home jobs contact us
Our Clients:
Browse by Sport
Find us on ASAP sports on Facebook ASAP sports on Twitter
ASAP Sports RSS Subscribe to RSS
Click to go to
Asaptext.com
ASAPtext.com
ASAP Sports e-Brochure View our
e-Brochure

U.S. OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP


June 14, 2006


Carlos Frestan

Jeanne McCooey

Jay Mottola

Edwin Padro

Jason Wallace

Karis Weston


MAMARONECK, NEW YORK

RAND JERRIS: It's a pleasure to welcome some of our friends from the Metropolitan Golf Association this morning to the interview area here at the 2006 U.S. Open. They will be here about a very important and accomplished Junior Golf program on this golf course that the MGA has coordinated for several years.

I'm pleased to be joined by the executive director of the Metropolitan Golf Association, Jay Mottola, and I'll turn it over to him and ask him to say a few words about the program.

JAY MOTTOLA: Thank you, Rand. First of all, the Metropolitan Golf Association, other than the USGA, is the second oldest amateur golf Association in the country. We've been around for over 100 years and do things you'd expect us to do provide tournaments and handicapping course rating services for area golfers and our member clubs, and we really represent about over 500 clubs and about 140,000 golfers here in the tri state metropolitan area.

In the early 1990s, the MGA created a separate charitable foundation, the focus of which is educational programs and junior golf programs.

When we started that foundation, we wanted to identify some things that were a little unique in the junior golf area. Before I get into that, I think any time you have kids interact with the game of golf, we think the results are positive, positive for the game and positive for the kids that are participating.

But to be honest, there are a lot of junior programs, a lot of clinics, a lot of brief exposure to the game, and we were looking for something that would give a little more depth and meaning to the experience of having kids interact with golf.

We created a program called GOLFWORKS, which is a student intern program. We're very proud of the program and proud of what it's done for the participants. Just a little bit about the program, it takes kids who normally wouldn't be exposed to the game and certainly wouldn't be exposed to careers in the golf industry and puts them in summer internships at our member clubs. We think these are real meaningful experiences. We try to get kids that are freshmen, sophomores in high school, while they're just starting their careers and things, so I think it's the right time to reach these kids.

When we started GOLFWORKS in 1994, we had 12 kids participating at six clubs within the metropolitan area. And now a little over 12 years later, we're very proud of the fact that in 2006 we will have over 200 kids participating at 85 MGA member clubs. So it's a real meaningful experience.

I think you can just imagine kids that wouldn't normally be exposed to club life and the game interacting with people in the golf industry, golf professionals, golf superintendents, club managers, interacting with members of clubs, people that are very successful. We just think that that interaction is very important, very meaningful, and again, a great opportunity for the kids.

Just in the way we've structured the program, and Jeannie McCooey is here with us and has been helpful in helping to grow this program, even preparing the kids to interview, preparing the kids for their first work paper situation, preparing kids who might be working with the golf course superintendents to get the responsibility to be there at 6:30 in the morning and working on things like transportation.

Again, we just think GOLFWORKS does a wonderful job of interacting deserving young kids with our member clubs and the game of golf in a very positive way, and we're very proud of what that program has been able to accomplish.

Rather than me tell you more about the program, we just have some of the kids introduce themselves and tell you a little bit about their experiences with GOLFWORKS and where they've come from. We might start with Carlos.

JEANNE McCOOEY: Carlos, introduce yourself and then I'll give you a little bit more background information.

CARLOS FRESTAN: My name is Carlos Frestan. I'm 17 years old and I'm currently a junior at Harry S. Truman High School in the Bronx. I've been involved in the golf course program for the past three years and I've had a steady job there in the summer. I've been working at the Mosholu Golf Club. I've held various jobs there from teaching kids in The First Tee program how to play golf and introducing them to the game, to working on maintenance, helping maintain the golf course, and GOLFWORKS program itself has helped me gain more confidence. It's helped me stay more focused in school, and just taken a more active role in my community because they help me volunteer and everything.

JEANNE McCOOEY: Just a little more about Carlos, who's a great representative of this program and what it can do. Carlos was born in Nicaragua, was raised in the Bronx and began in the Golfing Schools program and that's how he became involved in The First Tee and the GOLFWORKS program.

Really from the beginning, we recognized Carlos as a very outstanding young man. And through really lots of hard work, he always impressed people with his work ethic and his enthusiasm, and through that we were able to obtain a scholarship for Carlos for the Petty School, a very exclusive Petty School, which is a very unique experience for someone who was raised and grew up in the Bronx.

