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UL INTERNATIONAL CROWN

July 20, 2016

Chicago, Illinois

KRAIG KANN: Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the 2016 UL International Crown here at Merit Club. It's great to have you all in this room for what we believe is a very exciting press conference today and some exciting news we're going to share regarding not this week or this year but 2018 specifically, and we do have some exciting news coming up and a full panel to discuss that.

We debuted this event in 2014 at Caves Valley. Now we have UL as a partner helping to elevate this entire event to a whole 'nother level, and we're looking forward to an exciting week of competition that begins here tomorrow.

We do have some big news to announce. As I mentioned, a full panel to do that. The two gentlemen that are to my far left or to your right, I'll introduce in just a few moments. They are special guests. But first let me introduce the others on this panel. To my immediate left is the CEO of UL, Mr. Keith Williams, the Commissioner of the LPGA Mike Whan, and I believe if you've followed this competition you certainly know the lady in the middle. She is a superstar player on the LPGA, a major champion, and now a two-time member of team Korea, So Yeon Ryu is here.

Mike, I want to start with you. Some comments on this week and what you've seen over the first couple of years of this event and now the second staging and then you can segue right into this big news.

MIKE WHAN: Well, first I just want to say to Merit Club, thank you. I walked in here yesterday afternoon for the first time. I've played here when -- I used to live in Libertyville a while back and I played here probably 20 years ago. I didn't remember how big this venue feels. When you pull in, it just has a bigness to it. The golf course, the word I keep hearing from all the players is pure, tee to green it's just pure. It's going to create for a lot of great opportunities, and there's no doubt that Merit Club is going to help us elevate the UL International Crown.

I want to say thank you to Drew Blass, who's really been the person who's made this thing happen from top to bottom and a great example of somebody who I get to sit at the podium while he does all the work and makes us look good. That's exactly how it work, Drew, so thank you very much.

It's kind of hard to believe in my mind that this is the second playing of the UL International Crown. Usually when you talk about an event in its second year, it doesn't feel like this, and this thing is taking off and elevating at a pace that's even better. When we all sat down and envisioned this, we had big visions, we had big dreams, but if I was being honest, the pace of that pickup was slower, and thanks to UL, they've taken this thing to another level, and it's great when you meet a partner who already thinks more global than you do, who already recognizes how much bigger this can be on a global stage, and who said to me in the very first breakfast we ever had, you're willing to take this thing overseas, right? And I realized we had the right partner right from the see beginning.

The last time that Keith and So Yeon and I sat on the same stage we were in Seoul Korea a couple years ago announcing to the Korean media that in 2018 we'd be back. We're sitting on the same stage again to fill in some of the blanks and talk about the specifics of where we're going to be in 2018, and if it's okay with you, Keith, I'll let you do the honors of where we're going to be UL International Crown 2018.

KEITH WILLIAMS: Thank you very much. It's a real honor and pleasure for me to announce that the 2018 UL International will be at the Jack Nicklaus Golf Course in Songdo City, Korea. You may remember that golf club that hosted the Presidents Cup last year. It's very close to Incheon Airport, reasonably close to Seoul, and if you've been lucky enough to play the golf course as I have, you'll know what a fabulous venue it's going to be for the UL International Crown for match play, and for the great stars that show up to play this competition.

KRAIG KANN: Some exciting news for sure, and that brings me to the ability to announce the two gentlemen at the end of the table, the General Manager of Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, Joon-Hee Lee. Thank you very much for being here, and the Executive Vice President of Gale International, Tom Murcott is here, as well. We'll get some comments from you two gentlemen in just a moment, but Keith, let me follow this up, since you got to make the announcement, of why it's important for UL to take this thing not just internationally, truly taking the UL International Crown international, if you will, but why is it good for your business, as well.

KEITH WILLIAMS: Well, UL, we're a 122-year-old company, and I think if you ask anybody in America who is UL they can tell you immediately. Having said that, our business is now very, very global. More than half of our employees live outside the U.S. more than half of our business is outside the U.S., and in particular in Asia, some of our biggest and most important clients are in Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan. So it's very important for us to build awareness of the UL brand.

You may remember I think Mike and So Yeon certainly will, at the press conference two years ago in Seoul when we announced Korea as a venue, and the very first question from a reporter was, excuse me, but would you please tell me who is UL? I said, exactly, that's why we're here, it's UL and this is what we do. So, for us, this is fantastic and being overseas for our business, for our clients and for our employees, it's perfect.

