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CANADIAN PACIFIC WOMEN'S OPENAugust 26, 2017Laurence ApplebaumOttawa, Ontario, Canada THE MODERATOR: Thank you for joining us here in the press room for our media availability with Golf Canada CEO Laurence Applebaum. Was named in May and started the position officially in July, July 10th, just leading into our men's RBC Canadian Open. Some travels across the country since starting that and I believe meeting with nine of our ten provinces, a number of stakeholders and obviously here today to take some questions, deliver some remarks and give an update on the tournament and answer any questions you might have. So I'll turn it over to Laurence for some comments and then get right into questions. LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: Good morning, everybody. Nice to see everyone Saturday morning. We're going to, I'm sure be very quick because Brooke has started off strong and starting where she did from yesterday and then already sort of making it halfway through the field is pretty exciting. Just a few things that I wanted to share with everyone here and then happy to, as Dan said, talk through any questions. First of all, I want to thank the City of Ottawa and Mayor Jim Watson who was out here on Thursday, and I know he's coming back here tomorrow. The City of Ottawa and Golf Canada have had a long-term agreement together in bringing some of our national championships and even an international event that's coming here in two weeks with the World Junior Girls' competition at The Marshes. They've been just an outstanding partner of ours, and we're on track for having the highest attendance since we started recording attendance for the Women's Canadian Open and looking to smash all ticket sales and all commercial metrics for the event. So we're absolutely thrilled. An event like this can bring close to $10 million in economic impact to the city, and we're looking forward, after the event, to do a full review, along with our partners. We're looking to have just an outstanding record, economic impact number for the City of Ottawa and the area. I also wanted to talk a little bit about the Ottawa Hunt Club. Many of you have been here for the duration of the week and can be attested to that the tournament has stood up, the course has stood up, to the greatest players in the world. Our co-chairs, Lori White and Ron Milligan have done a most incredible job in shepherding this event here as our hosts. Along with general manager Boris Uvakov and the President Brian Barksdale who have been commercial partners, they've been golf partners, they've been friends. We have had just an incredible experience here. We've had over 1200 volunteers join us in Ottawa here. 400 of them come from the club locally. That's a very, very impressive number. We, for the first time since I've been around and since I've seen in professional local sport, we had to close off the volunteers. We had more than we could use appropriately, and we had such an overwhelming response from the community. Obviously, from a golf course perspective, the scores have been good. Nobody has yet been able to torch the course. The players have all been so complementary. Obviously the local region of the Northeast has had a lot of rain this year. The course looked incredible, it looked lush. The players had nothing but incredible comments. Maybe the only down side was the nuances of the green. They were pretty quick, but a lot of the players commented on some of the subtleness of the greens that made it challenging. From a player's perspective and the LPGA, we had Commissioner Mike Whan here for almost three days, and Mike Whan is just a dynamo of energy and one of the most impressive people in professional sport today. He's brought this Tour from strength to strength. And I overheard him talking to a couple fans, and one of the fans was talking about how hard it was, his impression of the LPGA and gave him some of his sort of personal opinions of the LPGA. And Mike turned to the gentleman and said -- because he had just arrived -- and he said, "You would be exactly correct on your impressions if we're talking about five years ago." And that gentleman proceeded to have an incredible experience in the day and actually sought Mike out later in the day and told him he was right. It is amongst the most engaging professional athletes in the world today. These young ladies are not only impressive inside the ropes, they are incredibly impressive outside the ropes. What they did with regards to Pro-Ams, with sponsor activation with their engagement has been so, so special. This field is arguably the strongest field in the LPGA this year. It's comparable to a major. It's comparable to any of the best events on Tour. Mike said it's a combination of great spot schedule-wise, it's a great time coming off the week of Solheim Cup, which had great energy, but at the same time gave everyone a chance to come back and play. So it has been incredible from an LPGA Tour perspective. It's a great staff who have really come through. Keeping