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PGA CHAMPIONSHIP

August 16, 2006

Marino Parascenzo

Art Smith

Joe Steranka

Roger Warren

MEDINAH, ILLINOIS

JULIUS MASON: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Medinah Country Club and our annual State of the PGA Association news conference. Today we have with us the president of PGA of America, from Kiawah Island Golf Resort in South Carolina, Roger Warren; and from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, the chief executive officer of the PGA of America, Mr. Joe Steranka.

Also joining us today from Bend, Oregon, the PGA of America vice president, Brian Whitcomb; from Ludlow, Vermont, PGA secretary, Jim Remy; from Jacksonville, Florida, the honorary president of the PGA of America, Mr. M.G. Orender. Our national officers are also joined by several members of the PGA of America board of directors and past presidents. I would also like to recognize the Illinois PGA Section Executive Director, Mr. Michael Miller.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, it's my pleasure to turn the microphone over to Roger Warren.

ROGER WARREN: Thank you, Julius. Good morning, everyone. It's really a pleasure to be with you again. This is the 90th Anniversary of the PGA of America. In 1916, 35 golf professionals got together to establish our organization, and they had a mission at that time to raise the professional standards of our organization as well as continue to grow the game of golf, and today, 90 years later, the PGA of America still has that as our mission as we move forward.

It's interesting, I'm not sure if all of you know this, but the PGA of America headquarters resided here in Chicago from 1930 to 1956 before moving down to Florida. It was also 90 years ago that the first PGA Championship was held at Siwanoy Golf Club in Bronxville, New York, and Jim Barnes was the first champion.

What I'd like to do right now before I go any further is we'd like to roll through a new 90th Anniversary PSA that's been done, and the voiceover on it is by Academy Award Winner Michael Douglas, and we'd like to show it at this time.

(Video played.)

ROGER WARREN: We really feel that this PSA really captures the essence of the PGA of America and the 28,000 members as they work every day to make sure the game of golf grows in this country, and we work every day to make sure the standards of our organization get better every year. We're very proud of that and our 90 years and 28,000 men and women golf professionals.

This year we're back at Medinah after a recent appearance in 1999. This is historic. We have 3,600 volunteers that are working this event. Medinah is very different than it was in 1999, and we're proud of the golf course. It's 7,561 yards, as you know, the longest golf course in major championship history, a par-72 layout. There were 300 trees that were removed in the transition from '99 to today. And it looks more like the original design, but it also helped to open up some of the sightlines as well as flow of air to the greens to allow the greens be more effectively grown and taken care of.

We go back to the original spot of the 17th green down by the water, which we think will be extraordinary in the final day as we come through this Championship, and the 18th green was elevated and moved a little bit. We think with the classic sculpturing of the bunkers, the golf course today is a new challenge to these players and in great shape.

And we would say, I was asked a question before, am I surprised about how much improved this site looks between '99 and today, and I would say no. We've said over the years that when we run a PGA Championship, we sit down at the end of the year and we evaluate it and ask what we can do it make it better. I would have been disappointed if we had gotten here to 2006 and we had not seen improvements in the presentation to the fans here, and we're excited about that.

We certainly expect another great championship with a great champion. Again we have the strongest field in major championship golf; we have 94 of the top 100 players, 63 international players representing 18 countries.

This is the only major championship that has an all professional field, and that field is made up also of 20 of our club professionals who earned the right to be here at Turning Stone Resort this year in New York when they played in our Professional National Championship, PGA Professional National Championship, and Ron Philo, the head professional at the Metropolis Country Club in White Plains, won in a three hole playoff with Alan Schulte.

Again, last year for the first time we initiated this, and we'll be recognizing at the awards championship on the green, or the awards presentation on the green the low club professional who makes the cut. Because of the playoff last year, we were not able to do it in the presentation on Monday. But we will be recognizing that winner at the presentation, at the presentation ceremony. We're proud of our club professionals here; five of them made the cut last year. They represent our 28,000 members.

We have three core values in the PGA of America; playing the game, teaching the game and being able to run the business of the game. Our 20 golf professionals who are playing in this event represent those standards at the highest level, and we're proud of their participation again.