After completing two years at the Petty School, Carlos is now back home in the Bronx finishing his high school education. And throughout his GOLFWORKS internship, he's just been a great spokesperson. And I encourage you, in your packet, there's a speech that Carlos wrote. He's spoken many times on behalf of GOLFWORKS, but he wrote a speech for our lunch reception for our capital campaign. He spoke in front of hundreds of people, Mayor Guiliani, Donald Trump. I wrote his mom, and I said, "Do you want me to write some stuff out?"

She said, "No, Carlos has written some stuff out."

Carlos wrote every word of that speech, and I sent it back and said, "I wouldn't change a word." You can take a look at it in your packet.

"I was born in Nicaragua and raised in the Bronx. My voice representing all the inner city youth, who without the programs like GOLFWORKS would never have opened doors, opportunities, and a chance to see the results of hard work, never really learned the tremendous impact of self respect, responsibility, leadership, goal setting and the game of golf."

So he's a really extraordinary young man.

Next I'd like to introduce Karis Weston, who is also a current GOLFWORKS intern.

KARIS WESTON: My name is Karis Weston. I'm 18 years old. I currently work at Pelham/Split Rock Golf Course. I recently graduated from high school in the Bronx and in the Fall, 2006, I will be attending SUNY Albany College studying in the field of communications.

JEANNE McCOOEY: Karis actually started her golf course internship at Pelham Country Club. When they were undergoing construction last year, we moved her over to Mosholu Golf Course. And Karis, even though she didn't really have a background in golf, just by being around it on a day to day basis has taken up the game of golf and you can see her practicing. What's happened this year is this war over Karis because Pelham is now back in business and they want Karis so bad. Mosholu wanted her back. Pelham won and they've actually hired Karis on their own payroll, which is great for us because we can now add another kid to the golf course payroll.

It's just another thing that can show you the opportunities that can open up for these kids. We're going to help Karis get a Westchester Caddie Scholarship when she's in school with GOLFWORKS, and she's decided to major in communication at SUNY Albany, so she's another outstanding representative of our program.

Our third is a graduate of the GOLFWORKS program. He came through the program and graduated two years ago, and his name is Edwin Padro. Do you want to say a few words?

EDWIN PADRO: I'm 22. My name is Edwin Padro, I'm 22. I'm from the Bronx, New York. I am a junior at the College of Mount St. Vincent, and I worked for two years at Mosholu Golf Course. I helped coordinate The First Tee program, another junior golf program, that is facilitated at Mosholu.

JEANNE McCOOEY: Edwin came to us from the New York Institute For Special Education in the Bronx, and really from the very start we recognized Edwin as a very extraordinary young man. His work ethic was like nothing we had ever seen, nothing you could give him that he didn't handle beautifully. He worked very long hours and soon became so indispensable at Mosholu that they hired him on a full time basis or on a permanent basis for The First Tee. So he wound up starting in GOLFWORKS, but then began working with First Tee.

While he was at school, he maintained a 3.5 grade point average, served as president, Valedictorian of his class, graduated with an academic and a leadership scholarship. He was born with a disorder called corneal dystrophy and he's legally blind. He's now successfully in college and we're hoping to get him back on the payroll at First Tee this summer.

JASON WALLACE: My name is Jason Wallace. I'm 27 years old. I was in one of the original GOLFWORKS groups. I started in the Summer of '96 and '97. I worked at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale. There, I was a bag room attendant and worked primarily in the pro shop. I learned a great deal at Quaker Ridge, just about the client interaction and the stuff that I learned in the pro shop about merchandising, invoicing, dealing with different customers.

From there, my first two years of college I actually graduated from SUNY Albany. I was an economics major, and my first two winter breaks there I worked at the MGA headquarters in Elmsford doing various administrative office duties, and that helped me on to now.

I worked for years at CitiGroup and recently I changed jobs and now I'm a consultant at the Bank of New York on Wall Street, and MGA was definitely a foundation for all of it.

JEANNE McCOOEY: Jason, we're so proud of Jason. He was really one of our initial golf course interns when we really didn't know what to expect from this program. He really has turned out to be a tremendous representative. Jason is also the kind of kid who's understood the importance of sharing what he has learned from GOLFWORKS with new interns and comes back every year when we have our golf course orientations, and talks to our current students and explains to them what they should be getting out of GOLFWORKS, what they can get out of GOLFWORKS, and the kind of opportunities that GOLFWORKS can open up.

