1133: LPGA Commissioner Craig Kessler

[MUSIC] Better than most. Better than most. [MUSIC]

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the no-langup podcast.”

Soli here, spent some time out in Dallas last week with the LPGA Tour Commissioner Craig

Kessler, Cody and I went out there. It's a home game for Cody, but met up at Trinity Forest and in-person interviews sit down, full hour here with the new Commissioner of the LPGA Tour, talking about his agenda. We really visit what happened at Hilton, talking about schedules, marketing, and all the changes that are coming to the LPGA Tour, greatly appreciate Craig's time, greatly appreciate everyone tuning

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limited time offer. Founding for the delay, here's our conversation with Craig Kessler.

Alright, here's what I want to know first, like the literal actual day one of the job.

What do you do?

“Is there a blueprint on your desk of like, here's how to be the LPGA Tour Commissioner?”

What is day one on the job? Actually look like. It was a great day. Got on an airplane, flew to Orlando, Florida, drove to Daytona Beach, and walked into what was just an unbelievable atmosphere.

Place was decorated, the staff were there, I think we had a food truck for lunch, and honestly day one was entirely dedicated to the team, walking the halls, and getting to know the staff. Do you feel like you knew what to do, like I'm honestly, we'll get into the actual LPGA Tour stuff, but I'm just so curious about this job in general, did you feel like you knew

what to do on day one or like was there a big learning curve? You know, I'm sure there is a learning curve of course, but take us to like, where, you know, when your playing gets, I actually get puts into place. There's no paint by number approach here, no formulaic playbook that was laid out, and frankly I'm still on that learning curve.

I had ideas and thoughts, I'll give you a few examples, again, getting to know the staff, reaching out to our partners, being super visible with our players, walking the driving range is often as possible in those first few weeks and months, but, but candidly, the plan came together as we were flying the airplane. How does, you know, in what direction does this go more, where, you know, you interview

for the job, yet there's a also a recruiting of you for the job, in terms of, were you able to dictate, you know, hey, if I'm going to take the job, here's how I want to do it, here's how we're going to do it, like I need to have the runway to do this, or, you know, were you hired to execute a certain plan? Is that question makes sense?

“Like, where does it, you know, where does the ball get passed there?”

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Look, I think the best interview processes are like dating more than anything else, where each side can ask to feel the other side out, and hopefully both sides all love by the end.

There was never a point where the interview committee said, this is what you're being

hired to do, and there was never a point where I said, this is exactly what I'm going to do. He did is we asked the ton of questions of each other, talked about past experiences, ideas, hopes, dreams, and by the end, it felt like each side had confidence in the other, and here we are, nine months later.

What, no, nine months in kind of where, how would you say the plan is going, if you were to picture where you'd like to be, nine months from your start date, how would you say you're, you're doing, and what you wanted to execute, and how what you've been able to put into action? Yeah, I think it's a tale of two cities on the one hand, incredibly proud, and I think

our team collectively, and when I say team, it's our staff, it's the players, and what they've done, it's our partners, and how they've leaned in. I think we're ahead of where I expected we would be, nine months in this coming season,

of what fans will see will be amazing, and it was a fast change, is that, I think something's

happened quickly, it was impressive, totally, and it took a village to make it happen. You look at some of the people we've recruited to our team, who I'm sure we'll talk about. Chad Coleman is CMO, and Casey Daniel is Chief Administrative Officer, Monica Fee, leading sales, so we're ahead, in one sense, on the flip side, I have this expression

that comes to mind from time to time, which is the paranoid and hair at the earth. I wake up almost every night at 2 o'clock in the morning, staring at the ceiling, wondering, like, what's next and how do we go faster? What is next then? Well, for now, it's execution, it's all the things that we've talked about over the

last few weeks and months related to the broadcast, storytelling, creating global superstars. We've got work to do to actually bring those things to life, so we're laser-focused there

“over the next couple of weeks and months, and then I think what fans should expect after”

that is some serious work on optimizing our schedule. We talk about routing courses and purses, and while we're great in some areas, we've got work left to do in others. But what would you, if you're talking about the schedule, improving the schedule, re-routing the schedule, what would a more ideal schedule look like, and what are some of the headwinds

you face in pushing that through? Yeah, so I'll give you a few examples of the themes we're going to unpack as we get into optimizing our schedule. One is setting it up logically so that we build drama throughout the season. I find it tough at times that we send our players to Asia twice, just before the tour

championship and before the Onica, there in Asia, they come back in two weeks later, the season's over. That doesn't exactly build to a precipice, and frankly, fans want or drama.

The second thing our fans have told us loud and clear is they want to see us play some

of the best courses in the world, whether it's courses that the men can't play because they're too short for the men or some of the courses that the men do play that we should also go to. That's another theme that we're going to be focused on, and frankly, I don't see a huge set of bottlenecks other than in some places we're locked into some long-term contracts,

but everything's worth the conversation.

“Yeah, I think that's music to my ears, they're Craig.”

I think yearly, kind of the joke on social media is, once the LPJ tour announces their schedule, everybody likes to put the quick social, you know, Google Earth fly over things, just how much these women are traveling. When you set out about that process of identifying two Asian swings, things like that, what other things that you identified along the way that you're like, this historically is

why I understand why they did it this way, but this no longer makes sense. Yeah, I have an unbelievable amount of respect for the leaders that came before me. I realized at the time, you know, handful of years ago, we had 15, 17, 18 tournaments today.

We had 32 tournaments playing for $134 million in prize money.

Today, the schedule and some respects as a function of the LPJ taking what it was able to get at the time. I feel incredibly lucky to be leading this organization at a time with crazy momentum and the number of reachouts we've had from courses and sponsors who've raised their hands to help, maybe at an all-time high.

And so we're going to take advantage of that. And to your question, Cody, about, you know, like, what are the factors we consider, building drama, routing is certainly one of them.

“Can we play an elevated course that fans are going to tune in to see?”

We spend a lot of time thinking about media rights and our media partners. We just signed two deals in Asia, one in Korea, one in Japan. The deal in Japan is the biggest streaming deal in the history of the LPJ tour. We want to go to Japan. We want to play in front of those fans locally.

Yeah, that's a great thing, specifically highlighting, you know, Korean. This isn't a U-problem at all, but you kind of inherited a broadcast, a media rights issue in Korea that kind of had trickle down effects to a state-side tournament that was honoring Sairi Park and everything like that, it was great to button those things up and make sure that your stars, the biggest stars that are Korean that are playing on the LPJ tour are still

being streamed and have an act of port, let alone the business side of it. But as you look at protecting and opening up things like that, are we going to see a Sairi event that is strong and maybe more Korean companies push behind it here in Dallas? Forever, we have an LPJ tour event here. This is one of the biggest Korean American communities that we have in the United States.