Play Golf America is in its third year, and we are experiencing record participation this year. We had record participation in our PGA Free Lesson Month. We had also the Women in Golf Week PGA Free Fit and Trade Up and Take Your Daughter to the Golf Course have all been programs this year that have been very effective and we've had record growth.

We also believe that this is a role that's significantly unique to the PGA of America to continue to grow participation in this game. Our golf professionals day in and day out work diligently to add people to the roles of people playing the game and also make sure that the people who are playing the game have fun playing it and learn to play it better.

So we are excited about what Play Golf America is doing, excited about our golf professionals and how they are leading this effort to grow this game in this country.

In 2000 the PGA of America foundation created the PGA Community Relations Program. When we come into cities with our major championships, we want to make sure that when we leave, we leave something with those communities, leave something not only just money, but also leave an experience that helps those organizations see the PGA as the group that wants to continue to grow participation in the game and support their effort on a local basis. It allows charities to entertain many of their major supporters and help them also raise funds as they go forward.

Since 2000, there have been 680 charities that have benefitted by this program as we've gone to communities and we have the fund by raising funds and credentialing, we have given away more than $13 million since 2000 with this outreach program. I'm happy to report this year that there are 56 greater Chicagoland charities that will receive nearly $1 million in support.

I was fortunate to be out at Cantigny Golf Club on Monday. We had over 500 young people in our community outreach program with over 60 PGA Illinois Golf Section professionals giving instruction, there was a trick show and it was a great day for junior golf in the Chicago area, and I want to thank the professionals in the Illinois PGA Section for completing this program.

There's a complete report on this information in the media kit.

Finally I'd like to remind everyone that tonight we will present the PGA's highest award, the PGA Distinguished Service Award to Fred Ridley, the 58th President of the United States Golf Association. This is a great evening. We look forward to it and we look forward to recognizing Fred Ridley for his contribution not only to the game but his support of the PGA of America, and we have a growing relationship with the USGA. It will be held tonight at the Rosemont Theatre in Rosemont, Illinois. It will be a great night.

So right now I'd like to thank you and I'd like to invite Marino Parascenzo, representing the Golf Writers Association of America, to the podium to recognize our PGA Journalism Scholarship winner.

MARINO PARASCENZO: J.R. Carpenter once rehearsed my name for such an event, Parascenzo, Parascenzo, Parascenzo, then he said Mariano. He couldn't get Marino.

Thank you, everybody. Quick word about our scholarship program. I've got a great job. I'm spending about $90,000 a year of other people's money for a very worthy cause, journalism students around the country.

I should point out that my committee people don't get a penny. We give 100% right into the scholarships, of course. One of our founding groups, Joe Steranka, remember at Doral and Julius, we started the PGA of America scholarship. So I want to thank the PGA, Joe, President Warren, Julius, and Jim Awtrey, who is hiding back there somewhere, it's most generous of you. They give us $24,000 a year. I have six students around the country whom I'm going to introduce. And I'd also like to thank our committee members, Joe Giuliano of Philadelphia, who does Temple for us; Ed Sherman of the Chicago Tribune, who does Notre Dame; Art Spander, our president, and he's from Oakland, and he does San Jose State; Jack Barry, a former president from Detroit who does Michigan State; Melanie Hauser of Houston, freelancer, our secretary/treasurer, and she handles Texas. She handles the purse strings, too, and she doesn't get a cup of coffee out of me.

At this point I'd like to introduce our six recipients for this year, and I want you to know we're you're going to be reading their bylines someday and you'll say, I knew those kids when.

In alphabetical order, we have Anthony Anamelechi from Florida A&M. (Applause.)

From Temple University in Philadelphia, Samantha Davis. (Applause.)

From Notre Dame, Joey Falco. (Applause.)

From San Jose State, Christina Helena Louis Gullickson. (Applause.)

From Michigan State, Margaret Harding. (Applause.)

And from Texas at Austin, Brian Smith. (Applause.)

And we have one last question. If the PGA is all that good, how come I'm such a lousy golfer?

Thank you very much.

