1197: Neil Learns How a PGA Tour Event Gets Built

>> The right club to date. [MUSIC] >> Ready, that's better than most. How about you? It was better than most.

Better than most. [MUSIC] >> Expect anything different.

“>> The job I always think is worse, but you can see all these fence poles going up.”

>> Yes. >> And very shortly, you'll hear the sweet sound of a fence pounder. See the guys in a neon yellow over there. >> Yep.

>> That's the job I always like.

I don't want that job. >> See the two guys there, they're going to stand up. They got about 11 foot pole. They mount their hammer on it. He goes and gets his little step ladder.

>> Oh, there it goes. >> And now you'll see and hear he's going to get up there turn on his hammer. >> Right while this woman tees are on. >> Oh yeah. >> There's a jacket.

[MUSIC] >> Isn't curious. Lady's day. On 16. [MUSIC]

>> Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the no laying up podcast. Solie here joined by an eclectic group of colleagues. One Icarito Neal Schuster is here. Neal, what is going on? Not much.

Good morning, gentlemen. Fired up to be here. We got a special one for you. >> DJ, Pious here, hello, DJ. >> Hello, good to be here.

You know, we're recording this at 830 my time. We should have done this about 445, 5 o'clock. We got to get up early for the podcast like this. >> That's right. >> Throw on the vest, get to work, get the coffee going,

get a breakfast sandwich. Our esteemed colleague as well Charlie van Kirk is here. What's going on Charlie?

“>> Hey, Sally, who's the eclectic one in this group?”

>> The whole everyone. >> The whole of the place. >> Yeah, everyone. What are we doing today? What would you say we're doing here today?

>> Our different episode. >> This is one that's been on the brainstorming board for years. Charlie and I are going to take a little audio journey of the job site. We're going to explore all the stuff that goes into hosting and building out a successful project.

If you take anything away from this podcast, I hope it's an appreciation for all the little stuff, just the amount of stuff that has to get done in a very specific sequence and amount of time. So like the next time you're on site. >> You know, rope and steak. Why don't you take a look?

>> This has been a dream of yours for a long time. I would say we've leveraged our BMW relationship to really get behind the scenes. This has been an open door in terms of, hey, we'd like to interview a bunch of people who would like to come on site. We'd like to really dig on some finances.

A lot of background. We're going to get into a lot of stuff. I'm going to say what you are. Maybe not as entertained by this whole thing as you are, but you get to a tournament. You're like, man, all this for just like a few days of watching people play golf.

Like this triple-decker hospitality thing. I'll just, I'll just play golf for a few days. And then just going to tear it back down and all go back to normal.

It just never financially adds up in my head to work.

But it must if they keep doing it. We're going to get there. >> Where does it all go? >> We're going to get there too. >> I'm excited for this new.

I worked at the PJ Tour for a long time. I got to know a lot of the operations people. They're fascinating people. It's a fascinating job. You know, I feel like a lot of the player-relation stuff is just like, you think that's the sexy job.

And it's like, oh, no, they're just pissed about like whatever the locker room set up this week or something boring.

“These guys are just like, you know, how do we get that huge thing from there to over there?”

I don't know how we're going to do it. Do we got to take out trees? Do we got to break it machinery? It's just problem solving all day. So I love this topic and I'm pumped to dive in.

>> A lot of craftsman DJ. >> That's right. That's right. >> Before we get there, Neil, I don't have a good transition for this one. >> You're doing the intro and the read here.

Usually if I'm doing it, I got a good transition here. But do you guys have some some title stuff you want to tell us? >> Yeah, just, you know, Shadow of the title is the signing sponsor. And I want to give Master Shadow to Austin Shackleton. He's the New Jersey Area title is Fitter.

I worked with him about a month ago. Getting fit for a three would Anna seven would. He's awesome. So if you're in the area, go see. I would say that local fitters for title is everywhere.

Put me in a GTS three three would.

I've always liked being able to turn a three would right to left.

I've been turning it way too much right to left. It was kind of set up for that. And so he kind of neutralized the right to left ball. Put a little bit more weight than toe for me. And since then, I've had three Eagles since that fitting.

>> He's a more set up in the seven would. So we're hitting part five to two gentlemen and starting to really attack. It surprised the golf ball DJ.

