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SANDERSON FARMS CHAMPIONSHIP

October 25, 2016

Jackson, Mississippi

THE MODERATOR: My name is Doug Milne. I'm with the PGA TOUR Communications Department, and I would like to introduce some folks here today with some exciting announcements starting with Peter Marks, President of the Century Club Charities. He's joined by Joe Sanderson, CEO, Chairman of the Board, Sanderson Farms; Margo Coleman, Executive Director of Mississippi Golf Association; and of course, Steve Jent, the executive director of the Sanderson Farms Championship. And with that I'd love to turn it over to Peter for a few quick opening remarks and we'll just kind of take it one by one.

PETER MARKS: Thank you. I hope everybody is doing well today. We're excited, have a beautiful day. Century Clubs is the host organization for the Sanderson Farms Championship. The mission of our 250 members is to raise money for Mississippi charities. We also are very excited because we also promote the game of golf, obviously with the PGA TOUR being here. So I am more than thrilled to announce that in 2017 the winner of the Mississippi State Amateur Championship will get a spot in the field of the Sanderson Farms Championship.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you. And Mr. Sanderson, we'd love to turn it over to you for a comment.

JOE SANDERSON: Well, this is an exciting day for us. We are very pleased to support amateur golf in the state of Mississippi, and our hope is that by opening up a spot in the championship, that we'll make amateur golf in our state even stronger. And we hope that our 10-year commitment for this tournament going forward will encourage more businesses and more institutions to support the tournament and thereby support the hospital.

THE MODERATOR: Thank you, sir. Ms. Coleman.

MARGO COLEMAN: Thank you very much. The Mississippi Golf Association Board, our directors and members are very excited about this opportunity. We've got some very talented amateur golfers, and the tournament has supported our junior golf foundation for a number of years, and it's a great opportunity. It's going to definitely elevate the talent of our amateurs and give something more for them for our champions, and we're looking forward to bringing more to the tournament by having our amateurs involved. It's fantastic and one of the few opportunities for state amateur champions in the country.

THE MODERATOR: Okay. And with that said, Steve, we'd love a comment from you as well.

STEVE JENT: Yeah. Good afternoon, everyone. We're really excited about this. Our partnership with MJGA and MGA has been really strong with the junior program. If you look at our champions in the last 10 years, a lot of them have been first-time winners to the PGA TOUR, last year Peter Malnati, the year before Nick Taylor. We can go back to Chris Kirk, and Luke Donald won his first championship here in 2002. So we've got a history of young winners, and I would tell you a lot of the questions that I get as the executive director are what do you think about some of the young golfers and especially some of the most recent Mississippi juniors in the area. And I know there's some phenomenal talent out there. And so we thought this is a really good tie-in to say, hey, let's boost the status of the state AM by giving that winner a spot and exemption into our field. And I'm just thrilled that, you know, Joe, his connection to the state AM goes back a long way. He's been very tied into amateur golf. I think it's a neat tie-in for the tournament. It'll create a lot of buzz throughout the year, and it's just great. So we want to thank Joe and everyone at Sanderson Farms and all the Century Club guys for supporting it, and ^ again, it's been a great partnership with MGA, and we're looking at it being really strong here going forward.

THE MODERATOR: Okay. Well, thank you all. At this time we'd like to open it up for a couple of questions if anybody would like to ask a question.

Q. Steve, will this be a sponsor's exemption, one of your sponsor's exemptions you will use?
STEVE JENT: Yes, it will be.

Q. And for Margo, how many other state amateurs around the country get some sort of prize like this, of this stature?
MARGO COLEMAN: I don't know of any that do. And I have a friend that works for the Tennessee Golf Association, and they don't have that for their state amateur. I don't think the Arkansas Golf Association does. So this will definitely be one of a kind.