JULIUS MASON: Marino Parascenzo, ladies and gentlemen. Hook and horns, I saw that over there, a little PR going on.

Next up, the CEO for the PGA of America, Mr. Joe Steranka.

JOE STERANKA: Thank you, Julius. (Applause.) Well, thank you.

A long way from getting that degree in journalism from West Virginia University. I'm now in my ninth month as CEO, even though it's my 19th year with the PGA. As Roger said, the more things change, the more they stay the same. As we're committed to those two commissions of growing interest and participation in the game and upholding the standards of what it takes to be a PGA professional like Roger, who is our president, but also is the president of one of the world's leading golf resorts at Kiawah Island.

And this Championship is one of the those places in time where it really celebrates the promotion of the game of golf. You take the world's best players and a great course and the tradition of major championships, and it is appointment television. It is that one time of year where like the other three times that lead up to this well, maybe there's a fifth this year with the event in September, that people stop what they are doing and they pay attention and they follow each and every round.

In my background on the communications front and working with our broadcast partners and the media coverage, you see the investments that we make in this media center, the relationships we have that have been long term relationships with CBS and TNT, and certainly on the dot com side of it, you see a record level of coverage of the PGA Championship, 28 hours of CBS and TNT coverage. And this year, an exciting new addition with pga.com, 14 hours of broadband coverage.

So we're taking the CNN pipeline technology that the folks at Time Warner developed to make that the leading news portal on the Internet and bringing it to major championship golf. So people that it may cause a dip in productivity in the workplace for Thursday and Friday, but they are going to be able to choose from four channels, from some simulcast coverage, which has never happened before on TNT, to one channel that's devoted to golf instruction, the PGA Learning Center Channel. Our national director of instruction Rick Martino will be hosting that and is a coach of a lot of the players in the field.

I'm particularly proud of that channel because, again, I think it celebrates the expertise that PGA of America professionals have, whether you're working with the most elite players in the game, like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, or all of us that make up the 27 million that play the game.

We're also pleased that in this digital age, we're adding XM Radio as a partner of the PGA Championship and then the Ryder Cup, and more importantly, they are going to be doing a weekly golf instruction series for the PGA of America that, again, it will showcase the expertise that our members have in golf instruction.

I mention the long term relationships that we have with both CBS and TNT. This is their 16th consecutive year of covering the PGA Championship. And when you're working with partners on a long term basis, they go the extra mile, whether it was bringing High Definition coverage to the PGA Championship, as CBS and Turner did in 2004, or some of the new broadband investments that are being made this year.

Right after last year's championship, I sat down with Sean McManus and Rob Correa and the folks at CBS and reached a new agreement that took us through 2011 for that relationship, and so we're pleased to be working with them again, and again, our TNT relationship goes to that same period of time.

The media, you in the room and the folks in the television and Internet business are a big part of sharing what we call Glory's Last Shot each and every year.

Let me also talk for a minute about the relationship that growing the game has to growing the business of golf. Golf in America is a $62 billion a year industry. You put that in perspective, it's bigger than the mining industry or the motion picture industry. Now, a lot of people don't know that, and they are not supposed to know that. When they come to tee it up for their weekend four ball with their friends, we don't want them to know about the thousands of business decisions that a PGA professional made to make that round of golf enjoyable.

But there's a huge economy that golf drives, whether it's in tourism; here in Illinois with a million and a half golfers, 900 professionals at almost 800 different facilities, it's a big part of the State of Illinois's economy.

So just as the PGA Championship has a huge economic impact to every community we come to, week in, week out, the golf industry in Illinois and in America has a huge impact on our country in terms of providing jobs and generating tourism revenues and tax revenues, all of the things that help put food on the table and make it an entertaining place to play.

With all of that money out there in terms of the size and scope of the golf industry, you need good financial planning and good financial partners and accounting firms to keep track of all of that. And it's my segue into the final thing that I'm going to talk about.

We're known for running major championships, some of the biggest events in the world, and for years we've had the largest amateur championship. But we're rebranding it. We're recreating it. We're coming up with a new format and have a new sponsor that I'm pleased to introduce to you today.