The majority of the Koreans that play on the LPJ tour are based in Dallas. Is that something that we're going to see back on the schedule? Your observations are totally right and we're in the midst of working on the solutions. We've said very publicly that we're going to go to where the opportunity is and I'll tell you, I took my first trip with the LPJ to create a couple of months ago for the

international crown. It was off the charts. Did you join a fan club? I'm in the Sungun Parks fan club, actually. I should.

Yeah.

I got to be careful play of favorites, but yeah, it was incredible.

I'll tell you, too, not just the on course experience, but off course, I went to the, I think it was the Hyundai Mall and went up to the 3rd or 4th floor and half of the floor is dedicated to women's golf, refrigerator, a pair of like, there's massive opportunity in Asia and it's on us to figure out how and when to go capture. It's the only place where a foot joy, PXG, truly is streetwear.

Yeah, you're like 100% of that. Massive billboards. Nelly, Danielle King, you name it like it's just, it's crazy how much that country embraces their window.

“Still, I remember that trip so vividly of just like people just, you know, Sungun Park”

getting swarmed. This was past her prime even swarmed after a round of all these people in a travel from far and wide to get a picture with her and everything. Well, I think that, you know, we're dancing around.

You started your, the first speeches that you kind of made.

You came out, you said, hey, I have four pillars. Things that I'm going to continuously look at every decision that comes to me. I'm going to rack against. And part of that was not just growing and building your fan base, but like truly creating fans that have favorites that are extremely outwardly supportive of that.

I think that is a small example of what you're looking for everywhere if I'm, if I'm not mistaken, you nailed it. So the four pillars you're referencing trust fans, visibility and financials to talk about those middle two pillars, fans and visibility, there is a difference between somebody watching a sport and somebody like feeling it in their bones. I remember when Rory won the master's last year, everyone in our home was in tears.

Right? I mean, you see, we felt it in our bones. And part of the reason was we've seen videos of Rory as a little kid hitting golf balls into his parents washing machine, dryer, whatever it was. And we know the story about the sacrifices parents made, working multiple jobs to get Rory

to the apex of the game. Right? When I was in Thailand last week and I watched Gino win in front of her home crowd, there's 8,000 fans around the green and she stays 45 minutes after signing autographs and her moms and tears and you could feel it in your bones, we have a duty to our athletes and

frankly, to our fans to create those moments where people feel it. I hear a lot of, we say this out, a lot of people say this out loud, like we tell stories, tell stories, we need to develop the storytelling. What does that actually look like in your mind? Because there's challenges in telling stories in the middle of a golf broadcast when you

have commercial breaks and you're trying to show as many golf shots as possible. And I feel like it's something I hear in golf, put them in the men's and women's side all the time. I feel like everybody says that we got to, all right, well now I'm in charge, we're going to tell stories and I don't feel like we ever see the actual change in what that

actually looks like.

“In your mind, what does that mean when you talk about wanting to tell players stories?”

Well, let's start by acknowledging it takes a world class team to do it. Enter Chad Coleman, former CMO, dude perfect and I was at Cali before that. We've got guys like JD Sterb on our team who lead communications, we've got world class talent that's going to help us do it. The second thing I'd say is that storytelling historically for the LPGA has felt to me like

it was purely inside the ropes. And that's great. It's a great start and we're going to do more there. Having track man at all of our events this year with four times the number of shots traced, we'll give us access to data that allow us to tell some super interesting stories.

The real story telling that I'm excited about those going to happen outside the ropes. I mean, think about what happens in culture now. People know what NFL players wear on their way into and out of the stadium. They know where Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey are going on vacation. We've done none of that.

We're at least very little of that at the LPGA. But you look at what some of our athletes have done recently. Nelly going to the Met Galler Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition or Charlie Hall going to a state dinner in the UK. You look at our players at the Rolex Awards this year dressed to the Nines.

There are some interesting things happening that are more culture oriented outside the ropes. And those are the stories we know our fans care about. Talk to me a little bit about one of the biggest changes you made almost immediately into your tenure was moving the location of the first major championship on the LPGA tour count. Moving the Chevron Championship from Carlton Woods where we've seen it last couple of years

to Memorial Park in Houston.

“What's the motivation behind that and what are you expecting to gain?”

Will LPGA tour gain from that? Yeah, I'll tell you a quick story and then I'll bring it back to your question. I mentioned I was in Thailand a week or two ago.

We're on 18 Andrea Lee who's an incredible tour player went to Stanford.

But doesn't often show a ton of emotion makes a birdy on 18 and throws this fist bump. She's tiger woods. You just won the U.S. Open and I asked Andrea like, that was so cool. Where did that come from? She said it's a lot easier to show emotion when you've got 8,000 fans around the 18th

green.

It's hard to show that level of excitement when the crowds aren't there.

The reason one of the reasons I should say for moving the Chevron to the Memorial is to bring it closer to the heart of the action in downtown Houston and we're excited to bring women's golf major golf to the heart of a major city. And that's again, nothing against the club of Carlton Woods, the woodlands and everything. It's just the distance that it takes to go out there.

Truly is separated from the heart beat of it. We have been ever since that decision meant I've been to every single Chevron that has been in Texas so far. You hit the nail on the head.

“Was that a decision that was already in motion upon your arrival?”

Or is that something that you picked up and said, hey, I see a potential here to make something better. Let's run downhill with it. Yeah, the good news is that we take an extremely collaborative approach to everything that we do.

But by no means will the LPGA by itself take credit for this.

We work very closely with our partners at Chevron, you know, Mike worth the CEO Chevron, what a total visionary, not just for what he's doing with the tournament, but the commission which is an event that happens around the Chevron to inspire future generations of leaders. Thanks to the great partnership we did it together. One thing I want to chat with you about in great detail, if you'll allow me.

And someone in your position, I think, is it's an interesting conversation because we come in a lot on women's golf, coming a lot on men's golf, coming a ton on courses, course setups, you've mentioned already kind of getting to top level venues. What do you see as the value of that in terms of, you know, I personally have seen some LPGA tour majors rotate to venue, they made it a point where it seems like we want to go

to venues where the men's game has also had majors. Maybe sometimes at the expense of finding a venue that fits the scale of the women's game the best, right?

“I could name names if you want to be too, but I've said, all right, that's a big name”

course. We got to go there because the men went there yet, the women's game has played at a different scale. How do you view the way balancing, kind of what we're talking about, name brand venues that are recognizable to people, yet also the course setup and the product as it relates to that.

Both on major championship level and, you know, kind of, more normal tournaments, because I'm going to have some follow-ups to that of what that actually means for the product that you are in charge of trying to sell as well and how that fits into all of your equation. Let's talk about that in separately. Sure.

Course selection and course setup. Spend 10 minutes in player dining with me next week at the Fortinet, that founders cup and you'll hear players talking about just how excited they are to go play at Riv this year for the U.S. women's open or at Hazelteen for the KPMG women's PGA. They get fired up, but we also know from all the research we've done on viewership is that

fans tune in not just to see players, but to see courses.