Jason also was the recipient of the Westchester Caddie Scholarship as a result of his internship with GOLFWORKS, and to show you what networking can do, Jason's sister Janelle now works in our office.

And to tell you the truth, we get dozens of applications from kids every year, and you look at some of them, you don't look at some of them, but because we knew Jason and his work ethic, we looked at her application and we paid attention and we hired Janelle, and she's got the same kind of great work ethic.

But again, these kids cannot just have an impact on their own lives, but they can impact kids that come after them because of their work in the GOLFWORKS program.

But all of these kids I think are just great representatives of the kind of opportunities that can open up to the students in GOLFWORKS and the connections they can make, the networking they can develop, friends they can make, and also just the financial opportunities that it can provide, and also, the idea that it can open up to them career choices that they didn't even know existed.

Most of these kids probably never knew what a golf course superintendent did or what a club manager did, and we've had a number of graduates from GOLFWORKS that have gone on to careers in the golf industry. We have half a dozen kids studying to be golf course superintendents right now. We have three students that have gone on to culinary school, two have gone into club management, and a number of other students have gone on to golf related careers. So it really did help change the direction of their lives.

RAND JERRIS: Thank you.

Jay, could you tell us a little bit about the funding for the GOLFWORKS program?

JAY MOTTOLA: Yes. Actually the way GOLFWORKS works is that all of the participants are actually employees of the MGA Foundation. We do that to make it very easy for the clubs to participate, and we're actually paying their salary. At the end of the year, if the club is happy with the experience, they pay back a portion of that salary to us, so the participating clubs help fund it.

But one of the things that I think is important to make here at a USGA function is when we got started with the GOLFWORKS, the USGA grants program was really critical to us getting this program off the ground. I think in the first five years, the USGA grants totaled almost a quarter of a million dollars to help us launch and expand GOLFWORKS, and without that initial funding and seed money from the USGA, it would have been very difficult for us to support this kind of program.

Other than that, our foundation and GOLFWORKS are supported by individual donations from local golf communities. We have a number of corporations who participate and sponsor GOLFWORKS interns, and each year we run a golf outing specifically to help fund the GOLFWORKS program. And in 2005, a year ago, we were lucky enough to host it here at Winged Foot. We had 200 players participating in that outing, did a great job in hosting it, allowing us to use both of their fantastic courses. So that's another important funding ingredient for us.

Q. Question for Karis. Tell me about how you first got interested in golf and what it's meant to you to now be working on a somewhat regular basis.

KARIS WESTON: Well, I was introduced to the golf program through my father. A good friend of his works at the golf program, so he told me about it and thought it would be a good opportunity for me. Basically, it taught me responsibility because before I wasn't I was kind of lazy and always staying at home, and then finally when I got into working, it taught me to deal with patience, dealing with different customers, and also different language barriers, because we have different customers of different races. It just taught me responsibility and patience basically.

Q. Carlos and Karis, could you guys describe your first day at work, if you can remember that, the emotions you felt, really what it was like and how it may be different now?

CARLOS FRESTAN: Well, my first day, I was very nervous because I didn't know exactly what to expect because I never really worked before. All I remember is my mom telling me to be there early. So I woke up well, I had to start around 8:00 I think it was, so I woke up around 5:00 o'clock, not by my choice (laughter). I got there quite early, about an hour early, and I just remembered everything my mom told me, make sure to find out who my bosses are, simple things, what I'll be doing while I'm there, my hours and when my lunch break was. That was my idea, of course (laughter).

I was just quite nervous, but at the same time, I was very excited. The fact that I was actually going to be earning a paycheck and bringing some money home, so I was very excited, also.

KARIS WESTON: Like Carlos said, it was nerve wracking because it was my first time working, as well, and I really, like, had never worked before. Being at the golf place, I guess, I think I was the only person working in the pro shop at the time, and my bosses were running in and out. So basically when I answered the phones, I really had no idea what to do. But as I went throughout the workday, I got used to it and comfortable.

Q. And now your emotions when you go to work? How has it changed throughout the program?

KARIS WESTON: Well, I'm pretty comfortable, like, I know a lot of the customers that come in. Basically it's like a regular day, going in and saying, hi, how you doing, and answer the phones.