The PGA RSM McGladrey Team Championship will begin in 2007. It's our hope that we'll have as many as 70,000 Americans that are going to play at up to 2,000 local facilities and three person facilities are going to come together to crown a club or course champion and they will come together with their host PGA professional to one of 41 section championships, so here would be the Illinois PGA champion that would then go onto a National Championship.

The same people that set up the course for the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup also set up the course for the National Championship there. But again, we couldn't do it without the support of sponsors. They play a big role in the business of tournament golf and helping us grow the game.

With that, I'm very pleased to introduce our new partner from RSM McGladrey, the chief marketing officer, Art Smith. Art?

ART SMITH: Good morning. Thanks, Joe. I appreciate the introduction.

Briefly, on behalf of RSM McGladrey, I'd just like to express how proud we feel to be a part of announcing today this golf tournament, the PGA RSM McGladrey Team Championships along with the PGA of America. As we considered our relationship and our entry into golf and our relationship with the PGA, a couple of things really stood out for us. As Joe talked about the developing long term relationships, we feel exactly that same way.

From our perspective, it really is about stewardship, role and history from the PGA in stewarding the very essence of the game of golf is very similar to the work that we do in the accounting and consulting business. But also, interestingly, or similarly interesting here, the 28,000 teaching professionals that support both the amateur and the professional golfer, it's the enablement of the success of that player.

The role that we play in business is we work every day over 8,000 RSM McGladrey employees with mid size companies, the owners and executives that run those companies, helping them achieve the success that they desire in business. So the parallels that we see between our two companies are very strong. It's an exciting announcement today about this particular tournament. But for us it is also a very long term relationship that we're very excited about with the PGA of America. So, thank you. (Applause.)

JULIUS MASON: Art Smith, Marino Parascenzo, Joe Steranka and Roger Warren, thank you all very much. And now, folks, the floor is open to you. We're happy to entertain any question that you might want to throw at us.

Q. Wonder if you could give us your assessment on how the Ryder Cup Team looks like it's shaping up and kind of looking back on the first year of this new points system, and do you think that do you necessarily mind that in Ryder Cup years that the week of the PGA also has a heavy focus from media and fan interest on what's going to happen as it relates to the Ryder Cup?

JOE STERANKA: I'll answer the first part of that. When M.G. announced Tom Lehman there in Amelia Island as our next Ryder Cup Captain, it really was part of a refocus by the PGA of America that was really intense during that period, and Roger was a big part of that; that we needed to put together a game plan to win back the Ryder Cup. The feedback that we had received from past Ryder Cup Captains and players and looking at what had happened over the last few years was that we needed an emphasis on the current year and an emphasis on winning. And it was something that Tom supported very much. He wanted winners to be representing the team.

So we feel very that that team that comes to the K Club that Tom is assembling is going to reflect the very best players playing their best golf and guys who know how to close the deal. So very comfortable with that.

With respect to the focus of the Ryder Cup and the PGA Championship, as you've watched over the last six weeks, the Ryder Cup is a subplot of virtually every tournament. There's a lot of movement. There was designed to be a lot of movement and really reflect those people that were playing their very best right up to the matches themselves.

It is a nice additional story. I'm sure it makes all of you work a little bit harder. But, no, we're very pleased with that being part of the story of the PGA Championship every other year.

Q. Joe, I know you guys have done a lot of things to try and improve the status and the quality of the PGA Championship. When you look back the last 10, 15 years, what do you think of the two or three things that were the most important to do, what you guys wanted to get accomplished?

JOE STERANKA: Well, hiring Kerry Haigh. Kerry and I have been together since 1989. He avoids the type of coverage that you all have kindly given him this week leading into it. He's a quiet guy, goes about his job, is incredibly focused and very professional. There's no detail too little that he won't look at.

So I think, you know, you need great staff to execute any plan. We had the support of the board of directors at the time to take back the control of the PGA Championship. It used to be very were very focused on simply showing up with the rules officials and setting the qualifications for entry into the field, and coming up with the purse obviously; but for the most part, the championship at that time was run by our host clubs, and we still couldn't run the PGA Championship without 3,600 volunteers and the tremendous leadership at the club.