“So for sure makes a difference and it's why we're going to spend a lot of time in the coming”

years on course selection. Course setup. This is so important. I have to tell you one of the coolest moments I've had as Commissioner, I played in a program with Brandel Chambley a couple of months ago at CME and I could listen to that guy

wax poetically about course setup all day long, but he said, let me just give you one example. Let's talk about 18 at Augusta National. They said men hit fades because they hit it so far, they want to stop the ball, women hit draws because they want as much extra distances they can get.

18 at Augusta, you've got a bunker on the left. The distance from the bunker to the green for a man is reachable with a nine iron for a woman they need, a seven iron, but because of the height of the lip, women often hit the edge of the lip and it propagates the stereotype that women aren't killer golfers in the same way the men are.

Not true, but it is fundamentally because the way that hole is set up, it disadvantages the women and advantages the men. So as we think about the future of course setup for us, these are the types of factors we have to look at and take very seriously in order to show our athletes off in the best possible one.

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Let's get back to Craig Hesser.

“So I think back to, this was before your time, well before your time, the 2019 U.S. women's”

open at Country Club in Charleston was one of the favorite women's golf events I've ever watched. It's a, you know, Seth Rainer golf course that the men have definitely outgrown, but the scale and the, and this is where like, I, I think I can nerd out a little bit talking about things that may be only 15 to 20% of your fans really care about yet, bring it on.

But that's the most die hard fan, and so totally, I guess I, I, I've, I've butt up against this, this kind of argument in this take for, for some time of, I have some issues with TPC sawgrass and how that plays yet when I go to the players, I don't hear any, like, the 90% of fans are being like, oh, the scale of this whole, nobody talks like that. But how that relates into your product, I think matters a lot in that, you know, the better

the setup, the, and again, a lot of things go into setup, win conditions, firmness, a lot of things that are out of control, but the better the setup, the better you, it's going to identify the top level talent in creating stars, in my talk in the same language that you want to hear in terms of, of what would be, what would help make the LPJ tour more marketable?

You're absolutely speaking our language, and by the way, our job is not just to set up courses that players go out and she 25 under in order to win on Sunday.

“I think you, thank you, thank you for bringing up.”

Let's use, let's use every club in the bag. Let's make sure that the best player at the end of the week wins, and that doesn't mean driver, nine iron on every single home. Yeah. I, most recent example I understand, sorry, do you get head wins from that on players?

Is there, is there, is there pushback from kind of that, there's something to also like not wanting to beat the players up every single week, and it is an entertainment product. And again, back to my point of like, not everybody feels this way that watches golf, some people who do want to watch it and see birdies, like, so that, I'm kind of wondering if those two philosophies are ever at odds.

I wouldn't see we get blowback, there's plenty of conversation about it, not a week goes by where we don't get a question or an idea from someone, but honestly, the best ideas come from those who are closest to the action, I want feedback from fans, I want feedback

from players, and ultimately our roles team that's responsible for course set up, we'll

have to make a decision, and again, the guiding principles we've talked about, it shouldn't be easy every. And the best player should win, and it should be a challenge. Yeah, that's very well said, and also I think, or the best women in the game, it is beneficial to have a more difficult setup.

I think for the LPJ tour, there's, I can go back 10 years now, there's this discussion of what actually brings of you are in. And for a long time, there's a small group that said, the most birdies, the most underpar, that is what excitement is on TV, and you saw that kind of trickle into the LPJ tour in the setup, and now you see that on telecast, and I don't think that's very beneficial, or

doing the tour itself, the right justice. And I know Lashur was an outlier, but you have 32 events last year on your schedule. Yeah, 29 different winners. That's right. I don't think you can really build stars when it's spread out that far and wide.

“Yeah, you know, you have to be able to identify your top five, your top 10s, and I understand”

I say that was an outlier, because you're before you had Nelly with an incredible spring.

That's right. So everything doesn't line up like that. So you look at it two ways. It's a setup thing. I know the depth is there on the tour.

I just don't think it's that deep or at a hunt, you don't have a hundred super stars. Yeah. So it's a hard marketing question. This probably a moment where it would be great to have Chad and we'll get him on later on a couple of weeks to ask him.

But it just puts you in a very difficult position when you're trying to answer so many different questions. Yeah, look, it's a fair point and regardless of what happens inside the ropes each week, we have to be prepared. If we have Nelly go on another tear, Gino, or Charlie and when seven times in a season,

like we'll be ready. Believe me, and our partners will be ready as well. If we end up with another season where we've got 29 or 30 winners, we're going to do the best we can to highlight the stories that we know interest our fans. And you're right.

Course setup plays into this, but at the end of the day, the competition's going to do what it's going to do, and we're going to do our part to get fans as excited as we can. Because I think we can, we can't overdo it on the side of the table on course setup stuff. But I think back to like one of if not the most exciting tournaments and finishes on the LPJ toward last year was the Evian.

And I think that was driven by the course setup. That 18th hole was like, literally anything could happen here. And Grace Kim was just out of control with, you know, made a mess of it. But then holds the chip hits it to eight inches or whatever it was to make the eagle and regulation, or I don't remember the exact order.

But that's kind of where I'm where I feel like the LPJ toward has aired is, and the LPJ toward for that matter as well is a less than stellar shot can still be an easy

Yeah.

And that is going to lead to bunch leaderboards.

And that's going to make it harder to separate where, you know, Scotty Sheffler, even he struggles in tournaments with that or like that. But when there is a stronger penalty for even slight misses at the highest level, and your short game gets gets then tested in a different level of that is what makes golf really interesting to me and creates your stars.

And I, I don't know, that's I just wanted to say my piece on that part. Yeah, look, it's all fair feedback and a genuine offer. I'd say come in and spend a half a day with us, come talk to our rules team. I'd love for them to hear directly from you, kind of what you think. I also think, you know, Cody, you brought up a point around what creates viewership and

what gets people to tune in. There isn't a single answer. It's a combination of multiple factors. I go back and I use the example only because I know it and I was there at the P. J. of America when we played the P. J. Championship at Bahalla.

The scores were pretty far under par if I remember the winner was maybe 13, 14, might even be in the early, low 20s under par when Xander Schaffley won the tournament. And I'll tell you what, having Xander come down the home stretch with some real competition. I think Victor Havlin, Bryson was in the mix. Like it was the combination of all those factors, not scores by itself that created the

drama.

You're right, a birdie shoot out by itself is not always interesting.

But if you've got your top three or four players on the LPGA tour coming down the stretch, making birdie eagle birdie or eagle birdie eagle, it's super, super interesting. So again, not one size fits all here. But it is hard too, I mean, we talk about these things. You're in a tough position where you handle a tour, but you also run two major championships.

And when we're talking about tour and normal core setups for Rage Gurler LPGA tour events, but we use examples of major championships that puts you in a tough spot and I understand. So from your perspective, is that difficult?

“Is that a different line that you have to walk?”