KRAIG KANN: Mike, let me get a reaction on this choice, this club, and where this event is going in your mind.

MIKE WHAN: Well, I'm going to warn you guys at the end of the table I'm a hugger. So at the end of this, we're doing a group hug. I'm pretty excited. If you watched the Presidents Cup in 2015, you know this is a venue that can handle big. It felt big in every way, but imagine when Team Korea tees it up with four players what this is going to feel like in Seoul. We talk a lot about hometown advantage. There's definitely going to be hometown -- I don't know if it's advantage or disadvantage, you'll have to help us with that, but it's going to be big. They already know how to handle big, so a lot of times when we talk about operational challenges it's great to work with somebody who's already been through it from a business perspective and for what it means for this event. Literally as Keith was talking about his business and how much it's overseas and how many of his members are all over the world and what it means to take their brand, I literally felt like just saying ditto because that's really the LPGA story, as well.

It's great to have a partner that not only recognizes global but embraces it, has part of their business there. It just fits for us on so many fronts.

I think the UL International Crown is already lifted significantly in its second playing. I'm pretty sure in 2018 we're going to hit the hyper-speed button and it's really going to go crazy. I'm looking forward to it.

KRAIG KANN: So Yeon, not specific to the choice in venue for 2018, but when you, a Korean star player in the women's game, found out that the UL International Crown was going to go to your home country, what was your reaction to that?

SO YEON RYU: Well, it's going to be so exciting. As soon as I heard we're going to have a chance to play 2014 UL International Crown, I was so excited to represent my country. Right now I have a really great chance to play and represent my country in front of my Korean fans in Korea, so I'd love to thank the UL, Mr. Williams and LPGA to give us a really nice chance.

KRAIG KANN: How big is this going to be in your country?

SO YEON RYU: Yeah, well, maybe once, women's golf could be top-three sports in Korea, so Korea's expectation level is really, really high. I know that, but I think it's going to be a lot of pressure for us, but at the same time it's going to be really exciting.

Then I hope we can make a really great one this year then make more exciting to Korean fans in 2018.

KRAIG KANN: We know this venue hosted the Presidents Cup as has already been mentioned. That's for the men's game. What it will be like for the women's game? How many people will come to see?

SO YEON RYU: Actually I played this beautiful golf course like four years ago. This golf course is long, green is really challenging so this is perfectly suited for this type of match so it's going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, to be honest, we cannot hit as long as men, so it cannot be really like wow, these guys like hit 400 yards. It's not going to be like that. But you know, like our passion is not less than men. Our passion about the golf is -- for sure it's big enough as the men, so it's going to be really exciting.

For sure it's going to be more exciting than Presidents Cup and we do have really great fashion, so it's going to be fun to watch. Plus women's golf is more similar to amateur golfers, so it could be great venue for amateurs to follow up our tournament. They may have a great chance to have to learn to manage the golf course, especially a tough golf course, and how to have beautiful swing and rhythm.

KRAIG KANN: Joon-Hee, you are the manager of the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea. First off, congratulations. I know this is a great day for you as well to announce news like this. Let's get your reaction and why this was important to you all to have this, not to UL but to you all.

JOON-HEE LEE: First of all, it's an honor to me to be hosting the UL International Crown at my club. As you know, the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea has hosted three times the KLPGA and has proven the value among the Korean golfers.

Also we have a cooperation with the PGA TOUR and the Champions Tour operations team, so our staff, they're looking forward to making 2018 UL International Crown a wonderful setup.

Also, the amateur championship sponsored by Augusta National and R&A will be held at Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea this October. UL International has selected our club, and it means they have now recognized the golf course for the ability to host the most valuable international tournaments.

To the members of Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea, they recognize this event is very important, and they will be very supportive for UL International Crown event, and welcome to all the teams. Thanks.

KRAIG KANN: Thank you. We'll take some questions. I want to introduce Tom Murcott, the executive vice president of Gale International. You've got a big smile on your face, and you've had one for a couple of days. I want to get your thoughts on this and the importance of it.