But by bringing more staff on to the PGA headquarters team and having a guy at the top like Kerry Haigh, we were able to develop some consistency over the year and improve every year; just every PGA Championship, every Ryder Cup, we're trying to make better than the previous one.

I'm biased because I came up through the communications ranks and sat in some of those early meetings with Larry O'Brien, who, you know, I appreciate greatly what he did for me and for the PGA and who passed on this past summer. Those early meetings, they weren't all fun. You had a lot of very legitimate concerns about how we were equipping you to do your job, and we took that same approach to whether it was the players and how you serve the players, how you handle course setup. So Kerry got much more hands on in that.

The result is that we think it is not only the only all professional event; it is the most professionally run event in all of golf, and we're very proud of that.

Q. Has there been any consideration in the Ryder Cup points system to take into account strength of the field in helping to determine the points? Obviously there was a situation with the B.C. Open and the British Open this year.

JOE STERANKA: I'm going to let Roger answer it. He was a lot more involved than I was working with his fellow officers and Tom. So, Roger?

ROGER WARREN: I think that when we looked, we started through the process and we said, we want to look at what we've done in the past, what do we want to do in the future. One of the issues we dealt with was quality of field, and we really didn't think it was our responsibility to try to start rating the quality of the tournament fields that the Tour players are playing in. We knew that the Tour top to bottom had a lot of strength.

We were much more concerned with making sure that in the second year that we created a points system that was going to reflect the performance of the players in that second year. We wanted to value, as we said, the performance in the majors, and there's been a lot of discussion, too, about how the points are distributed; that we only distribute points to the Top 10 finishers, as opposed to the Top 10 Americans. And that was a directed decision, also, too, because as you all see, there's a continuing growth in the number of the European players and world players on the PGA TOUR.

And we made the decision to award only Top 10 points, points to Top 10 finishes. We realize right now I think only 59 percent of the points have been allocated because of the performance in the Top 10. We felt it was important to reward that performance against the players that our players would be playing in the Ryder Cup, and to make sure that that accumulation of points was in the context of the competition of the Ryder Cup and the players that would be playing in the Ryder Cup.

And we've watched it and we think that the system at this point is working the way that we anticipated that it would. I think it's really too early to judge whether or not the system will work or not until we get done with the Ryder Cup and we see what the final results are. We are pleased that what we put in place is, in fact, working.

We're coming into the PGA Championship. We still have the opportunity for a number of players through their performance in this Championship with the added value of the points to make the Ryder Cup Team, and I think that that's exactly what we were trying to do.

Q. Back to the Ryder Cup points system, two questions. One, depending on victory or defeat this year, will that make the determination if the points system needs to be changed in your mind? And two, did you actually talk to or how many players outside of Tom did you talk to about the rewarding Top 10s considering that most of the players now believe that the fields are so strong out there that beyond Top 10 should be something to be looked at?

ROGER WARREN: Let me deal with the first question first.

Every year after the Ryder Cup, we sit down, win or lose, and it turns out that seven out of the last 11 and four out of the last five we've been in a losing situation, so it changes some of the dynamics of the evaluation. We'll look at it when we get done with the Ryder Cup and see how we performed and whether or not the system the determination of whether or not the system was right or wrong will be a very careful evaluation based on what we see as performance.

But that's a normal process for us. We do that every year when we look at performance of the Ryder Cup, and we'll do that again.

The discussion with players is ongoing. It's not a formal process. But we have relationships with the players. We talk to them frequently. Like any other situation, there's a lot of differing opinions. We do agree that the quality of the fields top to bottom and the quality of the Tour continues to grow. When you look at the great players around the world, not only on the PGA TOUR but the other tours that are there, quality of play continues to increase.

But again, we will evaluate giving out points just to Top 10 finishes and see how it works out. But right now we're very comfortable with where we are, the decisions we've made, and we expect a very positive outcome.

Q. What was I guess my first question is more, will defeat or victory be a determining factor on if this points system worked or didn't work?