Getting the ball up in the air with those fairway would. So GTS fairer would's have been great. Still loving the left dash golf ball.

“Highly recommend the left dash if you're struggling with the spinny table as I tend to do.”

And if you have you know full swing wedges that zip off the green. That is neutralized both of those issues. And then I put the 2026 Scotty Cameron fan to seven point two in the bag. In May plumbers neck. That's the story here.

Guys, I've resisted it forever. I just like having craftsman. >> It's a little bit behind the ball. It's coming out bad. I don't know.

Maybe honey moon maybe not. But the plumbers neck is hot right now. That's my bag update. >> Neil the pullover. The tradeswood.

>> The eye bod member. >> The local 908. >> Put your pants up Neil. I was wondering if we might. You and I might may or may not play a old shot event later this fall.

It's like, oh man. Do I need to get a Neil's golf ball a little bit. A little time in with Neil's golf ball. Good point. I literally got him bed last night.

I was like, I got to play a different golf ball. We're also going to get to people waking up at night and making notes. >> Okay. >> So that's in this episode as well. >> So I run a show.

What's the kind of run a show? Spoiler, caveats real quick. There's a lot that goes into building a tournament.

And Charlie and I captured an overwhelming amount of first hand audio interview content.

“I think the hardest part with this stuff is like.”

Selecting what, you know, they're all of it's interesting. You know, but it's like, okay, we got to tighten this up. So this will not be a complete list of everyone and everything that makes a tournament successful. We had to focus. I hope it's a good overview of how it works on a macro scale.

So we'll go through some of the big players early and kind of who does what. But from there, it's a lot of it's a collection of things that's said, you know, made to say wow or just made room for wow. And some stuff that just made us laugh. So we interviewed about 15 people on site and from home,

tried to break it up into a few different sections. We'll talk about the why, like why we doing this. Quick run through of who does what? Because there are a lot of stakeholders. We'll profile the conductor.

I think the the main character. I'm going to call him the conductor. I'm going to call the big ass jobs. We'll laugh about some of the smaller more unique jobs. Walk through the financials and then run through some stats.

And then, you know, as you guys have questions, maybe we have answers. I don't know. If you don't, I don't know who anybody who does it this way. How did 12, 6 curve ball couple weeks ago,

“scheduled to go to St. Louis, me Charlie there to do the hit the job site,”

complete bones own flights, ground stop at newer, couldn't get out. Next night couldn't get out thunderstorms in the area. FAA just choke points everywhere. So Charlie did make it.

So a lot of the first hand stuff Charlie captured on on his end. I was able to work the interview stuff from home, but Charlie, anything to add there. Yeah, I mean, this was whiffs of rider cup last fall when Niels alarmed

and didn't go off and you and I were sitting on the bus before in the morning and Niels just like, "Oh fuck, guys, I don't think he likes it again." I spoke this one to do existence. I'm like, I haven't had any flight issues in a while.

It's back to back canceled flights. I'm mostly this summer. United both times. But thunderstorms. I mean, the whole airport shut down.

I don't know.

That courtesy is always extended to American airplanes.

That's what I'm delayed too. So that's great. Yeah, I mean, I have to sneak this in there that our idea for this was to put Neil in a micro dirty job situation

and just Neil make you suffer as much as possible and let that carry the first hand audio. And I am gutted that that didn't get to happen, but I'm kind of hitting out hope. Yeah, exactly.

Exactly. I've not given up on that conceptually for something. So we got a maybe it's next year at Liberty. Maybe it's something. In my backyard next year.

And then when these flight, I'm sitting at New York, you know, for four hours. And then I go home at, you know, 1 a.m. I'm like, hit me. I'm like, God, BMW's at Liberty. Next, why don't we just do it next year?

Oh, good, you know, so I had a lot. There's just been a lot of, a lot of angst and stuff. So Charlie also took some awesome pictures while on site. So if you're watching this on YouTube, we'll flash those when we play some audio clips.

And we'll try to get those out on social media as well. I got a million things we want to get through so please be patient if we get lost on the trail here. But otherwise, you guys ready? Yeah, I have one question.

I mean, you kind of, we kind of danced around this, but just a lot of topics we could do. There's a lot of stuff on our brainstorming doc. Why? You've talked about doing this for literally the years.