Q. Given the spot on the schedule, how important is it for this tournament to kind of reach out and try to get some of the younger golfers involved for both the young and up-and-coming players on TOUR and for the generation behind them to get interest in the game in this area?
MARGO COLEMAN: I think it's very important. I mean I'd like to kind of answer that by the junior pro am, this is our eleventh year having the junior pro am, and we have kids that write in for sponsor exemptions and play all year to earn points to be able to participate tomorrow with a PGA TOUR member. And Jonathan Randolph was one of our first junior pro am participants. He's been a professional that's played with our kids. Now he's got his TOUR card. We've got some outstanding young men who are playing collegiate golf, Braden Thornberry, Davis Riley. We've got a number of young men who are going to be playing college golf in the next couple of years, and I think this is really big for them to get some experience and to build their collegiate career. We've got a number of junior golfers that could win our State Am as well as what we call Mid Am, the 25 to 40. Clay Homan is our current champion. He won at Reunion this year, and he would be a fantastic addition to the field if he were to win in '17.

Q. Margo, where is the amateur?
MARGO COLEMAN: It's at Canebrake Country Club June 1 through 4.

STEVE JENT: And if I could just talk to the spot on the schedule, with us being part of the new season-opening tour, we have almost 50 of the guys and the players that just got their PGA TOUR card coming off the Web.com Tour. So if you look at it -- and I talked to about 24 rookies the other day. So over a third of our field are PGA TOUR players who are getting their status off the Web.com. And 24 of those guys, so a fifth of our field are brand-new rookies coming to the PGA TOUR. So we've got a history of kind of being a launch pad for players in their PGA TOUR career. And I don't see that changing with our status as one of the season-opening events.

Q. I wanted to ask you, Steve, about the condition of the course, if we could just talk a little bit about that, compared to last year and what the players might anticipate this year.
STEVE JENT: Absolutely. It's phenomenal. I've had so many members and players come up to me already. It may be the best shape it's ever been in. The greens are amazing. The players have told me they're probably the best Bermuda greens on the PGA TOUR, and I think that has a lot to do with the weather but Stanley Reedy and his maintenance staff have done a phenomenal job with this golf course. We are fortunate to have kind of a rainy growing season. We had thunderstorms in July and August before we got this recent drought, versus last year we had 100 days of drought. So the course is in great shape. You might want to ask Joe how the rough is. He'll find out tomorrow in the pro am. Right? But I can tell you that every player that's walked off 9 or 18 in these practice rounds the last two days has just said that this is the most amazing they've ever seen this, and the weather forecast looks awesome. I think there's a 20 percent chance of rain on Thursday, which means an 80 percent chance of awesome. So I don't know, do you want to, Joe?

JOE SANDERSON: Well, Steve and I rode the course last Friday afternoon, and I concur with Steve. The course is in magnificent condition. I commend the staff. The rough was allowed to grow up to three-and-a-half to four inches, had great rain in June and July that allowed the course not only to grow but also to thicken. And it was cut down to two-and-a-half to two-and-three-quarter inches earlier this week and last week. The rough will play a part in the scoring this week, because not so much about the height, but about the thickness.

The fairways are perfect. They're firm and they're fast. You all remember last year they were wet. They are not wet this year. And the greens are perfect. They're running 12-and-a-half to 13. I think they'll probably keep them at 12-and-a-half until the weekend and allow them to Quicken to closer to 13 for the weekend.

This is the membership and the staff at the Country Club of Jackson have done a magnificent job preparing this course for PGA TOUR play, and I commend them for it. I couldn't be more pleased.

Q. This is kind of an esoteric point, but the USGA, if you win the ^ U. S. Am or the British Amateur, you get an invite to the Masters and the U. S. Open, but you have to remain an amateur. If you happen to turn pro, you give up that spot. I know it's hypothetical, but what if your state amateur champ happens to want to turn pro and maybe make a check in your field, will he be able to do that or will he have to relinquish the spot? You probably may not even have addressed that.
STEVE JENT: No. We have other sponsor exemptions that we give to PGA TOUR professionals, so if the state amateur were to happen to turn professional between the time he would -- we would still honor it. The spot is because he won the State Am. Turning professional means that he's a professional in a professional field. We wouldn't renege on that. I think it would be pretty cool. And you're probably talking about maybe like a college senior that wins and turns pro right after his senior year or something like that.

Q. Could be a big boost to his career.
MARGO COLEMAN: Absolutely. And obviously the State Am, he's going to win the State Am in the late spring, early summer and then we play in late October. So he would still be part of the field.

THE MODERATOR: All right. Anybody else? Okay. Well, thank you all very much. This is exciting news and we appreciate your time.

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