ROGER WARREN: Yes. (Laughter.) I think it's an honest answer. Yes. When you look at it from the standpoint of performance, we think our responsibility as caretakers of the Ryder Cup from the PGA of America standpoint is to do everything that we can to provide the captain with the best team that he can get. We will talk to the next captain, we will talk to past captains, we will do an evaluation of it. Certainly our goal was to give Tom Lehman through this process the very best team that he can have to go out there and play the Ryder Cup. You always will look at it in the context of were you successful or not. I think we will look at it in that context.

Q. Before putting the new system in, did you look back and apply the new system to what would have been two years ago? In other words, would the team have been different with the current points structure?

ROGER WARREN: I think a lot of people did that. Yes. You would see when you look at

Q. Do you remember exactly who was and who wasn't?

ROGER WARREN: No, I don't.

But I can tell you, when you create a new system, we went back and looked at it. In any system that you do that's different, you create the potential for a different outcome, and in that evaluation, there was a different outcome. But you could not take the next step and make any assumption about the change in the outcome about what happened. But that system did provide that different players would have made the team when applying the current system.

Q. Guys, I know this is largely hypothetical, but your captain almost cracked the Top 10 last week. I'm wondering, I'd like to hear both of your thoughts on whether you think, had he made one more point, whether he could have played, should have played, and whether that's a realistic expectation in this era for a captain to go into the field of battle himself?

ROGER WARREN: We've had this discussion amongst ourselves and also with Tom and have taken the position that because of the process, the way it's set up for a player, any player, including the current captain of the Ryder Cup, to earn a position on this team is fundamentally what the system was designed to do. And we think that that would be a very positive reinforcement of the system that Tom Lehman as a player on the PGA TOUR would have played and earned his spot on this team.

It was exciting to watch it and to have the opportunity for that to be the case. And I still wouldn't count it out from being the case this week. I think that's what is so good about the process, that we're at the PGA Championship the last week of being able to earn points; there are a number of people in the field who can do it, and one of those is Tom Lehman.

In terms of the ability to do the job as a playing captain, the last playing captain was Arnold Palmer at Laurel Valley. That's a long time. Does that mean that it is not possible today? We think that under the circumstance, if Tom is comfortable with it, it can be done and we would support his effort.

But it would be his choice. We would firmly support that it would be Tom's choice and we would support him in that effort.

JOE STERANKA: The only thing I would add is we've hired or appointed the right guy at the right time. His play is only going to make him even more relevant to that team when it comes to crunch time, because he's played under pressure with them and against them, and I think it's going to make him a very powerful force, a very powerful leader, and that's what we need.

Q. Joe or Roger, is there a specific criteria now for, A, selecting the Ryder Cup Captain as in the case of Tom Lehman; and B, what criteria do you follow now for selecting the site for both the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup Matches?

JOE STERANKA: In terms of the site, we announced Oak Hill earlier this year. So we've got a great lineup. We're returning to some venues. We go back to Southern Hills next year. We go to Oakland Hills in 2008, Hazeltine in 2009, Whistling Straits in 2010, Atlanta Athletic Club in 2011. Roger is going to host us at Kiawah in 2012 and Oak Hill in 2013.

As part of the long term agreement we forged with Whistling Straits, we'll go back to the PGA there in 2015. So 2014 is the next PGA Championship that is open. I don't think you'll see our philosophy change. You'll see a mixture of those old, traditional clubs and some new sites.

We like as I mentioned before, we like long term partnerships. Medinah is a spectacular venue in every sense of the word; in terms of the course itself, the people that support it and the infrastructure you have to do all of the things you need to do for a big, modern, international sports event. So from the site standpoint, I don't see much change there. But we've got a few years before we need to do anything for 2014.

ROGER WARREN: I think when you look at the past Ryder Cup Captains that we've selected, they have been major champion winners. Many of them have been PGA Champions. They have been in an age group that is pretty consistent. They have been Ryder Cup past Ryder Cup players and performers.

As we go forward, I think you could identify some of the things we look for, but maybe the most important thing we then look for is the intangible leadership ability; the ability to take a group of people and motivate them. And so as we go forward, we know that there are a number of great players who meet those criteria, and we will continue to look to look to continue the record of having great Ryder Cup Captains, and I think that's something that will continue in the future.

