PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

May 17, 2022

Seth Waugh

Kerry Haigh

Jim Richerson

Southern Hills Country Club

Flash Quotes

JULIUS MASON: Good Tuesday morning, everyone. Before the strongest field in golf tees of Thursday morning at 7:00 a.m. central time, we want to make sure you have some quality time with the PGA of America's leadership, and that would be the PGA of America's president, Jim Richerson, our CEO, Seth Waugh, and our chief championships officer, Kerry Haigh.

Let's go ahead and begin with you, Jim. You are pretty excited to be back at Southern Hills, bottom line, aren't you?

JIM RICHERSON: Yeah, it's an unbelievable facility. After being here last year for the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, the club here, the community, Tulsa loves its golf. Obviously the PGA loves Southern Hills. It's our fifth PGA Championship that we've hosted here. It's great to be back and see PGA professionals and friends from the south central PGA section.

One of those representatives of that section is the host professional right here, Kerry could see by. What he means to this community from a golf standpoint, you see the connection with the membership here, you see a bunch of players that know Kerry personally, and he's just a great representative of our membership, the 28,000 men and women around the country.

We're really excited to be back at Southern Hills, but seeing friends from South Central PGA and just getting ready for PGA Championship week.

JULIUS MASON: There are a lot of really cool sidebar stories to go along with this week.

JIM RICHERSON: We kicked off yesterday with our PGA Hope Secretary's Cup at the golf club at Indian Springs, not too far from here.

And seeing how the South Central PGA section and how the membership there really got behind that event, if you're not aware PGA Hope, it's helping our Patriots everywhere. It's our veterans program that we do with golf as part of one of the pillars of our foundation, PGA Reach.

There's a lot of really cool things in the game of golf that really are enhancing opportunities for people that are in the game, whether they're from different backgrounds, a lot of things we're doing on inclusion, whether it's through places to play, junior league golf.

But PGA Hope, when you talk to those veterans about how golf really saved their life, how it brought them back into communities is really pretty special. To start off that week is really pretty cool.

Obviously this week is all about the best players in the world, and we've got 96 out of the top 100 that are here. For us what's really special is the Team of 20. It's the 20 PGA club professionals that are representing the 28,000, but those individuals that have kept their games at an extremely high level, that some of our professionals that have made the cut in this championship in the past.

We've got individuals who have a played in the Championship multiple times, but they also are the ones that are living out our mission on a daily basis of elevating the status of PGA members around the country and the role that they have in the game and growing the game.

They're out there in junior programs. They're out there in beginner adult programs. They're out there in leagues. They're growing the game on a daily basis.

To see that Team of 20 led by our professional champions this year, Jesse Miller out of Grand Canyon University where he's a volunteer coach at the course there in Phoenix. It's unbelievable to see the way they play and how they represent our association.

It's all about the best players in the world this week, but for us it's also about what we do as an association with this week to promote our members and the job that they do. Our members have been out there and are on the front lines during the last two years when the world and our country was really going through an unprecedented time. The way that they kind of stepped up for the game, and not only what you could do from a physical standpoint and everybody was at home and they could get out and play the game, but our members had to be there at the front line to greet those people, invite them into the game, welcome them into the game, teach them how to play the game.

That's what our PGA members do on a daily basis. Thursday through Sunday it's about the best players in the world, but this week is also about us being able to tell the story of what our PGA members do on a daily basis.

JULIUS MASON: Not too far from here, five hours or so away, some exciting things happening at PGA Frisco, right?

JIM RICHERSON: Yeah. We're excited about the new home of the PGA of America. We're going to have this championship and others in Frisco, Texas, in the future. Next year's KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship will be there in May and kind of introduce that facility to the world, and our partners with Omni who have some great facilities and have hosted some other great tournaments. We'll kick that off next year.

But we're excited to have our staff there. We're excited to be in that community. We're excited to partner with the North Texas PGA and all the things we just kind of talked about and touched on, all the player development and junior golf and everything that will take place there.