Do you view them distinctly differently because they are one? You have two major championships and the rest are all premium tour events, but they have to be weighted and treated differently? I view it as a huge opportunity. I mean, what a privilege to be able to put on, you know, 32, 33, 34 events in a season

and to have a couple of those be majors. At the same time, it's a gift when, you know, the R&A has the AIG women's open or the USDA puts on the US women's open, every unobviously does a phenomenal job. We're ready for everything that you've described. And I don't think there is, you know, necessarily a better model than the one we have now.

And you're right. There's a reason these events or certain events are called majors. And when we get to a major, walk the course, you feel the energy. It's different. There's a level of seriousness in the clubhouse and an hour job as operators of those

tournaments matches the grovitas of each of those events. How can the LP, if I was to challenge you with some opportunities for the LPGA tour to break

“the mold of how the product is presented on television?”

Let's just, let's dream for a while and not pretend there's not media contracts in this, but deal. If you could say, like, I would love to be, you know, maybe in three years. And I know these things, you know, turn an over and engine or whatever the phrase is, you, you, I know that one.

It's not easy to do over night, but if you could say, like, hey, three years from now, or maybe five years from now on, you're in a new media deal, what LPGA tour golf would look like on television and how it would look different than it does now, what does that dream look like? Well, we're, we're dreaming big, right?

So I don't want to give off the false hope or impression that anything we're talking about here is going to happen overnight. But if we could wave our magic lawns a few things would happen every shot on every hole. You, as a fan, you could tune in and whether you're in Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, anywhere in the United States or Europe, you can watch your favorite players.

Another thing that we were talking about earlier today before we got going is how cool would it be to have every player and caddy mic up and be able to hear, not just what happens right before a shot or right after a shot, but in the walk up to a difficult situation. Like, hey, what, what are we going to do here? The interaction between Nellie and Jason as an example, like that is pure entertainment,

especially for, you know, folks that are listening to this podcast, some of the most diehard golfers in the world. You've been in similar situations before, but to get inside the mind of an LPGA tour player

“to hear what she's thinking about, I think that would be incredible.”

Do you have a membership that's supportive of that for say? I think we've got an unbelievably supportive membership. I think the membership wants to understand the why behind all of our asks. We did it. The tournament of champions this year put on by Hilton Graham Vacations.

We had Laughty Wode, Lydia Coe and Nellie Corda do a walk in talk within the first 30

minutes of the broadcast in one or two of those players' cases. I don't think they'd ever done that, and they're doing it to start this season. So yeah, I think we've got a really supportive membership.

There's challenges with that of, you know, being miced up for four and a half hours.

“And, you know, not knowing if your worst moment's going to be captured on there, you took”

the bottom 10% of my rounds of golf. Of what I've said, even knowing I'm miced up, I'd be like, I hope that doesn't make the edit. I get that challenge, but I do think there's opportunities to bring people and bring people closer and to definitely, to try different things.

Do you feel, I guess, like, in kind of your tenure here, do you feel like you are brought in to specifically to do things differently, and do you feel like you have both the cash and the relationship with the players to push through the change, and maybe, you know, what are maybe some examples of some headwinds you've been, you face so far in your tenure?

You know, this has never explicitly said to me, but it's how I feel.

I feel like the LPGA has the raw ingredients in more potential than maybe any other sports league in the, why is that? Our players, like, get to know them, listen to the stories of the sacrifice they've made, their parents have made, the grind to get here, look at some of the things they're doing in their personal lives.

They're entertaining human beings, but the world hasn't yet been given exposure to all these things.

“So to answer your question, like, was I brought here to drive change?”

I was brought here to maximize the potential of this place. It's to find a way to tell stories and get people to fall in love and listen into Megan Kang as she walks down the fairways and she's telling jokes and when someone asks her, you know, how far do you hit the ball and she responds with, well, proportional to my height.

I hit the crap that. It's like, yeah, like the world wants to hear stuff. So whether that's change or whether that's capitalizing on opportunity, yes and yes. In terms of the headwinds, look, we put a man on the moon, like, 60 years ago. I used to sell five.

But I think it's possible. Right.

When I started in this job, there were a handful of people who said, you know, Craig, it'll never

work. Don't take the job. You're never going to be live on TV. The quality of the LPJ broadcast is not great, especially compared to their peers on the men's side.

And, you know, here we are, seven or eight or nine months later, and we've solved for many of those things. Not all of them. So I realize we have our work cut out for us, and there's, you know, endless headwinds. But I also, like, my core believe anything is possible.

Do you talk to us a little bit? I mean, we've touched on it here a couple of times. But like, how were you able to do change the broadcast elements that you were able to change so quickly? Right.

I mean, if you come in, get a couple of home runs in your first couple of abats, if I may say, moving the Chevron, I thought, was a great move, and because we sit on this side table, we throw out ideas every single week, and it's really easy on this side to

throw out a bunch of ideas, but we're always told how you're wrong, you don't understand

how things work, and these things are hard, and you come into the job, and you're like, no, we're going to be on TV for every event this year. How are you able to get that done so quickly? Yeah. Let's say, what, a crazy amount of teamwork and a dose of maybe inspiration, and I started

my career in golf at top golf 10 years ago, and when I was there, I started to get to know the guys at the golf channel. So I'd known Mark Lazarus and Tom Nap for a while, Matt Hong, President of Sports at Versan, obviously, knew, but those pre-existing relationships mattered a lot, and Tom and I went away for a day or two and talked about dreaming big and what's possible, and sure

enough, you know, a handful of months later, here we are with golf channel announcing every round live, either on golf channel or CNBC. The dose of inspiration, you know, I went to the FM Championship in Boston, credible event, got to know Malcolm Roberts to CEO, and as all good stories begin, we went on a long meandering walk to dinner, I'd say halfway through the hour along walk, I realized, man,

this is a guy who dreams big and takes a shot, and for anybody, you know, who knows about FM, and I won't give you all the details, but it's a hundred plus year old insurance company that fundamentally transformed how commercial insurance is provided, I realized Malcolm and his company wanted to transform the LPGA in the way we show up, and with a little bit of inspiration,

“I think we convinced Malcolm and his team that the LPGA is worth betting on, and here we are.”