Q. You mentioned the upcoming schedule. You guys were here in '99 and you're here in 2006 and the Ryder Cup in 2012. Is it safe to assume or is it likely that you guys are going to be here every six to eight years with the PGA and maybe towards the end of the 10s or whatever, towards the 2018, 2019, somewhere around that range?

JOE STERANKA: I won't commit to that, as much as you and the Chicago folks would like us to. As I said, we like long term partnerships. We like Medinah as a facility. We think it's going to play out very, very well this week. It will be a great site for the Ryder Cup in 2012, and sometime between now and then, we'll be figuring out if we're going to come back here and when.

Q. Joe, I'll direct this to you. The last time we were here at Medinah, there was quite a fuss about the finances and the funds generated by the Ryder Cup and whether the players had any control over them, and four players pretty well got hung out to dry for their opinions. As you look back on that seven years ago, were they right to bring that up?

JOE STERANKA: The business of our championships has grown so much, and you know, people didn't know much about it. It's fair that players would ask those types of questions. I think that, also, it resulted in sharing of a lot more information with players, a lot more information in future Ryder Cup Captains. Jim Awtrey said, and I echo it, that we're not going to apologize for being very good tournament administrators. Without the PGA Championship foremost, and then the Ryder Cup to a lesser extent, we wouldn't have the net income that we need to do all of the things to support our members and recruit and train young men and women to manage all of those businesses of golf and grow the game.

I think the other part of it is since 1999, we've launched many new industry programs, whether it's Play Golf America on the consumer side or a certified professional program and a huge employer support program for those people that employ PGA members. So there's more of an understanding of what the PGA of America does with all of the money. We're a not for profit association, so we're kind of bound to spend all of the dollars we take in, anyway.

Looking back, those were fair very questions. It led to some very frank discussions and creating a Ryder Cup charity program which is a very big success and a more open dialogue.

Q. Joe, are you concerned or are you taking a look at how the Ryder Cup will be affected in two years with the whole FedEx Cup scheme with regards to basically forcing players to play a lot at the end of the year and then a week off and then potential playing in a Ryder Cup? And also, have you spent time or energy on trying to quantify or measure the results of things like Play Golf America in regards to bringing money back to your membership?

JOE STERANKA: On the Ryder Cup question, yes, we've made it clear to the PGA TOUR we are not happy with the scheduling for 2008; that we were not able to achieve a one week gap between their big TOUR Championship and the Ryder Cup, which we don't think is good. We would like to have our players have one week off to kind of regroup. And, so, that is what it is. We'll deal with it. But we would prefer to have one week in between, and I think that's in place for the subsequent years, at least over the next six years of this current PGA TOUR agreement.

How players will react to the new PGA TOUR schedule remains to be seen, but we're going to watch it; if it has an impact on the Ryder Cup that we think we need to address further, we'll address it.

Second question, on Play Golf America, all of the things that we're now launching in the association and Play Golf America, keep in mind, is very similar to two other initiatives we've done in our 90th year. When you celebrate your 90th anniversary, you look back some of the high points, and there have been a couple of times where the PGA of America and our members were asked to step up and help grow interest and participation in the game because of a sluggish economy or the aftereffects of a World War.

So Play Golf America is the basic blocking and tackling of providing a welcoming a great, positive welcome to the game, a series of lessons, and then an on course playing experience that could be a three or a six or a nine hole scramble. And we found that that improves the retention rate from 50 percent to 80 percent, and it dramatically increases rounds played. I can't remember the exact number, and I don't want to make a mistake, so we'll get you the number afterwards. It does increase rounds played. It does increase money spent on additional lessons and merchandise and greens fees.

Our PGA Free Lesson Month promotion averages about a $4,000 lift to a facility that participates in PGA Free Lesson Month.

We think that's a good combination of the art and science of the golf profession; that our members are very good when it comes to the art of teaching people how to play and making them enjoy the game, and we're trying to address the business side, as well, and what's the best way to manage that.

JULIUS MASON: Roger Warren and Joe Steranka, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks very much for joining us.

End of FastScripts.

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