on the tone of players, we had 14 players tipping it off this week with the Canadian flag. We have some wonderful stories to tell, but one of them is our National Team coach, Tristan Mullally. Tristan has been working diligently with all of our pros. He, more than anybody else on the grounds was disappointed on Thursday. Disappointed because he thought the team was primed to really have a big breakthrough. At the same time, he used it as a great learning experience with the team members. A lot of people had a wonderful next day coming back, in particular Maddy Szeryk from our National Team came back with a 1-under par score on Friday. Every player came out of it with coachable moments and actually had a bounce to what was going on with our entire program. So I think Tristan, along with our chief sport officer, Jeff Thompson, have done a wonderful job. And I think you're going to see in particular, both of our teams, our men's and our ladies team, but particularly our ladies team really breakthrough in the next year to two. The other three stories that I wanted to share that many of you are aware of is the first is Lori Kane. Lori Kane came back for a record appearance at the Canadian Open. She, herself, will have said she didn't do what she wanted to do on the golf course. She had a little bit of nagging back or hip injury that she was fighting. But Lori is a force of nature out there. She is such an ambassador for our game. She is so great with our players, she's so great with our sponsors. Lori and myself hosted a breakfast for all the Canadian players on Wednesday morning. So we had 14 of the ladies come in and Lori was able to sort of hold court and talk about all the things on course and the things off course that have made her as successful as she has. And Lori has been active, engaged, all around the event this whole week. I couldn't be prouder from Golf Canada's perspective about what Lori has brought to Golf Canada and what Lori has brought to golf in Canada. I know Lori will be around for most of the weekend, and I just want to reach out to all of her fans and say how wonderful it has been to see her in Ottawa. The second is Brittany Marchand. Brittany is on a two-tournament win streak right now. Three, if you count her Skins win last week with some of the other Canadian players. But Brittany, it's all coming together for her. Wonderful to see her win the Canadian PGA. It was wonderful to see her get her win on the Symetra Tour. Just a lovely young woman. Been a long-term graduate of our program, almost five years together with Golf Canada. Getting to see her out with big fan support, not only dealing with the pressure, but thriving in the pressure, I'm really hoping that Brittany has a wonderful weekend. Then, of course, our absolute star from yesterday was Brooke Henderson and from the week. So Brooke, obviously, those were some of the biggest crowds that have ever been seen here at the LPGA, and I would also include our PGA event. The Commissioner thought it was incredible the kind of support that Brooke was getting in the local area. How she finished yesterday, disappointing bogey on her 17th hole and then coming back with that shot on her 18th hole. Cristie Kerr came over to her and said that was major pressure, majors pressure. So I think seeing Brooke put another one of those moments into her competitive brain is so good for the future. I've been so thrilled with Brooke and getting a chance to spend time with her and her family. She's been a wonderful part of golfing in Canada. We're looking forward to continuing our relationship with Brooke, with her dad, Dave, her mom, Darlene, and her sister, Brittany on the bag. It's just been a really wonderful experience. Then just a few words about the event in particular. The CP Women's Open is so appreciative and so thankful for having a title sponsor like CP. They're a dream partner for us. Their slogan CP Has Heart has rung true this week. They're led by a dynamic CEO in Keith Creel who has been an avid golfer, an avid sportsman, and has loved this relationship with our LPGA Tour event. They're coming off a 13-stop Canada 150 train activation. They had everyone from our Canadian music stars to Justin Trudeau on that train, and they finished in Ottawa on Sunday. Their goal is to leave a tangible, charitable impact in Ottawa, and their work with CHEO here has been absolutely transformative. I want to share their message for this weekend that any donation that is made to CHEO will be matched dollar for dollar through the weekend. So their support in the event, their support for CHEO is incredibly evident in their actions. So along with coming out for the support for Brooke and the tournament and making an impact at CHEO, CP has been an incredible partner for us here at Golf Canada. I also want to talk not only about we've had this incredible volunteer support, but our entire Golf Canada staff who relocates to Ottawa for the better part of the month led by our chief championship officer in Bill Paul and his key members of staff, Kris Boomhouwer, Paige Ottaviano and