TERRY JASTROW: My name is Terry Jastrow. I will be hosting this press announcement today, and first of all, we'd like to thank you all very much for your time and attention to this. We are announcing a new event that will be on the PGA TOUR. Jastrow Productions and Gaylord Sports Management, along with our partner Tommy Bahama, the PGA TOUR and CBS Sports will be making this announcement today.
The president and CEO of Tommy Bahama, Tony Margolis, actually made his announcement earlier because they are literally on a plane for Shanghai as a matter of fact, but Julia Jackson, who is senior management at Tommy Bahama, will be here for questions and answers. I'd like to give you a bit of an overview about the event and then Henry Hughes will speak from the PGA TOUR and then we'll hear from other senior management of the entities involved.
The Tommy Bahama challenge is actually an international team competition, and it will feature play of four young American players defined by the PGA TOUR as aged 30 and younger. We're essentially targeting young guns, great young players. So there will be four American players on the USA team. They will be in competition against four international players, again, aged 30 and younger. They will play in four individual 18-hole stroke play matches, so you have four players on each team, and they will be paired in 18-hole stroke play matches with one point available in each match. In the case of a tie, there is a rather interesting and unique process for a playoff that we'll get to in just a bit.
So with that, I think I should introduce the first of the speakers with me, Senior Vice President and Chief of Operations for the PGA TOUR, an old friend, Mr. Henry Hughes.
HENRY HUGHES: Thank you, Terry. On behalf of the TOUR, obviously we're excited to have a new relationship involving Tammy Bahama. We were talking earlier, to the best of our knowledge, this might be the first time we've had an apparel company as a title sponsor of one of our events, so we're excited to cross that bridge, as well.
The change in season presents some great opportunities for us to showcase our players in a different light, different formats, different numbers of players, and we think this one is truly unique in the fact that it is targeted as our younger players, 30 years old and younger, and representing a team competition from both the U.S. and outside the U.S.
I think it's important to mention, the way these players are being selected also brings a unique perk to the tournament, and that is we have two players on the American team off the Money List through the World Golf Championships- NEC-Invitational, and then we have two players on the international team off the World Ranking. In addition to that, there's a selection process involving all the entities that Terry just mentioned, selecting two sponsor exemptions to fulfill those teams.
Also, the other situation that's a little bit different is in the event of a playoff, we have a unique format where the captains are going to take all members of their teams, all four members to the teams, to the first playoff hole, select an order of play. One player will hit a tee shot, another play will hit the next shot, so on, through the four players, until we have a winner by the teams. Obviously if we need to go to the second hole we'll have the same format.
Working with Terry and his game and the Gaylord people, we're looking forward to a tremendous event and the comments among our young players are excited to play in this. They don't know all the details before today, but they're excited to hear about it and it's very important for us to showcase these young players. Thank you to Tammy Bahama and thank you to Terry and Steve for putting it together and we're looking forward to having a great round.
TERRY JASTROW: All of us will be available for a Q and A at the end if needed. We're very pleased that our network broadcast partner is CBS Sports, probably the preeminent broadcaster of PGA TOUR events, and with us today is the senior vice president in charge of program planning, Mr. Rob Correa.
ROB CORREA: Thank you. We'd like to thank the TOUR and Tommy Bahama for getting this on the air. We're going to tape the event November 9th, so we have six weeks to complete it before we air it on New Year's day, from 2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Obviously it's an interesting format, it's a different format, and from the parochial CBS viewpoint, it's something that can expose young players, young up-and-coming players, which I hope we will all benefit from.
Really the interesting hook for us in this event is that it's going to air on New Year's Day, which has traditionally been one of the highest if not the highest viewership days of the year on television.
With the Bowl Championship Series moving a lot of their games, which they've started doing the last five years, to other days, we think that New Year's Day is really wide open for golf. I looked it up and there has not been much golf on New Year's day, if any, in the past ten years, and while we'll still have college football competition, none of the big games are on New Year's Day with the exception of the Rose Bowl, which is about a 5:00 o'clock start, and we're going to be done at 4:00 o'clock. So that's really the hook for us.
I think it's going to be really a great experiment, and again, the combination of a lot of people watching TV that day and us really giving the viewer an alternative to football I think is going to really make this a successful event for us. Thank you.
