PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 16, 2022

Seth Waugh

Dan Rooney

Southern Hills Country Club

PATRIOT GOLF DAYS

PATRIOT GOLF DAYS

LT. COLONEL DAN ROONEY: We've tapped into this patriotic side of golf that had never been touched at this level and it just continues to grow, my man here to the left, just such a force for good and where have we been. It's amazing. Where we're going is going to be that much more extraordinary, and the only thing I know for certain is -- and I witness God's grace every day on His commandment to use your talents to make an impact, and that's the greatest part about all this.

JULIUS MASON: Seth, a couple of years ago, PGA Reach aligned with Patriot Golf Days and now benefits both PGA Hope and Folds of Honor. I believe Dan likes to call that a force multiplier. How do you see it?

SETH WAUGH: Look, he had me at hello, right, as he does everybody. We met in a lonely little office during our PGA Show in some made-up office when I was about three months into the job and he explained to me kind of the history.

He actually brought his father along, as I recall, which was not a fair fight, and talked about what we can do and the power of, as you say, force multiplier, but one plus one equals three is really what we are trying to do.

We hatched this plan to say, okay, how do we do this as a partnership, a true partnership. They had this beautiful idea, but there was an opportunity to accelerate it, kind of geometrically, if you will, by the power of our two brands.

What he's done is incredible from his garage. He has a lot more tours than me but I've got a little more hair than him, which is why he wears hats.

But it's been a great partnership. It's been a treat to ride along in his jetstream. We think, as I said, the whole veteran situation, which is awful across our country, has a real place in golf. We have one of the greatest engines for good on the planet. The veteran plates appeal to all of us, and particularly in the game, and so we think sort of blowing it up in this way is hugely important.

We are really proud of Hope. Hope is helping our Patriots everywhere. It's actually -- the Veterans' Administration calls it therapy and actually gives some grants to us because we are saving lives. Our great director of Hope, a guy named Chris Novak, who is a wounded veteran, says it's 100 times every day he plays golf that he doesn't have to think about anything hard in his life other than hitting a golf shot.

We think it's this great tool. The more we can raise, the more veterans we can affect. We will hit 7500 veterans this year across 46 states. We've got a couple hundred of our members that are dedicated and trained in this that are adaptive golf as well as kind of how to deal with PTSD, etc., etc.

We think the partnership and the ability to leverage off of each other is enormous, and I also think the other benefit as we can sort of end some confusion about how do you donate to a veteran cause through golf. So combining the two of the -- not that there are not other worthy charities, don't get me wrong, but combining the two that are probably the most visible nationally so that you can funnel it through one source I think makes an enormous amount of sense, and I think rather than confusing consumer donors, we can educate them to all the great that's going on.

JULIUS MASON: Dan, could you break it down a little bit for us, please, and tell us how Patriot Golf Days impacts lives through scholarships and how partnering with PGA Hope helps more veterans and their families.

LT. COLONEL DAN ROONEY: Yeah, as we stand here with PGA Hope and Folds of Honor, you have the most holistic veteran program in the world. We give golfers the opportunity to play a heroic round of golf over Memorial Day, and you know, Memorial Day -- not to go on a tangent here, but it's not the unofficial beginning of summer. There are 1.1 million veterans who have died for our country, and without Memorial Day, we don't celebrate the other holidays.

I have witnessed that in combat. It's around me on a daily basis. But the other side of war are 20 veterans a day currently taking their own lives, which people don't realize, which is more than we ever lost in Iraq or Afghanistan on a daily basis, and that's the beauty of these two programs coming together.

Bringing golf to veterans as a modality to hopefully stem this tide of suicide but also being with them to say, hey, we have your six, we have your family, we have your spouse, we have your kids and we'll send you to school, and in this divisive world that we live in where it seems like everything has got to be a red issue or a blue issue, the beauty of Patriot Golf Day is the beauty of this program, the beauty of this week here at the PGA Championship, it's red, white and blue.

Now, we come together in these moments, and regardless of where you stand, there's a half a percent of the country that woke up today, we saw two of my bros fly over in an F16 earlier that are willing to give their lives for our freedoms. It's that simple.

We as Americans, as golfers, get a chance to tee it up over Memorial Day weekend, go to PatriotGolfDays.com on your smartphone and make a donation to say thank you. That's it. And then we get to pay that forward to bring veterans to the game, to send families to school. We'll send almost 9,000 people to school at Folds of Honor this fall.