It's great. It's in the hub of the country, kind of the central time zone. A lot of our members from around the country will be able to utilize it more. Hopefully a lot of fans watching on TV will get down there to play the golf course, because it'll be a world-class resort, and they'll come out and spectate at some of the championships we'll have there in the future.

JULIUS MASON: Seth, you have some exciting news to share about the PGA of America making an impact on the game of golf, not only today, but well into the future for the city of Tulsa. Can you talk a little bit about a place to play?

SETH WAUGH: Yeah, thanks, Julius. Thanks, everybody for coming. It's great to see everybody. Here we go again.

Yeah, we added a pillar to our foundation called PGA Reach, which Jim referred to, and got our leaders Kennie Sims and Todd Alfred in the back there, and Jeff Price who run it every day. We have decided that we really want to leave a legacy everywhere we hold our most important championships in the town that we do.

We kind of come in for a week and then disappear, if you will, and come back potentially down the line.

As Jim said, this is our fifth time here, and so no better place for us to leave that legacy than Tulsa, Oklahoma. We added a leg to our foundation called A Place to Play, the idea that we're creating all these golfers through our other programs, but if there's no access, if there's not accessible, welcoming access, that's not going to do much good.

So we added a leg called A Place to Play, which is meant to help public golf, municipal golf and public golf around the country, and we wanted to recognize that. It came really from our good friend Nick Sidorakis who is the general manager here at Southern Hills, his idea of us putting a lead donation to help restore the municipal courses here in Tulsa.

So we're going to donate $250,000. The city has put up a million dollars, and I'm sure there will be some more fundraising around that. We're excited to be a part of, again, creating places to play here and everywhere around the country.

JULIUS MASON: Another championship that you recently attended and is very, very close to your heart is the PGA WORKS Collegiate Championship, and I think you have some news about that.

SETH WAUGH: Yeah, Jim talked about how we're here one week of the year, right, and all the eyes of the world are on us. But the other 365 days our members and professionals are out there doing what they do to grow the game.

The idea is that if we can kind of make 28,000 lives better, we can make millions of lives better through this game. We have been a steward of what we now call the PGA WORKS Collegiate Championship. It started out in 1986 as the HBCU National Championship. They hadn't had one and we became the stewards a couple decades ago.

It's an amazing event. It does have some media coverage, but doesn't obviously have all the eyes on it that it does here. It's a way to raise awareness of the quality of the play, but also from our perspective, educating the 140 players that were there, they're all great players, about the industry. That it's an $85 billion industry, it's got two million jobs, and we want it to look more like the rest of the world, if you will.

This is a great opportunity for us to do that. We just came fresh off of, as you said, Julius, our last championship, which was in Philadelphia at the historic Union League Club. We've done an unbelievable job of raising the bar.

And this morning we announced through our good friends at Shoal Creek and Garrett Price, who's my friend and is really in some ways the author of this idea that we're going to go to Shoal Creek next year. The membership has been incredibly excited about this.

They approached us with the idea of bringing it back, and it's a little bit -- there's some elegance in this given that we were around in 1990, obviously, and helped integrate Shoal Creek, and now to host what is essentially the HBCU National Championship is amazing.

They've committed to help us, and our goal with this championship is over time to really endow scholarships for every man, woman who we can possibly within the HBCU community. They've committed to raise significant dollars towards that, so we thank them, and we're excited about raising the bar yet again next year at our PWCC.

JULIUS MASON: Seth, for the first time since 2008, we do not have our defending champion at the PGA Championship. Would you like to offer some thoughts on that?

SETH WAUGH: Yeah, look, Julius, I'm glad you asked, right, because it's the elephant in the room obviously getting a lot of attention. It's probably why we've got pretty good attendance today in some ways.

Look, no one was more excited than us last year when Phil had his epic win, right? It's amazing. He's done something nobody else has ever done and win a major at 50. It was one of the great moments in golf, and we'll never sort of forget it. We certainly looked forward to him defending.

He's not here. It's at his choice. He and I have had some conversations before, during, and after, and I can really say that on Friday his camp called and said he's not ready to play. Obviously we respect that. We understand it.