TOM MURCOTT: Well, you know, we were invited in 2001 to come take a look at a development project in Korea, a very large in scale, building a new city, and the Incheon metropolitan city government asked us to come and undertake this with them. We understood that golf could play a crucial role in bringing awareness and making our development very attractive to multinational corporations, investors and occupiers. So our first call from our chairman, Stan Gale, was to his good friend Jack Nicklaus, and he asked Jack to come and develop a world-class facility that would be worthy of hosting great events like the UL International Crown as well as Presidents Cup and others.

What was most rewarding during the Presidents Cup was the fact that the players, the fans, the TOUR leadership all really felt that the entire experience clicked and that it was perhaps the best, most integrated, efficient and memorable experience that they had had at an event like that.

You know, looking back into the statistics, in 2001 when we first came over, there was two of the top 50 LPGA golfers were Korean. I checked the stats last week, and it's 21 of the top 50 golfers are Korean.

Put on top of that, the Chinese and Taipei and the other teams from Asia who are going to be competing in that event we hope in 2018, and we think the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club Korea is going to put on a great venue for the event, and we're really looking forward to hosting in 2018.

KRAIG KANN: Tom, Gale International is a global real estate development and investment company. Do you need more real estate to bring in all the fans that are going to come out and watch this thing? I just have this feeling we're going to see something that we haven't yet seen, certainly with this event, but maybe on the LPGA.

TOM MURCOTT: You know, I think that's very true with the popularity of the LPGA in Korea, and with what we saw at the Presidents Cup where we had huge crowds out there every day, even though a couple of those days the weather wasn't so great, this is going to be at a new scale.

We do have plenty of real estate. We have plenty of hotel rooms. We're really open for business, and we're looking forward to hosting this in '18.

Q. Mike, two things: Given the time difference, will this air live on television, and the second thing, as Kraig just mentioned, those of us who have seen women's golf in Korea are astonished by the crowds. How many people can you fit onto a golf course to watch an event like this given the number of matches that you've got going on at any one time?
MIKE WHAN: This is my seventh year as commissioner. I can only remember one time when we stopped letting people in. I think that was the first time we went to Taiwan when Yani was No. 1 in the World Rankings, and they had to walk up like a mile hill to get into the event, but it just got to the point where we couldn't control the crowds. It would be a great problem to have. I hope that's the problem when we get there.

Based on what we saw at the Presidents Cup, they can certainly handle big. I think we're going to have big. I think what's going to be interesting about that location, this is something that I think a lot of American media don't grasp, but being in Seoul will not only be a great Seoul event, but I think you're going to find a lot of people coming from other Asian countries. It's easy to get to Seoul. The airport is a piece of cake. The town is close to the airport, and as Tom was saying there's a lot of locations. I think you're going to find this to be a huge hometown crowd for Seoul but I think you're going to find some other countries are pretty well represented that is a little more difficult to do in the States.

Regarding your TV question, I don't think we've gone there yet. I'd be shocked if it's not live on TV because we're not going to be competing with a lot at the same time frame, so my guess is we'll not only probably air it live but we'll have some tape delayed in some window hours, but we're just announcing all the basics here today, so we've got a couple years to figure out TV.

Q. Mike was joking around about how much you travel, Mr. Williams, for your job. I was just wondering if you could give us a glimpse into what a typical travel schedule is like for you just so we can understand what your world is like so globally.
KEITH WILLIAMS: I travel probably 200-plus days a year, and a lot of my colleagues come to me, have asked me about travel advice because I seem to know a lot about the air routes. But I also lived 11 years in Asia. I lived four years in Tokyo, three years in Beijing, a couple years in Hong Kong, a couple years in Singapore, so I got used to the travel. I got used to the flights.

It's kind of normal life these days. We're in a very global business, and as long as you manage things well, you can make it all work.

Q. I loved your story about the UL. Have you noticed already the impact, even though this event hasn't even started yet, of name recognition because of the UL International Crown for your company?
KEITH WILLIAMS: Yeah, the UL International Crown has already made a big impact for us in a variety of ways in terms of people talking about it as employees, people talking about it as clients, fans getting excited about the event. The question was asked how big is this going to be in Korea. Well, I think it's going to be huge, and as Mike said, because it's right near Incheon Airport, it's so easy for fans to fly in from Tokyo or Beijing or Shanghai or Taipei. You're talking two- or three-hour flights into one of the best airports in the world and lots of hotel space, including some beautiful hotels right in Songdo City, which is five minutes from the hotel to the golf course. I think that'll be huge.