Seth had mentioned this, but so excited to bring on board the PGA Tour, the LPGA and the USGA and address a subject that's very relevant in golf right now, which is our lack of diversity. At Folds of Honor, of the 35,000 recipients, 41 percent are minorities, and I can think of no greater path to equality than the gift of an education.

We are harnessing, as Seth said, the power of golf and doing good to address this equality issue, and education is the ultimate force multiplier. We are not going to solve this with a macro way, but it's one person at a time, and the one person at a time gets to go play golf, make a donation, and find a path to help equality in this country as well.

SETH WAUGH: As you say, it's very personal. This started out as a dollar a person, right, and obviously it's grown from there but that's what it is. It's golfers saying, all right, I'm going to give what I need, what I can to it.

As you say, it resonates across the industry. We are standing up here but the other golf bodies and everybody that cares about this game and our country are behind it. So the other commissioners are absolutely going to try and help us in this mission.

JULIUS MASON: The grass roots nature of this fundraising campaign is really quite remarkable, especially how PGA members have stood at the heart of Patriot Golf Day since day one; right?

SETH WAUGH: 100 percent, and that's how it worked. Brian Whitcomb stood here and said, that's a really good idea. Let's go sort of activate our scale, if you will, by taking it to clubs and putting a jar on the front desk and saying, today is Patriot Golf Day, can you make a donation to our veterans. People took cash out of it and stuck it in a sort of March of Dimes sort of times, and obviously we've gotten more sophisticated from there, but that's a hundred percent what it is.

Our members, we have 28,000, the largest sports organization on earth, and they are the front line in everything golf. So they are passionate about this and willing to activate and rely on the generosity of their members or guests to whatever facility it might be. It is absolutely a grass-roots thing, and as most things, almost all good things start locally. All sports are local. All politics are local. That sort of famous Tip O'Neill thing, and that's what this is all about.

Q. When you think of a little seed of an idea you had 15 years ago and start talking numbers like 9,000 scholarships this fall and $2 million, what makes you proudest?

SETH WAUGH: The next one.

LT. COLONEL DAN ROONEY: Yeah, I think it's all of us, these moments in life where you can combine who you are with what you do, and probably I'm so proud of everybody that's graduated from Folds programs, from PGA Hope programs, but being able to energize a group of people for a greater good; and this incredible irony that I've discovered along the way that I try to preach across America is that when you reach out to help someone, you're the one that's being helped.

In a world where I don't think you'll meet anybody that says, are you 100 percent fulfilled, we are all looking to fill up and the way you do that is helping other people, and to be able to combine a game we love, teeing it up and helping other people is just as pure as it gets.

You know, the second thing probably for me, kind of a nostalgic week because it all started here 14 and a half years ago, that we stayed the course. Life is not easy. That's the common denominator of the world. Everybody is struggling. Everybody will be challenged. Everyone will face resistance, and there are a lot of days that it was easier to pitch out than keep doing.

But in moments like this you're so proud that God gave you the strength, a guy like this coming along in my life is -- you guys know it, but he is a force for good and he has motivated me and takes my calls and listens, and it just, man, fills you up to go kick down doors and make massive change.

SETH WAUGH: There he goes again, giving somebody else some credit for what he did, which is a great question. The thing I admire about him most, having been around entrepreneurs throughout my life, he's a philanthropic entrepreneur, right, and he started in his garage and did this thing when nobody thought he could do it. He had to convince The PGA of America, I don't know if it was a cold call to Brian, but whatever it was --

LT. COLONEL DAN ROONEY: It was.

SETH WAUGH: -- to say hey, that's a pretty good idea and then do it, and it's not the easiest organization on earth to move, and then keep it going like every good entrepreneur has done. I'm sure there are times when they ran out of money, ran out of energy or belief; he never did but a lot of people around him did.

Just to keep doing that for as long as he had to create what he's now created is remarkable, and it's an honor for us to be with him now but really from the beginning. We're blowing it up, but this is not my idea. I hope I can help take it to another level.

But it's remarkable. You know, one of the great Patriots in how many different ways do you want to say it relative to what he's done.

Q. You talked about PGA Hope being personal, saving lives, what do you see as its future?

SETH WAUGH: More and more. We are still scraping the top of the pyramid here, right. We need to seek more veterans, right, rather than just have people find out about it. We have to go find them as you do in a lot of underserved communities in a lot of ways.