We wish nothing but the best for him and Amy. He's going through a lot. I don't really have a whole lot more to say. It's been parsed pretty well by everybody. We're disappointed he's not here, and again, wish him all the best.

JULIUS MASON: Kerry, Southern Hills Country Club, you were here in 2007 for Tiger's win; you were here in 1994 for Nick Price's win. What can the best players in the world expect this week?

KERRY HAIGH: Yeah, thanks, Julius. Obviously Southern Hills is a wonderful test of golf. Always has been. And now with the redesign or the transformation that Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner performed on the golf course, along with the incredible work of Russ Myers, the superintendent, and his team who are -- no detail is missed. He is incredible.

That team together have produced what I think could be one of the greatest tests of golf in the country. I'm really excited to see it. The conditioning is unbelievable, May, creating the golf course -- the playing conditions here in May for warm season grasses, the fairways, the roughs, it's just immaculate. I could not be happier.

We've told the players there's four or five holes we may use different tees, give a bit of variety. Mother Nature looks like it may be sending some things our way, and we want to just simply test the best players in the world on one of the best golf courses in the world.

I cannot tell you how excited I am, and thank the support of Southern Hills Country Club and their membership who have closed the course for the last three weeks and walked through the winter months, did not use a golf cart for six months. That shows the dedication, the pride, and the support that not only Southern Hills Country Club, but Tulsa, the city, and Oklahoma as a state.

It's just wonderful to be back here, and I can't wait for Thursday.

JULIUS MASON: Thank you, Kerry. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions, please get yourself to a microphone and we'll take them.

Q. Kerry, if you look back during two previous PGAs here, how has the historic restoration that Gil did, how does it change your task in setting up the golf course?

KERRY HAIGH: I think they did an incredible job. They did a lot of different things, widened the landing areas of the fairways. They moved some of the bunkers back. They added five or six new tees for the back. State-of-the-art hygronics on the greens for cool season grasses here in the hot heat of the summer, and all of that just gives us more sort of canvas to test the best players.

It provides them a lot more shot options, a lot more shot variety, a lot more options to hit woods or drivers offer the tee, which in certainly in '07 there was a lot more lay-up holes than there are this week, or at least players have the option.

I think those factors, if I'm a player, I'm going to enjoy playing what it offers.

Q. Seth, how stressful were the weeks leading into this PGA Championship based on the Phil scenario?

SETH WAUGH: You know, they're always stressful, right, because we want to run -- it's our most important week of the year, and so we're doing a lot of details.

But you know, it was a lot more stressful for him than us, right. He was trying to decide, I think, what he wanted to do, and we were waiting for him to figure that out.

Did it add some uncertainty? Yeah, sure. But it didn't add a huge amount of stress.

Q. Seth, you've been there or your team has been there two or three weeks now; just wondering, how is the new PGA headquarters in Frisco turned out as opposed to your years of playing how you thought it would turn out? And also, have you had a chance to play the Hanse course yet?

SETH WAUGH: So the answer to the first one is that the reality is better than the dream. Our own people are blown away by what's been created there, certainly with our building, and it's had immediate sort of cultural impact frankly in the sense that people are just -- sometimes physical spaces make a big difference, and it really has.

I think we've already begun to do our education sessions there and they're rolling through now. Everybody that's come by to tour it is kind of blown away by it and what is happening in Frisco writ large, right? The whole campus is going to be one of the great destinations.

It's our home. We think it could end up being somewhat of a commercial home and a destination home for golf in the country. We're excited about that. It's a lot of things that we've talked about, as you've seen from the beginning, a laboratory for golf, a Silicon Valley for golf, all sorts of things are possible there, and we're going to do everything we can with it.

I've walked the Hanse course and the Bose course a number of times. Unfortunately I haven't hit a shot there yet. We did do some kind of outings over the last couple weeks, and the reviews there are, again, off the charts.

I think everybody is going to be just really shocked with the piece of property and what's happened there, so we couldn't be more excited.