TERRY JASTROW: The event will be played at the Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona. I don't know how many of you have played it, but it's one of America's great facilities and we're very proud to be here. With us today to have a word is the captain of the Grayhawk Golf Club, Mr. Del Cochran.
DEL COCHRAN: Thank you, Terry. This is Grayhawk's tenth anniversary. We couldn't think of a better way to celebrate our tenth anniversary than with Tommy Bahama and CBS Sports and the PGA TOUR. When Grayhawk was started 12 or 13 years ago, the dream was to do what we want, how we want, when we want, and what we think is best for golf. We think this type of event is really good for golf and for the game, and if you can't spend life as one long weekend at the golf course, where can you spend it?
So we're very happy to be a part of it. We're looking forward to working with Terry and Coach, and with the exception of -- well, sorry, can't mention those other guys at the moment, but there are going to be some interesting characters. On behalf of Grayhawk, we'll have some fun.
TERRY JASTROW: Del, we'll be playing the Fazio-designed course there, won't we?
DEL COCHRAN: Yes, Raptor. We do have 36 holes, Talon and Raptor, and we will play Raptor, which is a Tom Fazio design. We'll probably play it as a par-70, which we did for the Williams World Challenge when we hosted that a few years back. It will be challenging. The weather will be perfect, I'll be in charge of the sun, knock on wood, and we'll have some fun with it. Raptor course, thank you for reminding me.
TERRY JASTROW: On behalf of Jastrow Productions and Gaylord Sports Management and Tommy Bahama, Grayhawk Golf Club, the TOUR and CBS Sports, I'd like to announce the team captains. You can get an idea of the sort of personality of the event when you understand who the captains are.
It is our great pleasure to announce as the captain of the international team, Mr. David Feherty, and the captain of the U.S. team, Mr. Gary McCord. If you gentlemen would step forward, and the format here is that David will have a word first about the event, then Gary, and then they'll each introduce the first player on their team.
GARY McCORD: Two guys, our criteria, go right down the list until we get those two guys to play from the Money List, and then the last two will be picks.
TERRY JASTROW: The idea was to create an event for the first time that would actually and showcase just young guns. By TOUR definition, it's aged 30 and younger. We thought that David and Gary might be more effective with a whip on their team as opposed to actually playing.
GARY McCORD: Any time the money goes up, there is less passion visually from the guys because they're choking their guts out. We used to play in the 70s, there wasn't a whole lot of money, you had fun, you went out at night because you'd go screw around. You're playing for this kind of money, $5 million a week, you'd better be focused, you'd better be in the gym and doing all that stuff. That passion I think comes with personality. Everybody said there's no personalities. These guys are focused on what they're doing; they're playing for their life and trying to win some money.
The old days you had a lot of passion, not a whole lot of money. Right now you'd better pay attention or you're out of there real quick.
TERRY JASTROW: Right, the idea is that this is not going to be your garden-variety golf telecast as you can already tell. It airs on New Year's Day, and the sets in use are a household term, hot levels. Household use of televisions is extremely high on that day. The golf is only going to be the centerpiece to what is going to amalgamate the telecast. There will be lots of activity and a pro/celebrity outing the day before and fairly significant entertainment in the evening, as well, with some big-time entertainment, although we're not available to announce it.
The Grayhawk guys say that it's a PGA TOUR event disguised as a party or a party disguised as a PGA TOUR event. When we take just the golf, it's not a question of just the shot but the people playing it and the personality. We really want to try to get the coverage inside the ropes and have it -- because we are not live, we are on tape, where we can have that interface and that by-play between the players themselves, the players and captains and the captains together, which is going to be much more the focus of the telecast than not just necessarily the shot-by-shot development. It should be a telecast that will be very entertaining and worthwhile for golfers but also something that people would find entertaining to watch.
TERRY JASTROW: The reason why stroke play is because we wanted the event to make its way through to the 18th hole, and obviously a match play event might not do that. We also wanted to try to get an actual score for all eight players because there will be a prize, a trophy and money awarded to the single low net score. Those are the two or three reasons.
GARY McCORD: This time of year, without a doubt, this is the season for having golf tournaments with special formats. You'd better entertain this time of the year. It's about having some fun, showing these guys, guys that some people might not know, David and I screwing around and having a good time, and making it entertainment. That's really what it is.