One of the things we've done over the last couple years is started saying how do we do that. How do we get into the military community, which obviously he can help a lot on, but we have created ambassadors. We have a health and wellness week that we are doing in concert with Congressional where we have a multiyear relationship, and what better city on earth, or in this country, to do it than in Washington, obviously.

We bring in graduates of our program that we think can be kind of culture carriers to go find more veterans that are in need and so create -- obviously it's money but we are trying to create awareness and more even so than awareness, going and pulling people out of their bedrooms and trying to get them back into life.

We are excited about this possibility. This is completely free to veterans. We have self-funded it over years. We are now in the process of our first ever capital campaign for PGA Reach, which is our four pillars, one of which we are talking about Hope today and we also have three other pillars, and we want to endow that and make sure we keep growing that every year and live off the principal to a certain degree and then do great things like this on an annual basis to raise some more money and more awareness.

Q. I realize they each have their kind of, I guess, separate identity, if you look at American Dunes and Patriot Golf Club, but can you possibly see or even consider a network of courses dedicated to a broad cause? Or is that too much on your plate already?

LT. COLONEL DAN ROONEY: They are both golf churches, and they combine God, country and golf in that order with no apologies, and based on the energy around those places, anything is possible. Get up and try to be wide open. Mr. Nicklaus is up to do another one, but I don't know if I'm up to do another one.

So yeah, they are good, right. They just represent the best of the game. I think that there's an opportunity to see philanthropy in golf. I think it's a great model at both these places, and I've got great spirits. Whether we spread from sea to shining sea, I don't know. But if you asked me 14 years ago if we would be where we are, I'd have laughed at you.

When it's good and it's right, I think a higher force conspires for it.

SETH WAUGH: It's philanthropy, it's golf, but it's also history. It's also a museum. It's also homage to our country every day of the year, as opposed to just on Fourth of July, right.

You can't help but go into the Patriot and not come out sort of fired up and feeling pretty good about being an American. I think what's going on in the world right now reminds us how lucky we are to do that.

By the way I've been up here talking about Hope, and I wanted to recognize one of our great Hope participants, Gunnery Sergeant Will Stockholm. Thank you for being with us and all your service. That's the guy you should be talking to.

JULIUS MASON: Speaking of introductions, Dan, as we look around here in the room, is there anybody else that we want to recognize maybe?

LT. COLONEL DAN ROONEY: Besides you, Julius, for being the best-looking guy in the room. So Jen Stevens is over here, amazing, Folds of Honor Gold Star spouse, so Jen, thank you.

Q. I have a two-part question for you. First of all, can you talk about Mr. Nicklaus's partnership with Folds and also the PGA, and also, you envisioned 15 years ago where this could be. Do you put a ceiling on where this could be 15 years from now?

LT. COLONEL DAN ROONEY: No. I've learned not to put any guardrails on life. The only thing I know, I've said it before, this is God's --

SETH WAUGH: He's a fighter pilot.

LT. COLONEL DAN ROONEY: Yeah, unrestricted climb. But it's God's mission and we are going to keep showing up early every day and growing our partnership, force multiplying -- we'll continue to grow, I have no doubt. We're definitely in that exponential phase. It's four to eight, it's 8 to 16, and it's broadening, and with the new partners and energized relationship with the PGA of America and Hope, I have no doubt we are going to continue to grow.

You look at Mr. Nicklaus, where do we start? He is just an icon in the game, and I love his quote at American Dunes that sits on the memorial out front is, "I love the game of golf, but I love my country even more." I think that's a lot of where he is in life, he and Barbara both. It's about giving back, and they have had a legacy of doing that, but at this place in the walk, they are so hyper focused. He is not playing a lot of golf and he still has a lot of energy, so he's pouring that energy into giving back and has been a great ambassador for PGA Hope, Folds of Honor, and it's a privilege to actually call my boyhood hero my friend.

SETH WAUGH: Yeah, I think he has this mental list in his head that he wants to tick off. Not that he's going anywhere tomorrow, but he's seeing less time, as we all are, and I think this is one of those things along with Children's Miracle Network and a couple other things that he's working on, but it's real. I've talked to him about it a lot.