It does seem like you, the LPGA, both before your time and during your short tenure as well, has a credible amount of support from sponsors that do trust the vision and see the vision in terms of like, if we're looking for like dollars per eyeball, like the women's game is doing excellent in terms of the money that's coming in the door, you know, for the, for the impression, if you were to look at it solely of impression based, it seems like the support around the women's

towards seems has has been quite strong for quite some time. It's off the chart, so we actually, this is pretty wild, 75 year old organization, we honestly still feel like a startup in so many ways, but we'd never had a partner summit, or we actually brought all of our partners together in one room

in Utah at Black Desert, and I wish all of your listeners could have been a fly on the wall in the room. We'd lower a Rutledge from ESPN moderated, we had the CMO, the WNBA, Phil Cook with us, to keynote,

and talk about how the W had its breakthrough moment. They got prepared for it. Jim Fitterling,

the CEO of Dow, one of our biggest sponsors was there. You could feel the excitement for the LPGA

“in the room, and as I said at one point, I think we're the most undervalued stock that's out there today,”

call it discounted growth, use whatever euphemism you want, but the sky is the limit for this organization, and thankfully it's in part to the partners who are already with us that have created the incredible momentum we've got. I'm curious kind of what players, you know, I may ask you to name names on this one specifically, are seem to be like the most invested in kind of the vision of the LPGA tour, and wanting to do their part to support the greater whole. Some examples of

some players that go out of their way to, because we've experienced that when I think the first LPGA

experience I ever had was back in like 2018, we played a pro-am with Jane Park and Tiffany Joe,

and we just walked away of like, holy crap, that was so much fun, they were so raw, they were so funny, and they, but it seemed like Mike won and still in the players back in the day of like, when somebody's showing up for a pro-am, like hey, you're on, like it's time to be on, these people are right in the checks that you're playing for, leave a note and they're, you know, do all of these things, and I'm just kind of curious kind of some examples you've had of players that are like,

"Oh, this is how you treat sponsors, this is how you do it." Yeah, so let me first actually acknowledge some of the legends of the game. I mean, some of the players like Julie Inkster, Judy Rankin, or the more modern version of legends, Angela Stanford, Brittany Linsekum, Cheyenne Woods, these are women who raise their hand every week to come out and do their part to help. All those athletes I mentioned were out at Pebble Beach for our 75th anniversary, they helped us raise over

$4 million for the LPGA foundation, and they were with us in Black Desert, many of them for

the partner summit we just had. Of our current players, I would divide it into two camps. There's the big names that everybody's already familiar. It's the top three. It's Nelly, Charlie, and Geno based on kind of how they're playing now, and they get it, and they're doing their part to help. They're also a whole bunch of other names behind the scenes that maybe don't get mentioned as often, but these are women who lean in and say if you need me, they're making Kang is an example.

Yelimi knows an example, Austin Kim, Angel Yin. These are women who will literally be the first to show up in the last to leave if they know there's an opportunity to help. It does seem like even some of the pro-amparties we've been to, like, the players show up for that. You couldn't have dragged a PGA tour player in their wildest dreams to one of those all like a Wednesday night right before the tournament, but you look around like, "Oh, Lexie's here tonight, you know,

there's Michelle, a back of the day, there's Michelle Wii, and, like, the stars come out to support the sponsors." And I'll tell you another story, too, about the stars not just coming out

“in highly visible ways. I'll never forget that tough day, as Commissioner early in my 10-year,”

the Walmart Championship, it was, like, historic, torrential rains. You remember this week? We had to call it after two of three rounds, the unique tournament with only three competition rounds, Walmart was so upset, but they went above and beyond to do more than they had to do, and they paid a larger purse than they were obligated to pay, because they wanted to show the players how appreciative they are, the player's efforts. I mean, my kid's baseball game on a Sunday and the

phone rings and it's Lexie Thompson, and she's like, "Creg, what can I do to go say thank you?" And turn up, I said, Lexie, senior leadership from Walmart, they're at the course right now. If you could just stop by, give a hug in a high five to say thank you, it would go a long way. Lexie says, "I'm in the gym right now, give me like five minutes, I'll go take a shower, I'll head over to the course, and I'll be right there." This is Lexie Thompson taking a moment out of

her routine to go say thank you to our sponsors, and there were no cameras on, but that's the

“type of, I think, buy and we have from our superstars. Now that we praise the players,”

what do they complain about the most? What are the grievances do they come to you? Come to you about? Is there a theme kind of behind the changes in things that they would like to see? You know what? And again, hand on heart, like this is the truth, I don't get what, I think the word you use grievances or complaints. I get a lot less of that than you might expect. I get a lot of questions. Okay. Like, help me understand the logic behind this pin placement.

Help me understand why you rejiggered tea times, and the leaders aren't going off last, and it's like, "Well, let us explain how TV network windows work, and this matters a lot to our sponsors end to our fans." And not 100% of the time, but whatever, nine out of ten times,

this is just human nature. As you're trying to drive change and buy and helping people understand

“the why behind a decision is like nine tenths of the change management battle. And I've tried”

really hard, maybe even to a detriment once or twice, to be wildly accessible, super transparent, and if players want to pick up the phone and call or come find me on the range or play or dining, like do it, we're going to have a real conversation about it. We talked to you shortly after what happened at Hilton to start the year. What's kind of been the trail of that in terms of your relationships with players and kind of how that all, you know, how that communication process has

been since then and kind of feedback you've gotten from players. Yeah, let's actually start with the team, because I do feel bad the team at the LPJ, we're putting a really tough spot because of a decision that I made. And one of the more, I would say important or formative moments I've had since joining was standing up in front of our fault team and apologizing and tears and my eyes got super choked up. And the reason for that is, you know, Cody, you asked about the four pillars before

trust is number one, two, three and four, if we're being honest. And I felt like maybe I had not done a great job burning and respecting the importance of that trust. It was brutal. I mean, two weeks straight, hitting my stomach, sick to my stomach, not really sleeping through the night, because I take this very seriously and I made a mistake. With the players, the players have been great. They again, hey, give us some behind the scenes, walk us through the logic. Okay, good.

“Let's go play golf. And I think we've turned the page and I can't wait for the start of the US”

swing. What did, what did you learn from it? A lot. You know, and I was at top golf, we had a super

complex business to operate. 75 venues, 25,000 employees, 25 million or so guests at the time.

And what made us great was that we had processed that we could apply in a very similar way to every single venue and routines. We had contingency plans. I don't think we have all of that fully fleshed out yet at the LPGA. We have a lot of it. And we have more of it today than we had three weeks ago, but we still have some work to do and making sure we are, like, ruthlessly buttoned up on all things operations is important. And by the way, and this is not an excuse. It's an

observation. You know, we have roughly 200 people on staff at the LPGA. Compare that to the PGA tour, which has last I checked over. I think 1100, maybe 1200 employees, and we're pulling off a similar number of events. So one of our challenges is to go out and kill it in the marketplace, find new sponsors, find ways to be able to support our very limited staff creatively so that when we are under the gun. And we have a series of really tough decisions that have to be made, like we've got enough people

around the table in order to make those tough calls. We spent an obscene amount of time obsessing over our gear, getting fitted for shaft, tweaking lying, holes making sure everything fits our game perfectly. And then most of us go home and sleep on a completely generic pillow that we bought five years ago. It makes absolutely no sense. We partner with Lagoon because the idea is simple. If you custom fit your clubs, why wouldn't you custom fit your pillow? You go to lagoonsleep.com/nilew to

get two minute quiz about how you sleep, but they match you to the pillow that actually fits your body type. It's adjustable as well. So you can dial it in exactly how you want it. I can now say

first hand. I've been waking up without a stiff neck, sleeping so much better, and it feels just

way better ahead of an early tea time. If you're going to spend eight hours on something, like make sure it's quality. That's the biggest endorsement I can give to Lagoon pillows. So if you're serious about marginal gains, start with the eight hours before the round, go to lagoonsleep.com/nilew code nilew will get you 15% off. Again, lagoonsleep.com/nilew code nilew for 15% off. Back to Craig Kessler.