Q. We're a year on from what we talked about last year with the Saudi stuff. I'm not sure how much more clarity we have, but we're coming up to a significant crossroads. I'm curious how you see this shaking out, and do you have any idea what kind of impact it would have on either the PGA Championship or even the Ryder Cup?

SETH WAUGH: Yeah, so look, it's a great question. I would stand by our comments last year, right, which we are big supporters of the ecosystem as it stands. We think the structure of -- I don't know if it's a league -- it's not a league at this point, but the league structure is somewhat flawed.

We do think that for a lot of reasons, bringing outside money into the game is going to change it forever, if that, in fact, happens. The Tour is owned by the players, and that means that everything ultimately flows back to the players, and as soon as you put any money into it, it's going to create a need for return, a need for exit, and a lot of things that change the dynamics of it, which we don't think is necessarily good for the ecosystem.

We do think -- and I've lived in a world of disruption my whole life, or whole career I should say, and it was inevitable. Golf has never been hotter in every way, from a participation standpoint, from a viewership standpoint.

Golf for the first time ever is cool, and that is going to bring more and more eyeballs to it, which I think is ultimately great for the game.

It'll cause disruption, but the disruption is happening already internally. It's not us, but the purses are obviously up, there's lots of money going on, the affiliation between the European Tour and the PGA Tour is very real.

So all of that disruption is kind of happening but happening internally, which we think is good.

We're going to watch it obviously very closely. We're going to have a great championship this week. We've got 96 of the top 100 on earth are here.

We expect to have a great championship at Oak Hill next year, and we're at a perfect venue. The club couldn't be more welcoming.

We're very happy to be in Tulsa, in terms of the town. Couldn't be more excited about what's going on. We're going to have a great championship, and we, like a lot of you, will watch what happens over the next months and see where that all plays out.

Q. Secondly, we saw a pretty significant spike in the purse at the Masters; what can we expect this week, and what is the correlation to beer sales?

SETH WAUGH: You can see they go in opposite directions, right? But you will see a very significant spike, as well, in our purse.

Q. Do you have a number or are we waiting on that?

KERRY HAIGH: We'll announce that later in the week.

Q. For whoever wants to take it, did LIV Golf or the PGL or whatever these people are calling themselves, ever approach the PGA of America and want to partner, acquire, sponsor the PGA, Ryder Cup, or the ladies PGA Championship? Were you ever contacted about that?

SETH WAUGH: No. I usually give long answers, but no, we have not been contacted. I certainly haven't.

Q. Question for Kerry first and then one for Seth. Kerry, a few of the players have talked about some of the situations with the tees, and I'm curious how you're monitoring the practice rounds for that, how you're discussing it with the players, and then also the role perhaps of marshals and those on the tees to kind of do the traffic work out there, maybe particularly thinking of 3 and 6 and 7.

KERRY HAIGH: Yeah, there's obviously a couple -- with the new tees that we've added, a lot of them are close to the existing green, so there are situations, which we have at our venues. The 1st and 10th hole at Atlanta, alternating shots.

Even on 6, if we use the forward tee on 7, the players in '07 waited while the players were hitting in.

It's not something that I think the players are unfamiliar with. There are probably a few more occasions it's going to happen. We have made adjustments to the pace of play timing chart on those couple of holes where a group may have to wait while the group ahead tees off on 7, for example.

But the players will generally work, and they're used to it, and we have rules and referees on each hole and they will help manage it if it's a question of who should be hitting.

We do want to use the new tees that have been added. We think they're great additions to the golf course, and I think we'll be able to manage that just fine.

Q. Seth, there's been a little bit of unhappiness about the price of water being more than a soda and then the price of beer. Is that something you've heard, and do you have any thoughts on the subject?

KERRY HAIGH: I'm happy to take that. We do have a new concession area, but we also have a new ticketing pricing offering for all the spectators this year, which includes basically as much food and non-alcoholic beverage as they want included in the price of the ticket.

Starting Thursday, spectators will be able to drink non-alcoholic beverages and as much food as they want for the price of their ticket.

