home

jobs

	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

BARCLAYS CLASSIC

June 6, 2006

Joan Blackwood

Ron Cross

Retief Goosen

David Howell

HARRISON, NEW YORK

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Good morning. My name is Joel Schuchmann of the PGA TOUR. On behalf of CA, the PGA TOUR and World Golf Championships, I would like to welcome you to Westchester Country Club and thank you for attending this morning's announcement. Joining us on stage this morning are Joan Blackwood, CA Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing; Retief Goosen, the third ranked player in the world; David Howell, the tenth ranked player in the world; and Ron Cross, PGA TOUR Vice President of Championship Management.

The game of golf provides a great opportunity to forge relationships on a global scale. Today I'm pleased to announce one of these relationships. I'd like to welcome Joan Blackwood at this time who will make a special announcement.

JOAN BLACKWOOD: Thank you, Joel. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming. Today is a very exciting day for CA. We are very pleased to announce that we have signed agreements with Retief Goosen and David Howell to join CA and be part of our sponsorship and platform with the World Golf Championship. Obviously having such elite global players as Retief and David help us speak to our customers and talk about CA in a way we've never been able to talk about before, so we're very excited. We look forward to the relationship and partnering with them throughout the upcoming years.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: We have a few questions that we'd like to pose to the forum up here and then we'll open it up to the media. First one is for Joan. How did CA choose Retief and David to be the face of the company's global golf program, Retief being from South Africa and David being from England?

JOAN BLACKWOOD: Obviously the fact that Retief and David are from outside the U.S. is very important. CA is a global corporation. In fact, more than 50 percent of our revenue and customers are outside the U.S., so it was very important for us to join the World Golf Championship because it is a global platform. We believe very much that golf is an international sport and it's growing in popularity outside the U.S., so this gave us an opportunity to do that.

We also think that Retief and David exemplify what golf is all about, which is really about integrity, sportsmanship and precision, and these two gentlemen do that very well.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: This question is for Ron. What can golf fans expect from this partnership and the title sponsorship of the WGC CA Championship at Doral next year?

RON CROSS: On behalf of the International Federation of Tours, we're excited to have CA involved. When you look at why the World Golf Championships were designed, it was to grow the game of golf around the world and to provide an opportunity for the best players in the world to come and compete. To do that, we're taking the CA Championship to Doral next year.

It's an exciting opportunity for us. It's an international city. It's got great golf fans down there, a great history of golf, and we're, again, thrilled to have the relationship with CA to spread the word about the relationship with the World Golf Championships.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: For Joan, how does this partnership along with the company's sponsorship of the World Golf Championships fit into CA's global marketing strategy?

JOAN BLACKWOOD: You may not know exactly what CA does, but we sell software to the largest organizations and governments around the world. Building relationships with our customers is key, and our customers are actually the people who run these companies. When you look at what they like to do, golf ranks very high, so being able to talk to them at work and play is extremely important to us. Golf obviously allows us to do that.

The other thing that's kind of interesting, there actually is a connection between technology and golf. If you think about the golf swing, it's actually deceptively simple but it's obviously very complex, and it's about unifying the club with the player. It's obviously what CA software does; it helps unify and simplify the management of IT for the largest organizations around the world, so we think there's a nice connection, both with our customers and also with our brand.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: For both Joan and Ron, the type of visibility and involvement CA will have at the WGC events, especially at the title event in Doral.

JOAN BLACKWOOD: We couldn't be more excited. Having a named championship for CA is incredibly exciting for any company. Being in Doral in March is an honor, and we're looking forward to it, and obviously being part of WGC. What's interesting is the other title sponsor companies, Accenture, American Express, Bridgestone are also our partners and also our customers, so it's a nice synergy to partner with some of the other great companies out there.

RON CROSS: It's a tremendous partnership for us to have someone like CA who is global in its reach, having offices in over 60 countries, and what the World Golf Championships bring is the opportunity to televise these events to over 140 countries around the world. I'll throw in March 19th through the 25th; it's 290 days if anybody wants to count down, so it's coming up quick.

We're excited to bring a partner like CA to Doral, and it's going to be a great event. It's terrific to have players like Retief and David involved and knowing that this event, the World Golf Championships, CA Championship specifically, features the top 70 players in the world.

What it's going to offer Doral is a terrific opportunity to see the best players in the world compete on such a great golf course, and we're excited.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: For David, one of the WGCs, the American Express this year, will be right outside London, and maybe you could speak to that a little bit, maybe just about the WGCs in general and what they do for global golf.

DAVID HOWELL: Well, obviously since the World Golf Championship events started up six or seven years ago now, it's been a great opportunity for us as players to play on the biggest platform and certainly enabled many of the international players to play in the biggest events with the best players in the world.

Obviously I'm delighted to have forced my way into that arena. It's going to be very nice for us to play The Grove later in the year, probably 40 minutes from where I live and Retief when he's based in England. I haven't actually played the course there, but it's a wonderful facility, and we come in the week after the Ryder Cup, and there's going to be some great interest with the fans, and it's going to be a well attended fantastic event.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: Retief, if you could just touch on global golf in the last five to ten years. You've been pretty much a global player for a lot of your career, played in Europe and Asia and South Africa and the United States. Just talk about your international career.

RETIEF GOOSEN: Yes, I love traveling around the world playing in different countries, South Africa, the Far East, England and then over here. CA being a global brand, it gives me a great opportunity to take their name around the world and help them out on that side. It's a great honor for me to be part of it and see if I can help out on the advertising side around the world.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: One last question for Joan. We see that the golfers have the CA logos on their golf shirts.

JOAN BLACKWOOD: Prominently displayed.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: How will these golfers be integrated into CA's golf program?

JOAN BLACKWOOD: Obviously we will be using their marketing materials, advertising, employee messages, et cetera, very important. But I also think, as I said, building relationships with our customers is very important, and I think David and Retief will help us with that, as well, and just bring awareness obviously to the WGC and the CA Championship event.

JOEL SCHUCHMANN: At this time we'd like to open to up to some questions now, and after the Q & A section we'll also break into one on ones so you'll have some one on one time with the players or Joan and Ron.

Q. Right now three of the four World Golf Championships are based in the U.S. As international players, would you like to see those events moved around the world a little bit more?

DAVID HOWELL: Well, I think in an ideal world certainly one of the events would possibly move around to different parts of the world, different continents. That's not going to be the case the next couple of years. They're great events wherever they're played. As international players we're delighted to have the opportunity to play in them.

I guess, as I say, ideally I think one of them would possibly be, but they're going to be great events, as well. The market is here, and the golf world has always been based around the American golf consumer, and that's why it's such an opportunity for us to play here. That's just the way it's going to be, I guess.

Maybe a few years down the line we might be able to sneak one back across the Atlantic or the Far East so the rest of the golfing world gets to see us play, as well.

RETIEF GOOSEN: I feel, also, that it's a shame that the world golf events don't travel a little bit more around the world, but I think for now, just to build the tournaments, it's better that they stick around here for a while and build on that and then from there on take them around the world.

End of FastScripts.

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297