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RBC CANADIAN OPEN

June 4, 2019

Jay Monahan

Oakville, Ontario, Canada

Q. Opening comment about how exciting the vibe has been for you so far on site here at the Canadian Open?
JAY MONAHAN: Yeah, it's been -- we got in yesterday, and the weeks leading in, you really got a sense as the field developed, we talked to Laurence and Bryan and the team, just tremendous excitement coming into the new date, coming back though great golf course.

Then being here yesterday and this morning with a lot of our players, there's a great amount of energy and great excitement for the week ahead. I couldn't be more thrilled to be up here and to be here in the heart of our season with the RBC Canadian Open that's in a great position for a long time to come.

Q. How great of a partner is RBC to the PGA TOUR, a sponsor of two events?
JAY MONAHAN: They are a phenomenal partner, not just to the PGA TOUR but to the game of golf and to their home country. They are, as you said, they sponsor the RBC Canadian Open and they sponsor the RBC Heritage and they also are a sponsor of the CB Women's Open. To think they have 20 ambassadors on the PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour, they are supporting and developing the Canadian golf program and Future Links; they are a part of all facets of golf here.

Any young kids that are thinking about playing the game, to know that you have the back of such great company and brand, and RBC in Golf Canada is pretty special. You really don't see this anywhere else. It's pretty remarkable.

Q. Can you talk about the conversation to get the RBC Canadian Open to have the new date?
JAY MONAHAN: Yeah, we've been through, with this new schedule, there are a number of changes, but it all for us started out with how do we put our FedExCup with the best possible position going forward. We felt like ending in August, the month of August with a strong, dramatic finish would be a great result, which leads to the change to the PGA Championship to May and THE PLAYERS to March, and as you start to move the schedule around, it's been very clear to us from Dave and from Mary and from the entire team at RBC, that they wanted to be, if a date presented itself, that presented an opportunity for this tournament to step forward and to have an elevated field and to be in a strong competitive position, they would be very interested.

So it just so happens that that was the case. You know, I think it's the result of a strong partnership, where we understood every step of the way where they wanted to be, and we're very clear about where we were trying to go with our schedule. It's exciting to be here.

Q. The success of the Canadians on the PGA TOUR, looking externally to Canadians -- as the leader of the PGA TOUR, what's your thoughts on the success the Canadians have had the last couple years?
JAY MONAHAN: I go back a long ways, but I think that we've got the Mackenzie Tour PGA TOUR Canada, the number of players that have matriculated to that tour to the Web.com Tour, now on the PGA TOUR, to having ten Canadians playing on the PGA TOUR, I don't see anything stopping us.

We made an investment. We doubled down on our investment in Canada when we launched that tour, and we think it's a great platform for the best players in the world to prepare at the highest level.

So you have to think as the Canadian Tour, we're going to see that develop. I'm not at all surprised by Mac or Adam or any Canadian player; they are going to come out here and win, because they are prepared, they are determined, and they take a lot of pride in representing their country. You can see it the way they play.

Q. What do you remember about what you told Laurence they were getting this new date?
JAY MONAHAN: I tell you, we have a team of people that have worked with RBC and Golf Canada, so Andy Padzer who is our chief of operations and chief of competitions across all of our tours, he and I worked very closely on the overall schedule, and Andy was the one that shared the news. I remember, because Andy told me about the call he was going to make and how he was going to make it, and we talked shortly there after.

It's one of those things where when you know for as long as we knew that RBC is committed to the date they were in, but they would like to have a different date; you knew that when this happened, it was going to be a special day and that's exactly what it was. There was a lot of excitement.

But there was, more importantly, as you would expect, now that we have, it let's go make it work. There was about ten seconds of, all right, we finally got this to play we've been trying to get it to for a while, and now let's go to work.

By the looks of it all and by what I've seen from ticket sales and overall sales and response, I think that that's happened.

Q. The music series, do you think that will be something other people can do? It might change the demographics.
JAY MONAHAN: Yeah, we've done that at a number of our events, and I think you have to look at the fact that a tournament, the RBC Canadian Open is here at Hamilton for seven days, but we're a brand that's here every single day of the year. And so to be able to make the most of the entire week, to reach a broader audience, to entertain them in the context of the best players in the world competing for a National Open, yeah, I'd like to think that five, ten years down the road, you're going to have someone say, or a group of people say, I came, I wasn't a golfer, I watched the best players in the world play, I attended a great concert short there after, and now I'm trying to get out on the Mackenzie Tour, PGA TOUR Canada.

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