“Well, we did talk. We broke it down in detail, kind of from that. I think one kind of follow-up I”

had from that that maybe I didn't ask very well when we had the initial conversation shortly after that was where I guess you think the mistake was. We can go through the whole timeline of what happened there, but there's an unsafe. Potentially unsafe conditions out there, yet players went back out to finish round three in that scenario. I'm wondering if if you could just lay out the timeline kind of, I think I understand where I would guess you would call where the mistake was and how

you got to the solution of 54 holes, but not to bring up a traumatizing couple of weeks. Well, as you guys said, it is I have to rehash this with you guys. Yeah, let's build that trust. We're building it. Yeah, let's do this. You know, here's how I think about it after having a little bit of time between the event and where we are today. It was like a perfect storm. It was. Like when else are we going to be at a tournament with sub-freezing temperatures, multiple days

that paid for time on the network on NBC, not on golf channel. That time is early in the morning.

“You've got Anika, one of the greatest of all times out on the course, speaking to the press about”

as a celebrity. As a celebrity, I'm playable. It is. How playable it is. Like guys, I just don't know if those. Right. It was awful. Yeah. And super messy. So there wasn't one single mistake. They were a handful of mistakes. Again, hindsight should the celebrities have gone off no way. If it's not safe enough for the players, then the celebrity should go off. Should we have had somebody in the media center standing there with Bethan and Amy Rogers? Of course, Bethan is a mouthpiece to so many of

our fans and Amy Rogers could be live on TV in two seconds explaining to fans what's going on. So that's another example of a mistake. In earlier in the week, when we saw the forecast, could we have figured out how to get more play in earlier in the week? So we could have finished late on Sunday afternoon or perhaps finished early on Monday morning, like, of course. And back to the point earlier around repeatable process, like we built a top golf. It's the exact

same thing here. And believe me, if you've seen some of the things we've done differently with our own internal comms since then, like we're moving aggressively. Things have changed. Do I have it right and say, again, on the specifics of it? It's all right, we the conditions are unsafe. We have decided to make this a 54-hole tournament. Now we get into the afternoon. It's warmed up a little bit. The course is safe enough now that we can finish round three. At this point, you've already called it

54-holes or you kind of like, ah, we maybe could have stretched this the Monday, we could have

“voted that totally. Because that's where I think it is. But to your point of it being a perfect”

storm, but the confusion of, once you've already made that decision, you know, because that's where I think you caught a little bit of heat was sending players, but out in the afternoon, yet determining it was unsafe was where some of the confusion was. And heat is totally fair. Yeah. I appreciate you making a decision standing on it. I know this was before your time, but I think the last

LPJ tour has an incredible bad luck when it comes to public spectacles. And I think when people

think of writer cups or soulheim cups, the massive first thing is, oh my goodness, opening day. It's early in the morning. Crowds are there. The stands are swollen with USA chance and everything. We're in right outside of D.C. a couple years back. Remember, we were there. And the stands were empty. And there was this as media there that morning, this gut feeling of, oh man, this is not good. I feel horrible. I need to be honest as I was doing sky TV in the mornings that week. And

I had to be as honest as I was. And, you know, there's people in your organization that I'm friends with. I understand what was going on. Yeah. There's a situation that just, you know, a series

of things that happen that should have never happened. And then a massive delay in communication.

“And I think coming out of that, there was, there was never really a cleanup done. There was”

where identifying that we made a mistake here. We will do better moving forward, trust us. And the trust and continued communication never really came back around. Yeah. Whereas in this, you know, for helping this year, there was a conscious decision not just to own it and to try to get ahead of the messaging. But you came on us. You went on a lot of other people and tried to continue to message your decision-making process. And take it a step further and say, no, we actually have

identified things that have gone wrong. We're figuring out ways to implement them. So they will not happen again in the future. And it's set such a standard for for for hope of what the future of the LPGA is going to be operational in. I, you know, kind of thank you for that. I appreciate

you saying that. It means a lot. And again, it was a tough period. I hope never happens again.

And aside from the last five minutes of this chat, don't want to relive ever again. It's solid. It's not or spying here. Yeah. Okay. I, I, like, this was the best like conversation I've heard about it. Like, it's very human. That's the whole thing is like there's humans behind the people making these these calls. Totally. And here's the gods on us truth. Again, for a a small lean organization, that's a challenger brand. We don't have the luxury of already having all the

eyeballs we want. We've got to go get them. We've got to earn them. I promise you, we are going to make mistakes. There will be another apology for something at some point in the future. And you know what, the best organizations in the world have an appetite to try some things and see if they work. And if they do great, we're going to keep doing them. And if they don't, like, we'll try something

give us a little bit of grace. And they understand that the mistakes are coming from a very good place. And your job is way harder. I also say we make mistakes all the time, but it's like, oh, I got the rules wrong on the pod last week. No big deal. I'll apologize for it. I don't have this is a little different. The mistakes are a little different at your level, definitely. So we definitely recognize that. But I'm curious, have you talked to Molly Markusamon, much about the role or Mike

Wong? Here's if you have relationships with prior commissioners as to, you know, was there much of a transition period in any of that? And kind of have you gotten, here's where the bodies are buried, kind of conversation for me, they're of them. Yeah, I've talked to a bunch of commissioners.

“Let me tell you, if for those of you don't know, Charlie Meacham, I think he's like 91 years old”

and one of the sharpest human beings I've ever spoken to. And Charlie calls from time to time, usually with a dose of inspiration and a whole bunch of ideas. So Charlie, if you're listening, keep keep calling because he's an awesome man. I talked to Mike quite a bit. I've known Mike for just shy of a decade. Mike loves this place. In fact, not only does he love it, this place loves Mike and I think we have an award still inside the L. P. J. called the Mike One Act

like a founder award, because he did such an amazing job shepherding this place during his

decade as commissioner. And I've also known Molly for the last five or six years. Molly and I worked together when I was at the P. J. of America and she was commissioner. She reached out to say congratulations when I got the job. We've spoken once or twice and I was really pumped to see

“Molly take on a leadership role running. I think it's like US squash. It is. Which, you know,”

good for Molly and and again, all the commissioners that I've spoken to have been have been great. What is, what would you say is the hardest part of being a commissioner? This is the most intense thing I've ever done professionally. It's seven days a week. It's, you know, early in the morning, late at night. Sometimes again late at night when you wake up wondering what more can we do, how much faster can we go. The stakeholder environment is as gnarly as they come. 200 players,

a thousand legends. The media, our sponsors, our partners, our staff, our family, you know, by the way, I'm a dad of three young boys. They're six, eight and ten. I'm crazy about them. I'm

crazy about my wife and finding a way to sort of keep it all together. I've never done anything

this intense. And I think all of those things combine are the biggest challenge. Do you anticipate that evolving and changing it with more experience in terms of everybody needs work life balance? And I get on a podcast or my work life balance is out of control at that time. And golf is a seven day a week job to your point. And I'm saying it in your shoes. It's a lot more, a lot more intense in the stakes are a lot different to say. Yeah. Do you think the be a kind of a learning curve

element to it? And once you kind of get into a flow, you'll be able to find the balance a little bit better. 100% I'm already starting to feel it now. I mean, part of the solution is there's that phrase to use work life balance. We talk a bit about like work life integration. And our kids have been on tour four times in the last nine months. In addition, my wife, you know, came with me to Korea. And she was at the summit this past week in Utah. So they're a part of the adventure, which helps a lot.

