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CN CANADIAN WOMEN'S OPEN CHAMPIONSHIPAugust 24, 2011Mike WhanMIRABEL, QUEBEC THE MODERATOR: Like to welcome Commissioner Mike Whan to the interview room. As some of you may or may not know, Mike has spent quite a bit of time in the Montreal area in his previous life in the hockey business. If you would, just kind of give us an idea of coming back here and what kind of memories it brings about. COMMISSIONER WHAN: Yeah, sure, Mission Hockey and ITech Hockey came together in 2004. And ITech is in Kirkland. So from 2004 to 2008, I spent every other week of my life in Kirkland. So I'd be here for a week and be in Southern California for a week. Not exactly the perfect family man travel plan to raise your kids, but I found that my weeks in January, February, and March tended to wain toward California, and my weeks in the summer tended to wain toward Montreal. But it was eerie getting off the plane from Dorval and going to the rental car. I did that for four or five years of our lives, and we sold the business in Christmas of 2008. But still a bit of a Habs fan from my time in Montreal. THE MODERATOR: If you would talk about this week. We have a defending champion in Michelle Wie who has he a long back story. What have you seen from Michelle in your couple years as commissioner? COMMISSIONER WHAN: You know, I've said this a couple times and I guess I've never said it in a press conference. Five or six years ago as a fan of the LPGA, I remember reading all the stories about how Michelle Wie was pushing hard and she was going to burn out and it was all golf. Was she ever going to grow up to be a normal kid? And I got to join the Tour a year and a half ago, and what I met was a 20-year-old kid who was going to Stanford, you know, getting a degree. Had a really healthy balance between what was important in her life and what was important on the golf course. I kind of feel one of these days I'm going to open the magazine and read the story that says she had the last laugh on everybody. She's going to be a college student. She's going to get a degree -- I'd love to have a degree from Stanford, so I'm jealous of her for that matter. While she did all that, she's one of the Top 10 players in the world. I think all of us know that Michelle Wie's best golf is in front of her. I'm excited to know that's probably going to happen while I'm commissioner, knock on leather. But I think at the end of the day it's pretty neat to see what a great balance she has in her life. I'm proud of her and excited to know that she's one of the true faces of the LPGA. THE MODERATOR: If you would, just before we open it up, just your thoughts on this week, this event, CN obviously a great sponsor for the LPGA. COMMISSIONER WHAN: The first thing I think about when I think of this event is it's really the National Championship. If I was Canadian and I felt like I paid enough taxes, I could almost be considered a Canadian for my time in Montreal, you've got to be pretty proud of what golf Canada and CN have done here because this really is a National Championship. I know there are 17, 18 Canadian players playing in this. It's all about giving back to the girls in the game. I don't know what the current Miracle Match is, but last time I looked it was over $1.2 million, and we haven't put a tee in the ground on Thursday morning yet. So for those of us who don't follow us week in and week out, and maybe you do, but if you don't follow us you might miss how special this tournament is. I mean, great sponsor, great TV. TSN today and tomorrow, CBC over the weekend. You get phenomenal give-backs in terms of charity. You get a real country feel. The apprehension and anxiety that goes on in player dining here in breakfast is big. Players want to win this. When you walk past the clubhouse and you see that banner of the winners over the last five or six years here, it's literally a Hall of Fame banner. You go back to Sorensen, Daniel, Mallon, Ochoa, more recently Pettersen and Kerr, it's an absolute who's who. I think there should be a pride that comes with this event. I don't think Canadians would allow me to call myself Canadian. But spending as much time as I spent in Quebec for the last five or six years of my life, there is a pride showing up to this tournament. I think they do the big things right, but more importantly they do the little things right. People will miss as they go through the turn styles just how much money is going back through charity. They're going to miss when they go through the turn styles just how much little extra attention has been given to the golf course selection, the set-up, making sure that it's right for the players and they're able to focus on golf. Maybe that wasn't what you were going for in the question, but you handed me a softball there, and it really is a special event. Q. What about the overall landscape for the Tour, both given the current economic situation and the needs of the Tour and where you want to take the Tour? COMMISSIONER WHAN: That's a great question. It's really been all consuming in my first 18 months. That question really wraps up the focus there. I would tell you that when I started at the LPGA, I built a little six-point strategy. Point number one on that strategy is called T&T, it's stands for tournaments and titles. So number one thing we're about is making sure we have tournaments and quality title sponsors. I tell people that's easy to write. But number two is really the next big piece which we call role reversal. Role reversal is the cultural change I wanted to make to make sure we had more T & T. Role reversal means we spend more time at the LPGA focused on what's important to CN than we do on where the camera will be placed on 17, what pin placement will be on number 10. If you really want to be a business partner, you've got to be a partner. And as my wife reminds me regularly, partnership is a two-way street. She usually reminds me when I'm on a call from another city or country. We decided if we want to have more tournaments and titles, we have to be a better business partner. To be a better business partner, you have to spend more time focused on your partner and less time focused on the golf tournament. At the end of the day, we put on a lot of great tournaments. But we want to make sure when we leave that tournament sponsor understands what we do, we did for them. But probably will shock some of you but 150 gals when they walk in here and sign up for this event what they're going to get is a customer profile sheet. It's a two-page sheet. On top of that sheet it says who's paying for this week. Not welcome to the CN Canadian Open, not who is the title sponsor. But we talk about who is I paying this week, somebody who is paying the bills. We talk about what's important to them. We talk about what's going on in their business. We show pictures of Claude and some of the other senior people. We talk about what they're