Q. So Yeon, you spoke at the first International Crown and at this event about the pressure for Korea to win because you were the No. 1 seed in both instances, and there was a lot of expectation back home. How big is that going to be when it's actually in your backyard?
SO YEON RYU: You mean how it's going to be --

Q. The expectations and the pressure to win this thing.
SO YEON RYU: Well, you know, it's going to be really tough to play in front of the fans who think about, okay, Korea definitely going to win this tournament, because you know, even if you're going to finish second, for them it feels like we are like losers. So that was the toughest thing to handle from all the Korean fans.

But that means they just love to play, love to see us play in front of them, and that means how much they love to see women's golf.

I think it's going to be really, really tough, but we are professionals, so that's the thing. That's one of the things we are to deal with. So for sure all Korean players can handle that well.

MIKE WHAN: You know, Steve, I said this in an interview yesterday, but I think making the 2018 UL International Crown team might be the toughest team to make in sports over the next two years.

SO YEON RYU: Definitely that's going to be my next goal. (Laughter.)

Q. After conceiving this event, how important did it become to you to take it to Asia and maybe specifically Korea, and what's the future plans for this going around the world?
MIKE WHAN: Yeah, when we conceived of the event, we actually looked at what the Presidents Cup did. I think the first three times they played it in the States and kind of built the groundswell of the media of one of the largest golfing markets, but we realized that the UL International Crown, middle word tells you that we've got to play it international, and that's really for us a lot easier than I think for some other sports and some other tours. Us playing an event in Asia, especially in the early part of the fall, where we kind of fall into our natural schedule, and the biggest question when you start talking about years out is picking markets where you don't think that team would have a difficult time qualifying, right? What we've already seen in just playing it twice is that there's going to be changeover in teams. You go from a period where two years ago we said, gee, I don't know if Canada will be in this to -- well, Canada will probably be in this next time, because you get great players that rush up the Rolex Rankings and it can change things.

So playing it international is going to be an important part of the UL International Crown. We want people to embrace this globally, not just in Chicago, not just in Korea, and we think that'll happen. But we're also going to have to be smart about picking markets to make sure our home market is represented on that team. Korea is a pretty safe one for obvious reasons but it's something we've thought about as we think about the out years.

We haven't committed yet to where in '20 yet. We don't know if it's going to be a rotation, kind of America-elsewhere, America-elsewhere. We haven't committed to '20 yet, just because A, we haven't had to and we have to sit down and figure out what the best next step will be.

KRAIG KANN: So Yeon, you've been out there not just with Team Korea, but you play on this Tour, you travel the world. Can you give everybody a sense here as to what the chatter or the conversations are about this event from your friends that might be playing for other countries or hope to be able to play in this event and wish they could be here? What is it like out there?

SO YEON RYU: The first talk about the Korean team. For Korea it was huge to make an Olympic team, so we've been competing with each other really hard the last few months, and as soon as I walked to the locker room on Monday, then when I saw all the golf bags together exactly the same, all Korean flags on it, that was awesome. Right now we are not competing with each other, we are playing as a team, so we start this year, how can we play better, how can we enjoy this game, so this is awesome.

If somebody was at the gala dinner, everybody knows who is Jenny Money. Yesterday, I talked with Jenny Money, to Shanshan, and she said I'm glad I'm not going to play with you on Thursday. I said, what do you mean? I'd love to play with you. Then she said we are good friends, I always love to talk with you when I'm playing, but if we play against each other, we cannot having fun, so I don't want to play with you. So this is the thing. Everybody is friends but we have to compete with each other very hardly. We have to -- at some point we have to be really quiet to each other. We're not really sharing a lot of friendship.

So this is really the coolest thing about International Crown. If somebody couldn't qualify this year like Spain and Sweden, they have extra motivation to work harder to make 2018 International Crown, UL International Crown.

This is definitely the one help, the LPGA players work harder and definitely gives a lot of motivation to LPGA players.

KRAIG KANN: We're all looking forward to 2018. Tom Murcott, thank you very much for being here, Joon-Hee Lee, thank you very much for being here, So Yeon, thank you for your time today, Mike Whan, and Mr. Keith Williams from UL. Thank you very much, everybody.

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