CARLOS FRESTAN: I've been working at the same place, the Mosholu Golf Course, for the last three summers. I'm very close to all the employees and my bosses. I've learned a lot of things, like how to deal with certain customers, whether they're in a good mood or bad mood. I have a lot of fun doing it, and I'm just more comfortable with it.

Q. Any of you interns or former interns can answer this question. I'm just wondering what your impressions were of golf before you started working with this program. The game sometimes has a reputation of being stuffy or a rich person's game. I'm wondering what it was and what it is now.

JASON WALLACE: I'll start. My impression when I was in high school was it was a very exclusive game. A lot of people I went to a pretty diverse high school and everything, but not a lot of people I think when I was just leaving high school, they started a golf team, but a lot of people in my high school didn't really have exposure to it. I was really into sports at the time, so I'd watch it on television, but I thought it was just one of those things I could watch on television but never get exposure to it.

Since being at Quaker Ridge, getting all the exposure that I did, meeting the different personalities and all types of people, I have a true appreciation for the game. I think it kind of mirrors my personality. Like, I'm a laid back person but very intense at the same time, and I think it's a very intense game and I have a great respect for it now.

CARLOS FRESTAN: When I started I was in the fifth grade. My teacher actually told my mother about golf and The First Tee program. That's how I got started.

To be honest, going to school, going to public school in the Bronx, I never even heard of golf, to be honest. Football, baseball, basketball, those are the main sports.

But at first, I didn't know exactly what to think about it. I wasn't too excited because I seen it on TV and it didn't look too exciting, to be honest. But once I started working and volunteering at the Mosholu Golf Club, I gained a passion for the game and I became quite good at it. I even competed in the Junior PGA TOUR, wasn't exactly the best, but I had a lot of fun.

I just love the game, and I'm even helping the younger kids now get into it, and I told my friends about it. I like to take them on the golf course sometimes. Whether they like it or not, it's a good experience for them anyway.

KARIS WESTON: I actually grew a lot of respect for the game, as well. Growing up in the Bronx, you never really hear about golf as much. I guess you can say growing up I was more into basketball and I used to run track, as well. In 9th grade when I started working at the golf program, I started to get more respect for the game and watch it, as well.

EDWIN PADRO: Like everyone else, I also thought it was boring (laughing). I don't really play, but I do have an appreciation for it. It was very relaxing. It seems to be intense.

Q. Each of you are serving in the capacity as ambassadors for MGA and The First Tee and GOLFWORKS. Do you go back to your communities, schools, friends and talk about the program, and are you also charged with identifying talent that could be directed towards this program?

EDWIN PADRO: Well, I was working helping to coordinate The First Tee program while I was still in high school, and I went back to my high school and I got my high school was elementary, junior, and high school all in one, so I went back and I helped some of the youth elementary school students to get involved in The First Tee program. And from what I hear, they were actually at the golf course yesterday, still. So that's like three years ago that I tried to initiate that, getting them into The First Tee Program, and they're still going at it.

Q. Are any of the members at Quaker Ridge, customers or clients of yours?

JASON WALLACE: They probably are. I don't recognize any of the names I've come across recently, but I'm pretty sure there are.

JAY MOTTOLA: Just to make a comment on that, one of the things, obviously we think this is a great experience for the participating kids, but I think golf in the media tends to occasionally get a bad rap for some of the things that we've talked about, being too exclusive, too expensive, too elitist. But this is a very positive way for clubs to interact with their local communities, so I think it's not only good for the kids and good for the MGA and the USGA, but it's great for the participating clubs.

I'd like to say, again, that 85 clubs participating, they are making a conscious effort to support this program, members of their staff are participating with the kids and helping educate them, so it's sort of a win win from all aspects when you look at GOLFWORKS.

JEANNE McCOOEY: Just if I could add one thing to that. On the clubs, obviously the kids make the program work, but it's the clubs that really step up and say, we're going to do this. Even when there's a problem with the kids, I have to say to a club, they've always said, no, we're not going to fire them, we're going to stick with this, we're going to work on this kid.

There's probably six or seven clubs in the Met area that have really kind of adopted kids, and three or four of them have actually sent kids to college on scholarship money or grant money that they raised at the club for the kid knowing they couldn't afford it. They really wanted this kid to succeed, two girls and three boys I can think of immediately. The club has said we're going to send them to college and taken care of it on their own. It's been a great two way street, both the kids and the clubs getting a great deal from it.