We're hiring an incredible team. We talked earlier about Chad, Monica, Casey, in addition to the great leadership team we already have. And I'm also getting my sea legs under me. So I do expect that

it will get better with time. But this will never be a Monday through Friday nine to five sort of

“thing. Part of that balance was staying in Dallas the red line for you. The best way to answer”

that question is not forever, but in the short run. Yes. Again, three boys, they're in school, all of our friends and their kids sports teams. It's life life. Yeah, it's like the perfect way of saying it life is here. And I'm on the road. I don't know, 220 days a year. So before we kind of upset the apple cart and disrupt everything we're doing, let's go get our sea legs first. How was that gone on the home front so far? How was the adjustment, you know, how are you finding

that as it works into your home life? Look, there's their days, but overall it's been amazing. It's got to be hard. But when the tours in Asia, I imagine that's not the easiest on you, just put the times on differences and it's the top of. Face times a magical thing, as we all know, as parents. The cool thing too, I mentioned our kids being part of the adventure. One of my favorite moments, it actually happened before I started. It was the KPMG Women's PGA Championship.

I've been announced, but was starting a few weeks later. And my wife and I took our three boys to the tournament on Saturday. We bought them each a bucket hat, like an LPGA floppy bucket hat.

One, don't tell anybody your dad's commissioner in the LPGA. And two, go have fun. We'll see in an hour or two. And they came back, I don't know, a couple hours later with Warrior 50 signatures on their bucket hats. They had signed gloves, signed balls. They had the time of their lives. And now on the weekends, they and their pals asked to turn on the LPGA on TV because they got

“their first taste and they fell in love. U.S. earlier, you know, why do I see so much potential?”

It's personal moments like those where I see what happens when fans get access to our athletes who are just accessible, cool, interesting. And people fall in love like my kids. And to know that when dads on the road and wherever Asia or Europe, kids understand what dads do and they feel a small part of it, I think helps a lot. There's something to like, I can most of my golf fandom can get traced back to being from Dublin, Ohio or the Memorial Tournament is where I went

and like, I had my experience with the LPGA as a kid was not not extensive, but there was an LPGA, the windies, the three-tore challenge, I think whatever it was back in the day was at Tarton feel like a, it was only a couple of years at Tarton feels, but it was like that touch point and entry point for people, I guess my overall point is you, the tour moves around a lot and there's there are certain like what are some of the like the most core events in terms of like locations

where you can see the LPGA tour being for a really long time because they've been there a long time

“and like, we have a foundation and the market makes the most, I think of Toledo, like the”

LPGA tour has own Toledo, Northwest Arkansas and Walmart. Yeah, like, yeah, it's a fair question

and the answer is depending on what you're trying to optimize for. So if you're trying to optimize

for the fan experience going to these smaller cities, Midland, Michigan would be another one for the Dow championship, I mean the entire community shows up. This is one of those towns where the main street is actually called Main Street, like those, those, you know, let's just come to your two tier three cities that don't often get the love from professional sports organizations. Those are home runs for the fan experience. Now, earlier we talked about playing some of the best courses,

right? We talked about Riviera as an example. That's in the heart of Los Angeles, a major media market, maybe tougher to actually cut through the noise and get fans to show up, but when you think about broadcast potential and fans tuning into watch, it doesn't get any better than Riv. So again, goes back to what are you trying to optimize for and based on the answer may lead you down a different path. When you first started out, I imagine one of the first things you're doing is placing phone calls

to essentially every sponsor introducing relationships. What feedback did you get from them of,

kind of, hey, here's what's going good. Like, did you see themes of, like, here's what's going

good and here's where I'd like things to approve on a sponsor by sponsor basis. I'm sure that the answers are different, but what general themes did you get both in the positive and on the negative side for them? Can I tell you what my biggest fear was? Any time you go through an interview process, as you mentioned earlier, it's a bit of a sell on both sides and my biggest fear was, what are they not telling me? Like, am I going to show up on day one and oh my god, this didn't

come out during the process? What I got when I started was very encouraging. I would say 50 or so percent of the sponsors that I spoke to, they were all in and super excited for the next chapter. There was maybe, you know, 30 or 40 percent that had a couple of questions around the edges, just to make sure, like the tours, everything we say we're going to be. And when they had their questions answered, you could feel the enthusiasm through the Zoom screen or if we were in person,

you know, I could feel it in the room. And then there was, I don't know, 10, maybe 20 percent

that had very serious questions about the LPGA's future and question whether this was an investment they wanted to continue making. That's a pretty reasonable ratio for somebody coming in and, you know, look, they're one or two folks that have said, you know, it probably makes sense for us to spend our dollars elsewhere. And that's okay. Because to be clear, the partners we want around the table are the ones who are excited to be here. They're going to use their megaphone

to pump up the tour. And we have to be okay with moving on from relationships that aren't,

“you know, perfect. And I think one of the big things that you've touted too is you're willingness”

an openness to talk to anybody who wants to get into the business. You're the first commissioner who is, you know, the LAT has had an LAT event in the United States going on for a couple of years. Now, it's moved different locations, but part of the Ramco series, you're now co-sagging at this year for Las Vegas. Can you talk about that tournament in itself and kind of the relationship with the ladies European tour? Yeah, I'd love to. Let me break this into two parts. One is our

responsibility to unite women's professional golf. And then, too, let's talk about the Saudis and

on the men's side and it looks like, you know, the world's coming back together, finally after a few

“years. But it was a mess. And if that happens to the women's game, I mean, you thought that”

tournament a champions week was a bad week. There would be on a whole other level before you continue. Yeah. Have you heard plans of that happening? Of what? On the women's side? No, no, no, and this is the point I'm going to get to, which is like, let's get ahead of anything and try and unite the game as best we can. So I'll give you an example of something we did this week. For example, we announced that the winner winners of the four major global women's

amateurs will get an exemption into the Portland Classic. So the USGA, the USAM, the R&AAM, women's am, the Augusta National Women's Amateur, and then the NCAA Women's Champion, all four of those players, the first time ever will get an exemption to play together in the Portland Classic. We're doing that for a bunch of reasons, but the primary reason is to try and unite everybody who touches the women's game in a meaningful way. The same thing holds true of the

ladies European tour and golf Saudi who's been a big sponsor on the ladies European tour for the last five years. The LAT matters for a bunch of reasons, but I'll give you the one that excites me the most.