What is, what is it about this that makes you, makes you want to dive in? It's a couple things. Every time every time I go to any professional tournament, but especially the ones that bounce around,

Ryder Cup last year, US Open this year, and then BMW the last three or four years,

I just, I'm always blown away by the operation.

And then I've also started to realize how it's grown. You know, how it's, it's kind of,

like these buildouts have doubled.

“And so the idea of building a temporary city for a 130,000”

plus people to come and enjoy themselves over the course of a week is fascinating. I find myself wondering about like little stuff.

And so, you know, it's just always been a curiosity.

And I used towards city intentionally, because like, again, the last 20 years, these buildouts have gone from like county fair, style, open air tents by the pudding green to three story buildings, like legit buildings

with AC, couches, kitchen, sound system, shandaliers, the list goes on. I have never worked in construction, but I'm fascinated by stuff getting built in the real world. I know you're at a lover of guys building cabins on YouTube.

You know, just the sequencing for this stuff venue selection, how it's laid out, the financing, custom build, logistics of 50 different vendors. And then it's not on an empty lot like it is with a permanent building. This is a, you know, most of the time a private club.

People paying a lot of money to be a member of that club. You got to avoid shutting down the course, so it's all very confined. You can't push the open date. You can't have a soft launch.

You know, it's like we got one week if we don't hit these deadlines. And if we don't get all this stuff done in the next week now, it's a hard deadline. So all of that is really, really interesting to me. And then like the relationship with the local community,

the neighborhood, the government. We're going to talk a little bit about that and just like what, you know, like what you have to do, not just at the course, but like to move, you know, 15,000 additional cars on the road in a, you know, an old school neighborhood is something that needs to be thought through.

As a member of a course that is hosted a Champions Tour event for the last five years, and it's now no longer hosting one.

It is like it's never about the week of the tournament.

Like given up your course for all you got to give up your course for the week. It is always about the four to five to six weeks ahead in advance, clanging banging noise, like you heard in the cold open there of like, well, you're, I get the courses under construction. And then it's under construction to turn it all down for weeks afterwards.

And then there's damage left by everything that's been done there. It's like, it's just a, it's a big thing to give up your golf course for, for a professional event. You don't think about that. I don't think about that with wind them at all,

which is this week as we're recording this, but somebody's been working on that shit year round all year. Three years in advance. I'm saying advance.

“And BMW Championship, I think, is a really good example.”

One, because I've met the people that do it,

and I've always, we're gonna, you know, do a kind of a profile.

The people is the other reason for why. The age where I've always been really, really impressed when I'm like, man, these guys are super competent and interesting and fun. You know what I mean? So I'm like, I'd love to profile what goes into the operation here.

And BMW Championship moves around. So, you know, and other terms do Ryder Cup, but like the fact that they do it every year, it's not every two years. And it makes it more complex.

There's pros and cons to moving around. But as the tour starts to think about moving the tour championship around in a few years and, you know, getting to other markets. I think BMW is kind of the gold standard for how to do that well. So yeah, that's, I've just always wanted to like dig in and see how shit works.

Well, another thing is we have never been shy about offering our critiques of where the PGA tour maybe gets some things wrong, where we might have different personal taste and blah, blah, blah. They'd never mess this up. They'd never mess the operations up.

They never don't have it built in time. They're never bound schedule on any of this stuff. They don't correct me if I'm wrong. Remember, they don't run out of food. They don't run out of water.

They don't have massive parking problems. Like they did their ability to put this part on. Always amazes me and it's, yeah. And it's not all the same and it's not all the same organization. And that's also important to note.

“So like that's why I'm fascinated by it.”

It's not like it's not a copy and paste model across every tournament kind of has its own different setup and personality. So we'll get into that too. And to be honest, this was like a, like going back five years ahead of it in Vance.

I was like, oh, this will be things that live screws up. Like it's not as easy as the PGA tour makes it look to their credit. I would say, live has had equal amount and impressive amount of competence in the setup and the build out and all of the logistics that go into that. Like that was where I, I was expecting things to go wrong and

didn't, but again, that, that this whole part does amazes me. Not the same extent as does do you, Neil, but I'm very curious to dive in. Just just matter whether those people get paid, but that's a different. That's totally different conversation. The, I think the different organizations is fascinating to me because I think a lot of people

very, very understandably would be like, oh, it's the PGA tour. The PGA tour has a rope guy. The PGA tour has an opt, you know, and they do have ops guys, right?