RAND JERRIS: For Jay or Jeanne, are there other state association that have similar programs? Have they spoken with you on the administrative side if another association was looking to get a program like this started, what would you have to say?

JAY MOTTOLA: I think one of the things that we've done, and it's basically through Jeanne's leadership, and I know we have Luke and Kelly with us who helped support the program, but they've done a terrific job in helping outline every aspect of the program. There's materials for the participating clubs, for the kids, there's evaluation forms. All of our procedures are very well documented, and we have shared those things with other golf associations. I know it's being used throughout the state of Connecticut. There's been the Washington, D.C., area that's asked us for materials and looking at it, and we're currently talking to people from Southern California who are interested in starting a similar program.

The people on the MGA staff have done a terrific job in organizing it and we're delighted to share it with other associations around the country, and a lot of the credit for that goes to Jeanne, who's done a terrific job growing this program.

JEANNE McCOOEY: We've gotten a lot of inquiries for GOLFWORKS from other associations and try to help them as much as we can. But the one thing about GOLFWORKS we have to say is when they hear the amount of paperwork involved, sometimes it scares them off a little bit. GOLFWORKS, the way it was created, it's a very one on one program. We meet every student, we interview every student. Every student has a recruiter that follows up with them all the time. It's very much hands on. And when you have 200 kids, you have paperwork, I 9s, W 4, payroll, tax forms, there's a tremendous amount of administrative work involved in it.

Some associations are a little hesitant to get started on it, and I just encourage them to start small. I know a lot of associations want to go out and impact 1,000 kids the first year, but this isn't that kind of a program. This program is small, we know it's small, we've grown it deliberately and slowly because we want to maintain a very personal contact with the students. But I think we have such a high success rate because we do that.

But it is an administrative challenge sometimes with all the paperwork involved. As you can see by the students up here, we really feel it does change lives and it's worth all the work that's put into it.

RAND JERRIS: For any of the four interns, from what you've said, some of you have participated in other Junior Golf programs like The First Tee. Could you talk a little bit about maybe some of the other programs you've participated in and how the GOLFWORKS program has maybe augmented your experience and what you gained from those other programs.

CARLOS FRESTAN: I've been part of The First Tee since fifth grade, like I said before. Working through GOLFWORKS and learning good work ethics, I've been able to actually learn how to teach other people what I've already learned. Like I said, I've taught the younger kids and I have introduced them to the game of golf, and I got a chance to share that.

KARIS WESTON: I haven't actually worked in any other programs other than the GOLFWORKS, but like Carlos said, it taught me good work ethics and communications skills and responsibility.

EDWIN PADRO: The only other program besides GOLFWORKS that I participated in was The First Tee, and through my experiences my first summer I sort of did, like, helped other kids who were the junior members of The First Tee program, but I'm not really a golfer and I really don't know how to golf, to be honest. I just have an appreciation for the game. So I wasn't much help there. But in the administration of the program, I helped a lot with organizing schedules. The last time I was working there, I was helping Jeanne at the Mosholu Golf Course with the payroll of GOLFWORKS members that were at the golf course.

So just from an administrative standpoint, like learning how to organize my schedule and how to be able to manage other people, I just learned those skills through GOLFWORKS and The First Tee program.

JASON WALLACE: Well, personally I didn't participate in any other programs other than GOLFWORKS, but to expound more on what I got from it, it was just so much at 15, 16 years old, to be interacting daily with judges and lawyers and doctors, I developed a relationship with the head pro at Quaker Ridge and I was able to I remember one summer with him and his fiance to go to the U.S. Tennis Open one evening with them after work. One of the doctors at the golf course invited me and the pros there over to his house in Greenwich one weekend for dinner, so I got so much exposure to various people that I wouldn't have otherwise gotten at that age. So it was a really good experience.

Q. For all four of you, did you have a career path in mind before GOLFWORKS came around? And if it were not for GOLFWORKS, what would you be pursuing at this point?

KARIS WESTON: Since ninth grade I had wanted to deal with forensics. I thought that was interesting, watching C.S.I. Miami, New York, and I love science. But working with GOLFWORKS, communicating with people on a regular basis, I have changed my major and actually want to work with communications and dealing with other people.

CARLOS FRESTAN: To be honest, I never really gave thought to what I was going to be when I grew up, or even cared when I was younger (laughter). But since working with the GOLFWORKS program and having people behind me and always trying to get me to start preparing for my future, I mean, I already know what I want to do when I grow up. I even picked out the college.