going to talk about in their board room after they're gone. We talk about who to write your thank you cards to, what to tweet, who to Facebook. Why? Because that's what a good business partner should be about. When they go to Wal-Mart P & G in Northwest Canada, they'll get a different customer profile sheet because what's important to them is usually very different. Back to your original question, I've been pretty focused on domestic events. I feel we've had a good expansion the last four or five years in worldwide expansion. I feel committed to being a global Tour. I think when we play around the world, we grow the game around the world. I think there is a reason great young golfers are coming out of Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Korea. We've made commitments to go there. We've made commitments to growing the game an important aspect to the LPGA. At the same time, I want to make sure we don't wake up and not have a home, and North America is our home. You'll see us playing more events in North America because it's a focus area of ours. You're right, the economic challenges of the last couple of years have been unique to say the least. But as I always tell people, everybody else who is doing business is doing business at the same time, so it's not a good enough excuse for us not to continue to grow our business. You'll hear about new tournaments in 2012, and old tournaments coming back, and I'm excited about both of them. Because I think both of them have required us to be a better partner. Q. Can you just speak to the process and the decision that led up to the Evian Masters becoming the fifth major in 2013 and was this event considered to be reinstated at all? COMMISSIONER WHAN: I think the interesting thing is really no one's ever really talked about is the discussion with Evian dates back five, six years. And I think a lot of people talked about what happened in the last few years in my discussions with them, but certainly those discussions have been going on for quite a while. I think it would not come as a shock is the discussions about elevating tournaments start and go on for quite a while, and there is certainly more than Evian in our discussions about how to take tournaments to the next level. I think in Evian's case, I give them credit for building a legacy, like a lot of our quality cases. They've really created something special in France. They've also -- I've also said that Evian, I think Evian changed what LPGA players play for in terms of purses. They set the new benchmark for purses and continued to push that envelope. They were the first to reach out and create the most global playing field in terms of the globalness of their field. Then to be honest with you, when I got there and we started talking about what it would mean to be a major or not, I created a list of ten things that I think stopped that tournament from reaching the next level. Some of those things were incredibly expensive and incredibly time consuming, and I told them I'm not sure it would be worth the effort or the money to expand to a major. But I'm not here to talk into or out of it. I know over the course of the last two years we've kind of overcome many of these things. And I felt that on the women's side -- and I can't speak to Finchem or the men or any other sport -- when we play a major, we tend to get even more exposure, especially when we play outside the U.S., and I thought our Tour deserved it. Our players deserved it, and it would be good for our sport long-term to get another healthy dose of media coverage, trial time network coverage, and that kind of global field. Q. Where did they fall short in terms of the new criteria, if you will, if it did fall short? COMMISSIONER WHAN: You're talking about this tournament? Q. This one used to be a major. COMMISSIONER WHAN: I've said many times in certain cases and I'd put CN in that case. If we put major in front of this tournament, I don't know how much or what would change. Meaning if you sit and talk to somebody about elevating the tournament, generally you talk about a larger investment and what they get is a better field or better TV or better course and they lose some control. Because it's a major, we get more involved in who plays and course set-up. Sitting across from golf Canada or CN is a pretty interesting conversation, okay, let's talk about your field. Well, 10 of our Top 10, 20 of our top 20. You've got to get to 65 before you don't have a player here. So 50 of the top 50 LPGA players in the world are in this event. 50 for 50, so I know we can't fix that. The golf course is spectacular. The tournament is spectacular. The media coverage is solid as you know. So one question is how much does this elevate, because tough make sure that's a good rate return for our business partner. It doesn't mean we stop talking about it. It doesn't mean it's not something that could happen long-term. But at the same time as a business partner, I want to make sure I can make this event be all it can be. I don't want them nor should they have to spend money that doesn't payback, if you will. Right now you look at field and course and the way the players feel about it and the history of who has won this, I'm not sure you can be a whole lot better, you know? I'm pretty sure if you called it a major and you guys walked in here, well, we finished the end thing. But it's so spectacular that it's hard to think about it being better. Q. You're saying it's not an important issue, it's more of a word than anything else? COMMISSIONER WHAN: Again, it depends on who you ask. But if I were sitting in Golf Canada's shoes or CN's shoes -- and we've talked a lot about it, and we'll continue to talk about it because I think there is interest on both sides of saying the what ifs. But you've got to make sure that it's all worth it. Like I said, a lot of tournaments will talk to you about it because what they're thinking is I'd like to have 20 of the top 20 there, where we have media from around the world writing. I want players talking about this tournament three weeks before they get here. I would say in CN, Canadian Women's Open, check, check, check already. You know that. You guys walk around and see that yourself. It is pretty special. Mike asked me this morning when I walked in. He said you always have one word for tournaments, what is your one word for this tournament? And I said, pride. He said what do you mean by pride? I said as Canadians you should be pretty proud of what this is because this is a pretty special National Championship. And don't kid yourself, the players in player dining over there and hitting balls on the range, they want this one. That's what you want, you know? Everybody wants to say last year was Michelle's, but I'm this year. And I'm sure Michelle wants to say, nope, it's mine until you take it out of my hands. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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