our sales department in April. Fortunate enough to bring two new members to the team in John Slattery and Erica Lee who have been working nonstop since they hit the ground here and have really been an inspiration to all of us to keep pushing and new ideas and fresh thoughts. I think you'll see that when you come out to the event this year.
We've got a busy week enhanced by some of our ticket programs that we launched early this year. We have over 25,000 vouchers in the community right now, many in the hands of charities and a lot in the hands of various schools and programs within the schools.
Last week I think we had our first school return to us to ask for more vouchers. The school program you can sell vouchers and retain 100% of the proceeds back to your school, your club or your team. I know one group that sold 250 vouchers. So it's a great fundraiser and great to be in the community with those types of opportunities.
Also we developed a local sales team, member organization made up of 30-plus local men and women, called the Crimson Links of Las Vegas. They've seen success in raising close to six figures to this point. That is all new revenue.
It is important not only because of the revenue that that can bring in, but that's 30 to 40 new ambassadors that are out there locally letting the community know what we're doing to try to raise funds for Las Vegas organizations to try to bring business to Las Vegas, to try to work together to elevate this event.
I want to run through and recognize some people who are here representing them. New this year we've got our first ever walk-a-thon to benefit the Goodie Two Shoes Foundation. Thank Nikki Berti for being here on their behalf. Every time we talk we'll figure out something new that's joining the party. I think there is a helicopter coming now. I don't know if that's a surprise or not.
But we have close to 500 registered walkers. It's a wonderful cause and a great way to kick off the event, and a great way to come out and experience the hill. Be out here early on. It will feed into our youth clinic which is once again hosted by Justin and Butch Harmon and sponsored by Fiji Sunday. It's usually not the busiest day, but it will be busy this year before we officially kick off.
On Monday due, to the efforts of United Health Care, the team's dental program will be returning and growing. We're incorporating some of the charities that we're working with into the programming for that day. So we'll have dental care for close to 30 children out here all day at the hill.
October is burn awareness month, with burns being one of the disciplines that the Shriners focus on. Another charity that we've connected with locally is the Southern Nevada Firefighters Burn Foundation. They'll be out here programming for this these children. A lot of the kids that don't have shoes and are the beneficiaries of the Goodie Two Shoes Foundation, also aren't able to go see dentists regularly and also don't change the batteries in smoke detectors.
So you realize how many groups it takes to come together to put on this event, and how many it takes to take care of the kids and the people in the community that really are so deserving of their care.
Charley's Pro-Am on Monday, we'll continue that with five very worthy charities, and we're very thankful for Charley to lend his support and efforts this year. I think it's a great addition to the event. It changes the landscape of that Monday for us, and now Monday's quite an exciting day out here as well.
On Tuesday, once again, we'll be hosting the women's day sponsored by Beringer. And we have Contessa Brewer from MSNBC joining Emily Gillette and Nicky Stevens locally for a wonderful day of programming, as well as a skills clinic to kick that off.
Tuesday evening we have our pairings party this year for the amateurs that will be held at Hayes as part of the title sponsorship for the Pro-Am with MGM Resorts International this year.
As we get to Wednesday, and we begin the Pro-Am, we also have a chamber of commerce executive networking event. We've partnered with the local chamber for a unique opportunity. President and CEO Matt Crawson who has some history working on the board of the Champions Tour event in Long Island before he came out this way, will host a panel and be joined by several PGA professionals as well as former Governor Miller who happens to be the returning champion in the Pro-Am. So we'll make sure we get him out of there quickly so he can go defend.
Also, exciting news that I believe was announced today, as Charley mentioned, is our Rebel Ranch this year. Like to thank Coach Knight for being here as well as everyone else connected with the UNLV athletic department. It's a wonderful year to begin this relationship. We'd love to see it grow in the years to come.
But there is a real strong sense of community within the UNLV campus. Obviously the golfers that came out of UNLV and live in Las Vegas, their efforts both in the late '90s, and lately on the TOUR speak for themselves.
We're happy to have, boy, I don't know, Coach, almost all your guys in if the event. I think close to 15 people with ties to Vegas and UNLV in our field.
So we're going to program the tent from Wednesday through Sunday with a lot of unique activities, golf-themed, coaches, a lot of stuff you see here will be in the tent. A lot of stuff you see down at UNLV and Thomas and Mack will be out here.
It's a great partnership, it's a great way to program the week and have another venue to enjoy. If you don't get your fill of Planet Hollywood, and The Palm, and all the televisions up on the hill, stop by the Rebel Ranch. There will be some wonderful activation elements.
Then Charley and Martin tee it up on Thursday, and the rest takes care of itself for the most part. Once again we have a Monday after tough day challenge. I'm sorry -- well, I'm happy and sorry to communicate that that's actually sold out this year. So great growth with that opportunity to play the same pin positions and same course that the pros play on Sunday.
But it's nine days of programming. It's what we ask for, and we'll just keep on pushing to make sure that we deliver a product worthy of supporting out there to the community.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Adam.
We thank you all for coming out. And look forward to hosting you a month from now right here at TPC Summerlin for the 2010 Justin Timberlake's Shriners Hospital For Children Open. Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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