I'm only a junior, but I know what I want to do. I want to get my BSN. But first I know I have to graduate from high school. I will get my advanced high school diploma because I don't want to settle for a regular one. The GOLFWORKS program has got me motivated for the future. It's helped me avoid the pitfalls of inner city life. That's what I try to relate to my friends, that same message, that through some of these programs, try and get them involved, they can change their lives, also. It's helped me stay focused.

When I was in fifth grade when I first got started with The First Tee program, I know it taught me through the years to stay out of trouble and stay focused on my career and what I wanted to do with my future. That's something with the GOLFWORKS program and The First Tee I can help try to relate to my friends.

EDWIN PADRO: When I started, I was like in eighth grade, ninth grade, I worked at a camp upstate helping people with eye problems, and they also had special needs. And that kind of got me into the frame of mind of trying to be a psychologist to try to help those people.

But then I went on and I actually worked at the New York Yankees, and then working at The First Tee program, I like more the business aspect. So my career track right now is psychology with a concentration in organizational, which would be like human resource management, stuff like that.

So The First Tee program definitely did impact that and the GOLFWORKS program definitely did impact my decision in further pursuing the education in business but still going through with the psychology channel.

JASON WALLACE: With me, I had always known sometime in high school that I wanted to go into something business related, and I had a real passion for all sports. Like was stated earlier, the GOLFWORKS program exposed me to the simple things, like filling out an application, then dealing with various different types of people, office skills, so that translated those skills that I developed translated into me actually, through Jeanne, helping me get an internship in the World Financial Center one of my summers in college. And then through that job, that translated the next summer into my getting an internship on Wall Street, and then all these things culminating on my resume led me on afterwards in college to CitiGroup and now the Bank of New York.

So the GOLFWORKS helped me with that foundation. If I didn't have all those things and I had the regular mall job, which isn't a bad thing, I wouldn't have gotten the exposure that I did to go into "Corporate America."

Q. Jason, how do you convey that to 15 and 16 year old kids when you speak to them?

JASON WALLACE: I actually spoke to some this past fall, and I gave a similar example to that. When I had started the GOLFWORKS program, the Westchester Mall had just been built, so a lot of my friends were getting jobs at various food places there. I had this particular experience, and it gave me such great exposure that did translate well into me putting together a resume, developing just little office skills and stuff that they weren't getting that exposure to at that time.

The pay was really good, I was interacting with a different type of person every day, my communications skills developed tenfold, so it was overall a really good experience. Like I said, the money was great, it translated well on my resume and helped me in my career to where I am today.

JAY MOTTOLA: I would just like to say, I think it's always much more effective when we're talking to young people to have graduates or people that have gone through the program rather than some old guy like me trying to tell them what's important. I think having people like Jason come back and participate is a real key for us as we grow the program.

JEANNE McCOOEY: Just to add to that, for many of these young people that started GOLFWORKS, this is their first job, so that's intimidating enough. You add a Country Club atmosphere to it where they don't know a caddie shack from a locker room, and it's a very for many of these kids, it's a very intimidating environment when they first go into it, even more so than working in the mall.

And when kids like Jason and Carlos come to our orientations and they talk to the kids, I mean, you can see them sort of start to relax a little bit. They tell them it's okay and this is what you do and never go in the grill room if they say don't go in. They just kind of fill them in on the inner stuff. It's so much more meaningful coming from the kids because they can relate better to them. And you can see the kids when they come out of orientation, they're a little more relaxed and not as intimidated, and I think they go into their jobs with a little more confidence, and they continue to succeed and that builds on their confidence.

All of these kids up here have just been terrific in passing along information. They're almost like mentors to the new kids that come through the program, and that's been very helpful for us.

JAY MOTTOLA: Maybe just in conclusion, I'd just like to, again, emphasize how important the USGA grants program has been for GOLFWORKS, for our efforts at First Tee and they've helped golf associations around the country. I think it's one of those things that's sort of behind the scenes a little bit, but I think just recently they donated $50 million to these kinds of programs, and it's had a tremendous impact. And I think we're lucky that people like Tiger Woods and Michelle Wie are getting young people excited about the game of golf, and I think these USGA programs will generate excitement and interest in participating and a long term love for the game.

RAND JERRIS: Thanks for coming out and sharing your story with us today. Appreciate it.

End of FastScripts...

About ASAP SportsFastScripts ArchiveRecent InterviewsCaptioningUpcoming EventsContact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297