But BMW's an interesting one.

You know, I don't even totally, I mean, it's Western golf association. It's BMW. It's like there's a lot of different cooks in the kitchen. So maybe we start with like a little rundown of that. Let's start there.

I'm going to lay out, let me just do a quick overview macro. So host, so kind of players in the organization host organization. This is not the PGA tour. This is the Western Golf Association, WGA. They've had the mission for them.

They were found in the 1899 WGA exists to conduct championships for professional and amateur golfers. Promotes the use of youth caddies and supports the Evans Scholars Foundation's efforts to award full tuition and housing college scholarships to high achieving caddies with limited financial means.

“Basically, they are the, they run the tournament, right?”

So they are responsible for everything that goes on outside the ropes. Big hand venue selection. You know, I have to work with the PGA tour on, you know, what courses, but like they are. They are the ones building the tournament. They are doing all of the stuff that we're going to talk about.

They conduct four amateur tournaments annually in two professionals. One corn fairy event that was in Chicago a couple of weeks ago. And then the BMW championship, which bounces around. They're based in Chicago. They're going to liberty next year.

I don't know if they've announced it, but Olympia Fields was a location in the past and probably one in the future as well. Obviously, we're biased. I think they are the gold standard.

We partnered with them to work towards a named Evan Scholarship shout out to Abby Boyer, our first scholar.

But this is when we talk about the history of the PGA tour and the nonprofit stuff. This is the nonprofit component. They have 1,260 Evan Scholars enrolled in 27 universities for the 2025-26 academic year. And they've 12,575 young men and women have graduated as Evan Scholarship in 1930. So that's the charity component of this specific tournament.

The western open, which is now the BMW championship. Kind of pause on this. This is something that people do. The other that I don't need to pick on you for this, but I just want to clarify. You said we're biased based on this.

This is something. I feel like I've gone through in the last five years of like. I would say we would be biased if like your brother was running the Western Golf Association. We felt the need to steer out of our way to say nice things about them. We have chosen because of the great work they do with the Evan Scholars Foundation to be closely tied to that.

But just like we did work with ESPN about seven years ago. I just want to say there, you know, just acknowledge there is a partnership with them. I would not say we are biased towards the Evan Scholars Foundation.

I'd say we wholeheartedly endorse the incredible things they have done with that.

“They're picking your words there, but I think there could be a little confusion on that.”

And I think what I would add here is there's a host organization most weeks. Sometimes the PGA tour pulls tournaments in in house to do. I'll get there. I'll get there. So, but this is like if you go to Phoenix, this is the when you hear about Thunderbirds.

If you go to Dallas, this salesmanship club. There's there's different organizations like this kind of scattered. And there's some of them are struggling like they're getting. I don't want to say, you know, the ones that aren't, it's like anything. People's getting hollowed out a little bit.

So, the best host organizations, I think they offer a tremendous value both in the. The clarity of the charity component, which is really important. And we'll talk about it in the finance section and creating differentiation, having a personality. Like for Western golf, the WGA, like being being like, we want to bounce around because like. Not every tournament makes as much money for the Evan Scholars, but those are important markets.

And places where they want to start a scholarship or make sure, like, you know, all these scholars spread out. It's a way for them to bring the alumni back together. And so there's a lot of different success metrics for them.

“And, and I think if it, you know, the PGA toward us a really good job with their championship management,”

but they're going to systematize it and it's going to be a lot more uniform. And they, they're not, you know, they're not going to want it. They're not going to go out of their way to make it stand out. No one's in our fair. Yeah, yeah, it's not there.

It's kind of like, hey, we're doing 10 of these or whatever. It is more efficient, though, you know what I mean? Totally, which I think we don't have to get into it now. But it's worth keeping it in the back of your head. Like, that's the push and pull between all these changes on the PGA tour, right?

Is like what you just said makes complete logical sense, right? We want to move around. This is our fundraising engine. We have people all over the country. We need to go to different markets.