Q. So you both were talking about diversity. I know Nancy Lopez and her husband are big supporters. They were ambassadors at Congressional for Latinos, African Americans, women. How do you see your programs being a diversity with veterans and also the new face of golf?

LT. COLONEL DAN ROONEY: I'll let Seth take the heavy lift there on diversity in golf. I think everybody is focused on it, right. Across the country, I think there's been a big awakening in I think the vast majority of Americans agree that we need to find a path to equality.

There's just no quick fix and that's why I say it's one person at a time. It's one interaction. It's one opportunity, and the gift of an education is the difference in America and every other country in the world. We have 15,000 minority recipients in school that have graduated college, and they have made their lives better, they have impacted their family but they impact our country.

And while we are working to make the game look more like America, that doesn't prevent us from using this beautiful, benevolent soul that golf has to harness that energy and pay it forward in other ways.

SETH WAUGH: Yeah, our tag line is we want to make the game look more like the rest of the world, so maybe the world will behave more like game, right, and that's really the point of a lot of this. And as Dan said, it is -- well, let me talk about math for a second here. The last time I checked, 50 percent of the world is female, and our next census in the U.S., 50 percent going to be of color. So if our mandate is to grow the game, you take out half of the population and half again, that's not much of a story, right. So it's definitely the right thing to do but it's also the smart -- we talk about total adjustable market, TAM, we have to expand our TAM, and we don't, as a game, have the best history.

We have been serious about it; by "we" I mean the PGA of America has been serious about it for a number of years. I inherited that. A lot of great stuff. Julius has been around for it, but we have accelerated, no question about it. In 2020 after tragedy of George Floyd and the game was starting to take off from a participation standpoint and Jay had done his great job at getting on television, I kind of had this epiphany that said look we have an obligation and opportunity to do two things. One is to generationally grow the game because it's in front of us, and what didn't we do when Tiger burst on the scene to make it sticky and generational, what do we do to make sure that we are intentional about that, and not that we made mistakes, but we didn't do much I don't think.

And secondly, again, then how do we get the game to look more like rest of the country and the world, in fact, because that's the movement. And so I called Jay and I called Mike Whan who was running the LPGA at the time, and Mike Davis at the USGA and I said, look, we have this obligation, right, and opportunity, to do these two things, and shame on us if we don't do it.

From that, we sort of said, well, what do we do? We can gather, right. We have this convening power because of our positions. So we had, you know, Golf, Inc., come together, and it was the CEOs of all the equipment companies, TopGolf, other golf bodies, etc., etc., and we had a long call and everybody was totally enthusiastic with the idea. From there, we created six working groups that are working on supply chain, working on employment, working on grass roots donation to local charities; we were pooling our money and are going to give away 750,000 this year to those locals. We have a marketing group. We have -- I don't want to bore everybody but we can certainly walk you through the details.

And we have about 125 people across those organizations that are donating their time. Now it isn't just The PGA of America, but it's the industry coming together to do all this stuff. We call it the Make Golf Your Thing movement, which is again trying to accomplish those two things. And you may have seen ads on television. But for the first time ever, golf has been up-and-down, it's about good, it's been less good. But for the first time ever, it's cool, right. It's Rickie Fowler. But it's cool in a participation standpoint. I don't know what was at the a LPGA but you have McLemore playing and performing Saturday night for the crowd. It's not your Glenn Campbell kind of Saturday night party anymore. And that is great, right, because we are blowing it up in different ways. There's also so many more ways to participate, right. So you have got TopGolf, you have par 3s, you have got all these things that are just different ways to play the game. And so it isn't so much just, hey, do we have four hours and too much money. It's become more egalitarian and more accessible, and much more -- and our idea is not to make it just welcoming but invitational. How do we go find those people to do it.

As Dan well said, it's baby steps. We have made a lot of progress I think in the last couple years. We now have people believing in what we are going, as opposed we have benefit of the doubt, as opposed to presume guilt on some of this stuff. And that's the first step towards real change. Because now we have all these communities that are buying into what we are doing and helping us as opposed to throwing stones at our house, and that's a huge difference than what it was a couple years ago.

JULIUS MASON: Seth, you are a quote machine but dropping Glenn Campbell, that goes to your top three right now I think.

SETH WAUGH: Here we go. Wait till tomorrow.

JULIUS MASON: Two people on stage, ladies and gentlemen, that make us all want to be better human beings, right, thank you very much. Have a great week.