“If I'm a little girl in Europe, and I wake up one day, I think it is so important to have”

women who come from my country, maybe even my hometown, who I can aspire to be like. And that's what the ladies European tour does. It inspires future generations of golfers to be just like those professional athletes. And that's why we've been an adjoint venture with them for the last four or five years. Golf Saudi, no different. Golf Saudi has poured if I did the math, probably north of a hundred million dollars into the ladies European tour over time.

That's an amazing investment. And I know there are some who don't like that, but honestly, who are we to stand in the way of the Saudis funding the hopes and dreams of women professional golfers? And so part of the reason for doing a co-sanctioned event at Shadow Creek this year with the LAT and with the golf Saudis, it's another proof point of the LPA trying to lead from the front and unite the women's game. That's very well said. And a great opportunity, great venue,

great location for it and time on the schedule. As I look at, you know, you do have a financial

investment in the ladies European tour. I always say and see more opportunities for potential

for co-sanctioned events as you're looking at your global schedule. And I know we jump up and down all the time. Just there's some incredible national opens that are out there. You talked about two Asian swings we're getting ready or we're starting now on the LATZ European tour

“side. They're an Australia for a month and who doesn't want to play an Australia for a month?”

Totally. See an Australian open as a co-sanctioned LATLPGA tour event, getting the best players in the world to Australia. So they can go and and people who grew up, their idols are Mingi and Hannah and all these great Australian women. Right. But now you have Nellies there and Lydia's there from, you know, you just see all these people in your exposing more people to the game, which I know is part of your ethos and what you want to do. So I just challenge you as

you go through the scheduling side of it to get more of those that would be great. Challenge accepted and and I think you're actually on to something. You reference national opens and we see huge potential there. I mean, if you go from a national open with players, but very few recognizable names to some of the best LPGA athletes on tour being released during conflicting weeks, to be able to go back and play in their national open. Again, back to

this, call it what you want, altruistic, moral reasons for for uniting the women's game. When Hannah Green or Grace Kim get to go back and play in their home country and young girls look at them and say, I want to be like my fellow country woman, that's where the magic happens. What would you, we've long clamored for for more collaboration with the LPGA tour with with the PGA tour. Yeah. One, do you, in what ways would that benefit the LPGA tour to do you,

do you have a relationship with Brian Rolap, do you see that as possibilities in the future and kind of what, what, what if you were to make the case to them of why there should be more crossover in whatever way, one with that, what would that look like? There's a lot of questions in one.

What would that look like? Yeah. And why, why should they do it? Yeah. The answer is, and you can go kind

tour by tour governing body by governing body. I and we have great relationships with people across all of those organizations, including Brian Rolap. Peanut, I've spent a decent amount of time

just at the top. If you look lower into the organization, our sales teams talk to one another,

“our marketing teams talk to one another. Today, we do a little bit. We have the Grant Thornton”

Imvitational, which you're familiar with the week after the CME, it's a co-ed tournament. We both support it. And it's actually great. It's cool to see Lauren Coglin win this year, by the way. She's an awesome awesome human being. There's so much more we can do, whether it's finding a way across pollinate sponsors, whether it's additional joint events, whether it's finding a way to frankly find economies as scale. And instead of everybody building their own setups and tearing them down, you know,

disparate weeks throughout the year, can we piggyback the US women's open, by the way, we're going to back to back weeks at Pinehurst. And it was awesome and 14. It was great. It could be unbelievable. It was great. Yeah. So look, this has been written about. You look across virtually all the golf organizations, not all but most, P. J. of America, the RNA, P. J. tour us. There's a lot of new

“leadership in golf right now. And it's going to take us a minute to build the level of trust.”

That's necessary in order to pull off some really big ideas with one another, but know that the intent is there. How much does it help when you have an organization like the Olympics, thinking of LA 28, you have a mixed competition to it now? Yeah. That is taking something that was kind of an idea of a mixed co-ed event, L. P. J. tour P. J. tour. And now throwing it onto the biggest stage globally that you possibly can. It helps the world be mettle's allocated to that.

Totally. You know, it's such a good question. It helps enormously for a bunch of reasons. And I'll tell you the one that gets me most excited, most recent summer Olympics, Team USA is playing and who's on the sidelines. You've got LeBron there cheering him on. And by the way, it wasn't just Ron might watch more L. P. J. tour golf. He's all over. Yeah, it's crazy. It's as Nelly is on TV.

“Yeah, it seems like he is watching or posting stories about it. Yeah, it's amazing to see what”

what's happened there. And I hope the two of them get together at some point. Get him out. I'm sorry.

Well, that could be amazing. Yeah, when he's there, it didn't just elevate Team USA. It elevated

LeBron. How cool was that? We tried to actually, it's not Olympics, but you mentioned the writer couple earlier. We tried to do it this year. So on the first tier of the writer cup, we had Angela Stanford and Anna Nordquest there and their, you know, continents, colors, cheering on the men's team. And and on hard, I really hope when the writer cup, excuse me, the soulheim cup comes along in the Netherlands this fall that the writer cup captains are there doing the same for our

athletes. Is it frustrating at times that when using the writer cup as an example? Yeah. Probably the lack of media attention that something like that that you guys probably worked really hard to get in place and get people signed up for and to do. And then all of a sudden you do it and you execute it. Yeah. And you're thinking that like, oh, this might get some headlines and stuff outside of normal LPJ reach that it doesn't do you think the LPJ, I don't want to say the LPJ

tour is owed anything. Yeah. But what do you think the next steps need to be done to to make it so it is reaching a larger audience? We're going to be like water on a rock. It takes a long time to grind it down and eventually get it to where you need it to be. Would it have been nice to

have the world blow up because we had two amazing soulheim cup captains on the first team. Of course,

did I expect it would happen? Not really, but four years from now, six years from now, eight years from now and and we're going to just keep working our butts off to get there. That was a leading question on my part of how far is that look? Well, it's a very well done soulheim cup. I'm so excited for another one. It's going to be a lot of fun. But Craig, we really appreciate you spending an hour with us and you got a busy day as well. But great to great to meet up in person, great to hear here.

Here's some success stories already from your tenure. We look forward to seeing how it all plays out. Listen, I'm so appreciative you guys having me on you are massive LPJ fans and what you do to help tell our story. It means a lot, keep it up, whatever we can do to help, whether it's providing access, interesting opportunities. We talk about ideas. If you've got them, we want them and just know that we come at this with a wildly open mind and we're excited to do even more with you. We got that on

tape. We can play that at any time we ever request. So click, thank you again. Thank you. Thanks, guys.