Yadiyada. If the PGA tour is moving towards being just a pure entertainment product. And there's somebody on their couch being like, I don't give a shit. Just go to banded dunes. There's a real push and pull there between how the tour was set up and how it used to operate.

And kind of where it's where it's headed, which I think there's a lot of healthy tension in that. But it's tension nonetheless. So, and the WGA, they're P&L. They get everything outside the ropes. They get the money from tickets, hospitality, not the title sponsor.

But the hospitality, you know, that the, whatever. It's a package of tickets or, you know, a 400K big ass tent. Concessions and merch, right?

And they have to make sure that that number is a lot bigger than what it cost.

“And then whatever the profit is, that goes, you know, for the most part.”

We'll talk about some details that have changed. But that's going to go to the Heaven Scholars. That's the money that we are raising to send men and women, guys and girls to school. So I'll be honest. I didn't even know that.

I thought I assumed the PGA. It's a little more complicated than that. But that's where the majority of their money is going to come from. And also, but then, you know, this isn't an event and experience. They're going to generate more donations from this.

You know, so there's all like, but from the actual P and L of the tournament. That's to keep it simple.

So second, second stakeholder.

Quickly on that, the PGA tour, though, helps themselves the hospitality. Right? Or they're not necessarily in charge. I guess I'm thinking of like players, which is chant management. That's different.

That's just one of the hosted ones. So that's going to be a little different. And tour championship. They're going to help sell the hospitality. But, but for this specifically, WGA is responsible for the local market sales.

Right?

“And I think, I think, you know, you could probably think of the PGA tour as like a channel partner.”

Like, they might be funneling like an OMP official marketing partner. I was going to say you thought you'd not have a big office in St. Louis. Yeah. Can you guys hook them up with a suite? You know, like, of course, they're going to send inbound that way.

But as far as, like, who's, you know, where is that check being signed to that's going to WGA? Whereas next stakeholder is going to be title sponsor. This is BMW. BMW.

This is the 20th year that BMW has been the title sponsor. The Western Open hosted by the WGA.

The first year they were the sponsor was a cog hill.

Who won that tournament? Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods. The cat. I was there, baby.

Let's go. Who was a runner-up, Dege? Mark Leachman. I think Aaron badly. Okay.

Leachman was better up there. Or no, Leachman. What a one one. I'm worried. I'm worried.

And somebody checking on that. If you're going to ask it as a trivia question, I thought you knew the answer. I think I saw Aaron badly. Hold on, 2007.

Why don't you look that up? And you made up great transition here. Second place Aaron badly. Yeah. All right.

I listen. I've been doing a lot of research. So my own research. You know, so could get a couple things wrong. Okay.

Goal mission. Like, what is BMW getting out of this? First off, I'd say, let's just call out the Denny Cash episode. So I'll just listen to that a couple of days ago. I can't remember what number it is, but we should link it here.

But this, if you want more information on like title sponsorship and what the big name title sponsors are getting out of working with the PGA tour, that's going to be a better resource. But they're trying to create an annual experience that represents the BMW brand well to both golf fans watching. And then provides them kind of a physical experience for different stakeholders with BMW. BMW.

And talking to some people that work there or work with BMW. It's a physical product company. They make cars, right? So hosting a real-world event allows them to get creative with touch points, not just for customers, or for people watching.

You see the cars displayed in the lakes, all that stuff. But also like, hoat the dealers. You know, you got to take care of your top dealers around the country. And then other channel partners. There's just a lot of, there's a lot of stakeholders in the automotive industry.

And so this is a great, like, center of gravity for them every year. Two things, you know, one that is episode eight, seventy nine of the no-laying up podcast. How sponsorship works on the PGA tour.

“And I think you've already taken care of most of this part of the episode for me.”

But this episode is brought to you by our friends at BMW. Proud title sponsor of the BMW Championship. They're celebrating the year, the term it's 20th anniversary. And we're reminded of what makes this event so special every year. Thousands of people come together to build an entire city around a championship golf tournament.

They're creating unforgettable experiences for players and fans alike. Since BMW became title sponsor of the BMW Championship has been named PGA tour.

Termin of the year six times reflection of the incredible work that goes into every detail for BMW.