For those on the practice days, all spectators can bring in bottled water, and starting Thursday we'll have refills on water. The pricing of the product is sort of comparable to stadium events.

We're comfortable with where we are, and we hope spectators will come out and have a great time and a great experience.

SETH WAUGH: It's a new model for us, right, so at the end of it we'll go back and, like we always do, try to figure out if it worked or didn't work and what we can do better and raise the bar.

Q. That's all tickets?

SETH WAUGH: I think it's 95 percent.

KERRY HAIGH: It's all paid general admission tickets.

SETH WAUGH: And it's not unique to sports but it's unique to us, so we're giving it a shot, and hopefully people love it. That's the idea.

Q. Jim, assuming you've seen the story in Golf Digest about PGA professionals and their lives and how they're not exactly what they should be. I could go on with a litany. I'd like to get your thoughts on that being a PGA professional for years, and not only today, but what your guidelines are and what you're trying to do for the future for these guys.

JIM RICHERSON: Yeah, thanks for that. And obviously the article talked about we have the same challenges that some of the other industries have right now. We're a business and an industry that obviously we have to be there.

It's tough to be a golf professional by the phone or by a Zoom call. We greet the members. We greet the guests. We teach lessons typically on the range or on the golf course.

We know that. I think when I started in the business it was a little bit more along the lines of some things in that article. The expectation was to work a lot of hours and weekends and holidays, and quite frankly, the new individuals that we have coming into the game and into the workforce just won't work under those conditions.

We've got a full staff led been John Easterbrook our chief membership officer. Our career consultants, we doubled that group that are working with the 41 sections around the country.

So we used to help you maybe find a job. Now our career consultants are actually helping you create a career. So they're out working hand to hand with golf professionals, whether you're an assistant or head pro looking for other opportunities.

It's going to take some time, but we need to get with the owners of golf courses, we the multi-course operators, get with the boards of courses around the country and really explain the benefit of PGA professionals.

Some look at it and have looked at it for a long time as just a line item on your expense sheet, but if you put a golf professional in the right role with the right support, they're a huge return on the investment. You get people that are excited about the game. You get them improving their game of golf. They're going to play more golf.

I don't know a single person that enjoys the game of golf that doesn't play more when they're playing better. You want to play more golf. You need to get with your local PGA professionals and they'll help you at whatever level you're at. We're seeing it here at the highest level.

Scottie Scheffler, maybe one of the hottest players planet over the last decade, and he's been led by PGA professional Randy Smith is his coach since he's been in his teens.

Jamie Mulligan who's out in my area out in LA, at this point he's here with Patrick Cantlay and Francesco Molinari and Luke List and others. The list goes on and on of PGA professionals that help individuals whether they're beginning in the game or they're playing at the highest level.

I think the clubs that get it, that are understanding that, and a lot are starting to get it because of the work of the PGA of America's career consultants and the work that the 41 sections do.

You get a PGA professional in the right environment with the right support, they're a huge ROI to the golf club. You see that here with Cary Cozby; you see that with other professionals.

We've got work to do in that regard. We've got some of the same challenges that other industries have, and we've got to flip that script. And we're doing it. We've got a lot of people working hard at it, but we also know it's not going to be a fix overnight.

Q. Seth, talking to players that are trying to make a decision if they want to play in these LIV events or not, one of the things they say is we don't really know what's going to happen down the road. We don't know what the PGA of America's position will be on us next year if we qualify for a PGA Championship or even if you're a Senior PGA player, because it still would affect them, as well. Will you embrace these guys next year if they actually play in LIV events?

SETH WAUGH: Well, again, I think we've got a lot of time between now and Oak Hill, and I think we all have to sort of take a deep breath, see how it plays out, and what the ecosystem looks like at that point.

As I said, we're a fan of the current ecosystem and world golf ranking system and everything else that goes into creating the best field in golf.

Right now we really -- I don't know what it'll look like next year. We don't think this is good for the game and we are supportive of that ecosystem. We have our own bylaws that we will follow towards those fields.