Ryan Paul have just done a spectacular job in working with the team, in working with the LPGA Tour. We're closing in on an incredible weekend. We not only have started, but we'll immediately turn our steps to Saskatchewan next year. We're joined by the general manager and the CEO of Wascana Country Club. He arrived on the red eye last night after hosting the Men's Mid Am, which was an incredibly exciting four-hole playoff. To see it won by a gentleman who had won a couple Canadian Junior championships in the '80s and to come back and win a Mid-Amateur in a four-hole playoff over someone like Garrett Rank was an impressive feat. So they've had a wonderful test on that golf course in Wascana. Greg is out here to spend the week with Golf Canada and learn from Lori and Ron and the team here and to work with our commercial team in order to really make an impact for next year. We're really excited to have Greg join us and see all the things. The host hotel is an old CP mainstay. The hotel Saskatchewan. We're thrilled to be coming to Regina. We've got great support already. The volunteer sign-up list is growing by the day, and we know we're going to have a fantastic event out there. So I'm really pleased for you all to spend the time that you have had here. I will say from the beginning of the week, the Monday Pro-Am was usually seen on a Wednesday kind of attendance. The Wednesday Pro-Am was a Thursday crowd, and the Thursday crowd was a weekend crowd. So really looking forward to seeing what kind of support Brooke has on course right now and having a wonderful weekend and being super competitive for the championship. So thanks for your time. Q. I know you've been doing this cross-country tour. What's been your biggest takeaway with meeting with the stakeholders around the country when it comes to grassroots level programs and the impact of Golf Canada now and in the future? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: Yeah, so it started out in Montreal at our media day for announcing Team Canada and then over my first sort of 40 days I've visited nine of our provinces, and will be in Manitoba in the next two weeks. Then over 100 of our golf clubs I either sat down with or talked to the ownership of those clubs. What came back to me was an incredible buoyancy in the interest level of golf. An incredible appetite for the sport people love the game in a way that I knew, but I didn't know sort of the ground swell of support. I think people are coming back to golf in a really big way. In particular, I think I saw pockets of outstanding success, and I saw some pockets of people that were really dealing with significant challenges. It seems to be the same message was rolling true was that where we had really strong leadership in our provincial associations, we're working hand in hand with Golf Canada, and the club leadership tends to be a magic combination. I'll give one example right now in Golf Quebec. Golf Quebec is starting a new membership drive for 2018. They're working hand in hand to transfer and to bring all of our combined membership between Golf Quebec and Golf Canada into our gold membership. It's going to be a massive undertaking. We've changed the value proposition for what Golf Canada provides and what we can do in actually communicating it. And Golf Quebec, in particular, is having great success. You know they've had a tough year weather-wise, so the Montreal area and the surrounding have had probably lower play than they've liked, but their campaign, their new campaign they've come out with called Sorté Golfé, Get Out, Golf, has been targeting millennials, has been targeting juniors and has been targeting young women. So that's been real success. At the same time, there have been clubs that are struggling. For most of the time I see it to be that a lot of these clubs need to come forward with maybe sometimes more progressive programs, breaking some of the obstacles down. Simple things like maybe lowering the age of when juniors can be participating in programs. Shedding some of the restrictions on play and timing. I think it's a moment for golf right now where lowering of the obstacles, lowering of the barriers to entry is what we need to do. I could give you a laundry list of great club stories that are going from strength to strength. At the same time, we're trying to help those that are finding some challenges. Q. Last month at the RBC Canadian Open it was kind of funny. It was all about when is it this golf tournament moving away from the GTA? And this event hasn't been back to GTA proper since 2001 and it was in Niagara in 2004. So has there been discussion to take this tournament back to the greater Toronto area? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: Yeah, the tone is exactly the right one. Coming to Ottawa we knew we had high expectations just with all of the right elements coming together of a great host organization, a wonderful historic club that had hosted, so experienced people. Then obviously being a home game for Brooke, we were hoping it would be magical. I would say the outlook leaving here, and I speak on behalf of many of our partners, including CP, based on the support we've had with our fans, our connection with the charitable component, our experience with the Ottawa Hunt, we'd be very supportive of coming back here in the very near future. In Ottawa, in particular, and the Hunt Club. I think being back in the GTA is certainly a possibility. We are committed to Regina in 2018. On part of the Tour I was greeted by a number of incredible, lovely clubs that are very interested in hosting us. The LPGA is on a bit of a bounce, and I think people and clubs, some of the bigger clubs in particular, have already expressed interest in hosting. After this event we'll do a take down of what was good, what was bad. I know the team here has been so responsive in tournaments and I know they'll be responsive in the future. So that being said, we'd be very supportive of coming back. The GTA is certainly a possibility, as is coming into Quebec, as is going out east and going out west. So if I haven't covered off anybody -- if I haven't not covered off anybody, the great thing is that we've got a partner in CP that is national. They've certainly got some really strong marketplaces that we'd like to consider, and we'll go forward that way. Q. I have three questions if I might. I will go from easy to hard. How important to Golf Canada is the financial result of this tournament? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: Can I do one at a time? So Golf Canada has two wonderful professional golf events. We have our RBC Canadian Open and our CP Women's Open. These two events form a really good foundation for all golfing activity in this country. I think when you come out here, it is the pinnacle of golf. It's what our golfers want to be part of and want to see. It's also for our non-golfers to see what's going on in a marketplace like this. So we put incredible importance on all the non-financial components of hosting these two events. But when it comes down to financial importance, it's absolutely paramount. So our history has been all over the place, to be honest. We've had some really robust years. I think in the Tiger years on the men's side when golf was really going through a boom, it was a really substantial boost to Golf Canada financials. The last few years we've had some tough times making it sort of bring it all together. Being new on the scene, it's one of my principal goals, I would say. If I have 1A and 1B in really making some dynamic change, it would be behind the financial boosts that these two events can bring. The LPGA event that we host here provides a really nice bounce to Golf Canada. I don't want to quicken through the weekend, because I want to experience it all, but I am looking forward to seeing the end point when we see how things all netted out. But it's a dynamic partnership. In talks with Mike Whan, I think the only area that they really are -- they're the most global tour, they're the most engaged tour. I think he's looking forward to his next big TV deal. He's looking forward to 2019 and 2020 to making a real substantial impact. I think that would be dynamic for the LPGA. But for us, it's critical, Bob. Q. There was a report this morning that Milton town counsel on Monday will meet and look at a proposal from Club Link at rattle Stake point allowing them to make some changes to the golf course contingent on them getting an agreement with Golf Canada that it would be the home of the Canadian Open in five years. LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: Is this the hardest one or the medium? Q. That's the medium one, sorry. LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: So last Monday night you're well aware, most of you in the room, the town of Oakville council met and voted unanimously with the intent to designate Glen Abbey as a heritage property, and it passed unanimously. They're going forward, the town, working with Club Link and us and working on a management plan to make sure that the golf course in operation mode with Club Link and for the Canadian Open in 2018 and beyond will be unaffected or supported in the right way, I would say is what we've done. We've had long-term discussions with Club Link for a number of properties which include the property in Rattlesnake, which include other properties, and we're working with other developers and other regions as well. So what I can absolutely confirm to you is we're having good discussions with both Club Link and the town. Rattlesnake is absolutely a very interesting property for Golf Canada. But as far as commitments and five year agreements, that's a ways away. Q. Could you give us an update on, if he's referred to as the former or could you give us the tournament director who was here originally? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: Sure. So I've spoken before at the briefing last month, but I'll tell you that the matter involving our former tournament director is a confidential Golf Canada employee matter, so I won't be able to comment specifically on that. I will comment that Bill Paul and along with his team here, has taken over the event and done a wonderful, wonderful job and couldn't be prouder of it. When you have an event of this importance to Golf Canada, to have a guy come in with 20 years experience and running this event has been such a joy to work alongside and for the team to work with him. So we're going to finish off this event, and I think in record style. Our focus is going forward into the future. Q. I'm going to make your morning. Brooke Henderson is now 4-under through the day through 8 holes? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: Great. That is wonderful news indeed. Q. You mentioned earlier that you were trending to surpass all recorded attendance figures for this event. What is the highest recorded attendance figure for this event? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: So that's the fourth hardest question I'm going to get this morning, probably. So we've been hosting this event for a long time, and anyone who is running professional events will say that in the prior years, especially with regards of going through security, it was very difficult to record any true numbers, especially on weekly passes and the number of times that people are coming in. So the numbers that you may have heard previous to in our men's event and RBC Canadian Open, over 100,000 or over, those are hard to audit and hard to be sort of realistic with. I think we're trending in a realistic sense to solidly over 50,000, and maybe even over 60,000. But I can promise you that our team is watching this closely. Our CFO is here in the room right now. He's been tabulating the most sort of accurate way for us to really see what we've got, because we want to be able to communicate that to people like yourselves in the media as well as to our partners. So we're hoping for an incredible weekend, and I'd love to be able to report something north of 60,000. Q. The other question I have, you've talked about the many clubs which have indicated an interest in hosting this particular event, but your sponsorship deal only runs through next year. Have you started discussions with CP and/or anyone else about the future of this event? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: Yeah, yeah. So we've been in great dialogue with CP. The team obviously CEO Keith Creel, but led by Marty Cej and his team, and also our partner in the Wasserman Agency, we've had great dialogue already. They are very committed to events such as this that have wonderful shared experiences for the region, for the fans and for the customers. This event ticks a lot of those boxes. What's amazing to see with CP is the support with their ambassadors like Lori Kane, like Brooke Henderson, and they're also on top of that. They are a major partner of ours for our development team and our Team Canada. So CP is involved and you see them wearing the logo of CP. When you have partners that not only love to support, love the sport and love giving, their charitable initiatives are top of the list for CP. It bodes well for an extended future together. And we'll continue to have those discussions while we're here and throughout the back end of this year. Q. So you have nothing pending to announce? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: Nothing to announce at the moment. Q. Do you have a potential estimated time for an a announcement for 2019 and where this golf tournament would go? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: I'd like to be able to say by the end of this calendar year to give the next club up the runway, the team at Wascana has had. We'd love to be able to announce that by calendar year end. We're also looking at a couple of multiple properties, so we want to have time for sort of thorough investigation and looking at the opportunities, as I mentioned before, once we come back from this event we'll do our sort of high-level debrief and then really get into the future of things. So, thanks. Q. What do you mean by multiple properties? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: As I mentioned on the Tour, on my sort of listening Tour through Canada, I had a number of clubs come forward and ask the question about the possibility of hosting 2019 and beyond. So we've got a number of interested parties at the moment. Q. Are you coming to Montreal? LAURENCE APPLEBAUM: I've never heard that question before. I've spent a lot of time on this trip in Quebec, and I can tell you that the interest level is superb. CP has a wonderful business based in Montreal. Lines going from all of Canada to Montreal, and then they switch to what they call their intermodal business of Montreal where they move from rail to ship to truck, that starts in the port of Montreal. So they do a big business there. That being said, some of the interesting conversations with some of the top clubs in Montreal and the area have certainly been had and will continue to be discussed. I'm really excited at the possibility. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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