It's an opportunity to connect with passionate golf fans, share their latest vehicles and innovations, and help support something even bigger. Every BMW Championship is played for the Evan Scholler's Foundation, helping provide life-changing college scholarships to deserving caddies across the country. BMW, the ultimate driving machine.

And shout out to them for helping us make an intro as getting us set up with access to do this. So as I said, it's not just customers, dealers, partners, and good center of gravity for them. Reference, again, reference to Denny Cash, and specifically the workday example in that episode. I thought it was fantastic. Just quick recap of that CEO, workday, lost a massive deal back in the day because of SAP was able to set up a pro and experience with Tiger Woods, with a big prospect.

And they're like, "We're going with Bob Sugar." So he was kind of like, "You didn't have this, man. I'm going to get into this golf sponsorship thing so I can do the same thing." So the point being, there's a very human and memorable experiential piece of these events sponsorships.

But there's a kind of a hard to quantify piece of this, which is just like, you know, human, like, "Hey, if something's going wrong, if I hosted them and they had a great experience, I'm going to get a call." It's gonna be something to do. You know, I'm going to, hey, we're going with Bob Sugar, you're going to, you're going to call me before you do that, is the idea there. So we'll get into a little bit more like the finance stuff later.

But third, stakeholder, PGA tour, specifically for the operations, the competition committee.

So I spoke with Steven Cox last week, one of the lead tournament officials for the PGA tour, also kind of used to be the advanced guy that would go around to different events. Make sure, and their role here is like, "Yes, they are responsible for sanctioning the event, handling all the media partnerships, the TV stuff." They handle the media rights and the check that BMW signs goes to them. And then they do, you know, support the host course with whatever renovations need to be made, and they make sure they help out with the gronomy.

But specifically, they are responsible tournament set-up wise for everything that goes on inside the ropes. So that's a gronomy course set-up course improvements in advance, the tournament, the handle the title sponsor money, as I said. And Steven said, "I was like, give me some examples of like what you're working on on those advanced site visits." He's like, "Fairway with line patterns with of intermediate, height of rough, height of fairways, collar with, what sort of green speeds are we prepping for?"

“You know, "I'm looking at the site map, and I'm just making sure everything's far enough away, are we going to have any TIO stuff?”

Hold that thought, we'll get there shortly."

And I've seen them come into our course, and they'll dot the fairways of, you know, we don't typically have an intermediate rough.

At Tim Aquana, they'll come in a couple of months in advance and put green lines in the fairways of like, "Here's where we're going to grow up the intermediate cut for this tournament." Like they'll just make little kind of tweaks like that in a lot of place. Almost the way they work as a rules officials, it's similar here. So an example that Steven gave me of for coming up is on one of these advanced visits. They actually talked to Seller shy and Steve Milton of CBS, and they want to put a new fly cam in.

I think it's between 17 and 18 this year. And Steven's like, "Hey, we're worried because looking at the shot link data from the PGA Championship in 2018, a lot of guys dumping it left on both holes. And those wires can be running down the left side of both holes. And so they're like, we don't, you know, he's like, "Last thing I want is someone hits that wire and gets a favorable drop.

You guys are going to jump all over me." That's a problem. We're trying to get, make sure that though, but we also want those guys to use their bells and whistles. You know, so we're calling for more like cool shots and this is where the PGA tour will weigh in and use some of the data from an experience they have to be like, "All right, we've got to make sure we put this in the right place."

We don't want to know where versus England goal kick situation and all on ETS. Yeah, that's right. And then last thing here deaged it to your point earlier, it's important to know the tour is getting deeper into championship management.

And, you know, hosting basically the WGA in this case.

And right now, they host the cognacent players, truest, FedEx, Tor Championship and President's Cup.

“And I think there might be one or two others I'm missing, but that's where they have two separate teams.”

You got the, so the internal teams at the PGA tour are working both sides of this. Yeah, it's kind of, like I said at the beginning, it's kind of a fascinating, a fascinating thing. It's one of those where it's like, if you, if you blew everything up and you restarted with the PGA tour, run everything, it's kind of the TPC idea that Brian Rullap talked about at the players, right? Or it's like, if, you know, if we could, don't you think we'd want to control all of our own venues so that we're not pushing a membership out?