Q. I'm sorry, do your bylaws preclude letting those players play?

SETH WAUGH: Not specifically, but our bylaws do say that you have to be a recognized member of a recognized Tour in order to be a PGA member somewhere, and therefore eligible to play.

If that becomes -- if something else became one of those, obviously we'd have to recognize it.

Q. Seth, back in the early days of Tiger's career he spent a considerable amount of time each year putting on clinics for the inner city kids in markets where there was not really a PGA Tour stop. The success of those clinics were extraordinary in generating interest, notwithstanding the success of the First Tee program. But would there be an interest in perhaps talking to some of the Tour stars, not just one, to put on a clinic so that these kids can touch their hero once every two or three months in order to grow the game in areas where there is not that much of a presence right now?

SETH WAUGH: Well -- and Jim may have a better answer for this than me. Look, we do things like that all the time. I can't say it's with Tiger, but everybody -- a lot of these players out here are giving back all the time. Certainly our PGA professionals are. We have a program called Beyond the Green which we'll hold tomorrow here and hold at all our events, which is welcoming in, inviting in, seeking kids at risk and bringing them into the game.

We do it through junior league every day, everywhere. We want to be able to provide a scholarship for every kid that wants to play over time.

We have a series of clinics for women that we run all the time.

We're doing things 24/7 on it. I can't say it's as visible as Tiger holding a clinic in all cases or in any case in the sense of him, but yeah, we're doing everything we can to do exactly what you're talking about.

By the way, I'd say the good news is that the game is obviously growing, but the two fastest cohorts in the game -- well, three fastest. Juniors and beginners are up sort of 20 percent, and the two fastest growing cohorts within that are kids of color and girls. Something is changing, which is great.

JIM RICHERSON: I'd say, too, the 41 PGA sections around the country all have different junior programs, teaching programs, and golf and school type programs. A lot of them have relationships with those Tour stars, whether they be on the men's tour or the women's tour or the Champions Tour, and they've reached out to those individuals.

A lot of them have involvement in our charities as Seth said, or other junior type tours like Justin Thomas is involved with, and those individuals are usually working with the local communities for that relationship and those connections.

Then at a lot of different Tour stops along the way, I know at our event at Riviera Country Club this February Cameron Champ and Tony Finau did a local clinic for kids. PGA Championship, Masters, U.S. Open, the Open Championship, the players are obviously really focused on the majors.

It's a little bit different week, but there's a lot going on in and around the championship from the South Central PGA in Oklahoma with all those types of programs you've talked about, and on an ongoing basis there's a lot of Tour players on several tours that are involved in that type of giving back to the communities.

Q. Kerry, what have you seen -- I'm sure you and Russ have been scouting it out closely; what have you seen in the effort to get driver back in their hands on 3, 7, 10, and what have you seen on 13 as far as percentage of people going for that green in two from the tee behind 12?

KERRY HAIGH: Yeah, that's the great thing that Jim and Gil did. They have created a lot of options. To answer specifically your question, 13, I'm not sure any or many have been going for it so far, but it's obviously wind dependent.

And based on the forecast, it looks like we could have a 180-degree shift in the wind from Thursday and Friday to the weekend.

We'll adjust each day as we try and do every championship and make it a fun, interesting challenge for the best players in the world and the golf course is speaking for itself, and hopefully we're not in the way of that.

Q. Drivers on 3 on the new tee --

KERRY HAIGH: Significantly more drivers are available, yes, on 3; certainly 7 I think is probably the most significant change from '07 and '94, the difficulty of that hole now with the green -- the only new green that was built 50 yards further back and the new tee 40 yards further back has created what was sort of a 4-iron and a wedge, probably one of the easiest holes on the course, to now probably one of the most difficult on the course.

I think that is certainly worth watching.

17 is a beautiful par-4, great short par-4, a two shotter. But if we choose to push the tee up on a day or so then it should be fun to watch. I cannot wait for Thursday.

Q. Do you know how many times you'll do that yet?

KERRY HAIGH: Depends on the weather.

JULIUS MASON: Jim Richerson, Seth Waugh, Kerry Haigh, have a terrific week.