And so that we're not, we're not doing XY and Z, but also that's a whole other undertaking. And it's, there's a lot of positives to how it works now. So I just frozen cons, man. I mean, that's, there's no right answer. The more people you talk to, I feel like the more, you know, not as a cup out,

but the more people you talk to, the more sympathetic you get to just like, wow, this is, this is complicated. It's not quite as easy as, like, saw that we figured it out or we felt that's very easy.

“We felt that when we were doing the schedule podcast, right?”

Where it's like, okay, although the governor's off, you could make the 2028 schedule anything you want. We got, I think we all got halfway through. We're like, I mean, fuck, it's just, kind of seems like it's just like how they're doing. Now I figure that one.

Now I get why we're in Memphis and August. Yeah, I mean, it kind of, you know, it kind of makes sense what they're doing. I think they've thought about it real quick. You know, I believe truest in Miami are both, my management events as well.

And I think it's also where the PJ tour, you know, they can be a little bit of a backstop for some of these tournaments, you know, like, because not every, again, these host organizations, not all of them are, are excelling. You know, it's, it comes down to people,

which we're going to get to here shortly. But a couple more stakeholders, host course, this is Belle Reeve this year. They have experience hosting a ton of high end golf event, PJ championship. They have a history of hosting high end amateur and, you know,

But they haven't done it in a while. So it's still kind of like dust and off the, you know, the playbook.

“And, you know, I think what's important to,”

to realize here is it's just they have a lot of stakeholders in the membership, right? So how do you work with a course like that to make sure that this is a win for them? They're trying to celebrate St. Louis and, and, you know, kind of the local flavor, but also, you know, just kind of put on a good event and have a party. And again, as I said, Liberty National next year,

and they're already ahead of like the whole build-out site maps all built. So they're working on, you know, almost in tandem, like getting ahead of next year as well. I'll just quick run through TV partners that CBS this year, normally NBC and we're going to talk about that, how that had, had created some complexity for the operations team here shortly.

And then you've got a ton of vendors, local government, local HOA this year. We've been, we haven't some HOA meetings about parking and access yet. All the local sponsors, then of course you got the fans, which will be kind of around the estimates probably 130,000. That was, that was the number given for Castle Pines, which was a high watermark

out in Denver a couple years ago for BMW. So, sorry, that was a lot, but that's just a state of play here. Okay, all that, all that makes sense. And, and it, again, is be well-during that they're not only doing that for this week, but they're doing that for 30, 40 events on the PGA tour,

and then a bunch more on the corn fairy tour and a bunch more on the champions tour. And it's, and then the DP world, the live golf, it's just, just a lot of,

“a lot of moving parts in pro golf, but who's, who's the conductor?”

We talked about the mice show at the beginning, where who's who's leading the ship here. Well, as we talked about, a lot of like, I'm fascinated by the size, and how many stakeholders are involved need to collaborate. But I think what's unique here, maybe it's like this in construction,

but as far as I, the way I look at it, in a large company, it's very clear hierarchy. You know, this event is an amalgamation of like disparate organizations, vendors, freelancers, government officials, volunteers, a lot of volunteers as well.

And, oh, it had, it changes cities every year, and it, like literally can't have delays. So you need a conductor. That guy is Patrick Timson, vice president of tournament operations for the Western Golf Association.

Patrick has worked at WGA, his whole career. I think he's coming up on 25 years. He was initially an intern or crew guy at the Western Open, during summers in high school. And then he went to college and came back to Western Golf

and has worked his way up the ladder to basically run shit.

So, Charlie, here's a clip. Let's just, we'll let him introduce himself. Patrick Timson, vice president of tournament operations for Western Golf Association. And where are we standing right now?

We are standing golfers right of 18 approach. Behind a huge scaffold deal that's the size of a football field. 100 meters long, just about as wide as a field. And we're going to walk in here to check out what's going on. Status wise to make sure the next vendor can get in on time.

And how many days until tournament week? I don't count that anymore. But let's say, it's three weeks from Monday. Okay. Oh, I'm sorry, two weeks from Monday.

Oh, sure. One day, next Monday is advanced advance week, we call it. Okay. And as you can see, there's a lot to be done. You know, we're standing on rough plywood.

Guys are painting, polishing, shining. But the biggest project is getting these walls done. The interior kind of divisions. So that that vendor can vacate the space. And our next guy can roll in, literally.

So they're going to roll out the carpet. I'm stressed. Yeah. He's not, though. And that's, we're going to touch on that.

But I've met Patrick previously, like three years ago. And I see him every year at the BMW. And he's, he's awesome.

And I've always thought he'd be a fascinating guy to profile.

I remember at Castle Pines. I was walking with him.

“He's like, oh, you see those porta bodies up there?”

Like, yeah, we had to, we brought a crane in overnight and put those, those went in. It's like three stories of he's got the porta potty. You know, it's like, how'd you do that, man? So a few, like, things jump out immediately when you meet him. First, he sounds like the actor JK Simmons.

The whiplash guy. It kind of looks like him too. You know, it's just a great voice for radio, which is awesome. Ball fit, just a positive force of nature. Every time I've called him to interview him or, you know, ask a question,

which is probably like five or six times at this point. He picks up the phone on the first or maybe second ring. But like, always this Patrick, you know, it's just like, and then you hear what Charlie's captured. I mean, he's just constantly talking to somebody.

And it's never like, he's, it's just like part, it's like, it's not so natural.

You know what, I, there's not single, like, manual labor job that I haven't underestimated the amount of time by at least three x on not one single one. Even, like, knowing going in, that part, I will still underestimate how long

photos that Charlie just showed as well if you're watching on YouTube.

“Oh, my God, that's a different, you're wired different.”

So he just embodies like competence and he's extremely calm. In short, Sally, put him on a list. All right, we've got Rory, we've got Scotty, Mayberom, and Patrick Timson. Dude, dude, he's an absolute dude. Okay, he is a dude, for sure.

Charlie, you spent a couple days with him. What was your, what were your takeaways?

Yeah, basically just followed him around at work for two and a half days,

spoke to some other people as well, but, you know, he would have a vendor meeting maybe at eight in the morning for half an hour an hour with a dozen or so of the folks who were out there building stuff, but then he would just cruise around the course. He was, you know, put in spray paint down. If, like, a line that was marking a flag got a little dull.

He would just touch up the line. He would, you know, he would have 48 new, like, urgent emails in his inbox between that would show up between 9 and 11 a.m. And he would, like, handle all of those by 2 p.m. For example, he's just, like, going out, he would, like, we would be solving something

or he would be solving something as I basically just pasted him with questions the whole time and three people would come up to him from different departments. While he was solving that one problem and he would solve three more from those individual departments over the course of that.

“And he was just so, like, the, one of the biggest takeaways for me was how calm he was”

as, you know, mentioned, like, granted, there's so many problems that have to get solved, like, someone drives the, the wrong kind of vehicle or fork lift without tread tires over the golf course and the wrong spot and ruts up the golf course or someone

literally crashed into a bridge of scaffolding and messed up the mesh.

Like, if you got flustered by all of that stuff over the course of these months, you probably wouldn't survive. So he's just, like, just mowing him down, just, you know, task by task. No problem. Everything's fine.

So I asked him about, actually, I, I teed up Neil and Neil asked him about his his management style here in this clip. You got something, Sally? I just say, compare that with, here I was last night. Maybe stressed about playing a different golf ball four months from now on a golf

tournament versus all of that is that's not lost on me. All right. Here we go. All right. I'm going to switch gears management style.

You've got 95 things going at once. I don't. Charlie's telling me he doesn't hear you raise in your voice. You, you got great vibes. Like, you're not stressing out.

Is that, is that how you're wired? Is that, or is that 20 years of experience? The, the latter. You know, the stress and out thing has, has definitely gone downhill because and the day we know we're giving out a trophy.

We know the folks that we've got under working with us, whether it's vendors or our staff. They've been doing it. They know the drill. Everybody's working towards a common goal.

So, um, that end of it stress has, has left my system a while ago. Now I still, you know, can't sleep because I, you know, all these things that run through my head. But it's not like, oh, I can't get it done. I just got to remember it.

So there's a lot of, a lot of, you know, last night, I probably wrote six notes to myself in between, you know, going to bed and waking up where I woke up to. Oh, you know, I've got to check on this program. Oh, I've got to check on this.

Um, so that's the nature of, uh, probably the closing weeks. You know, my wife will tell you, I, if I, if I am fortunate enough to be at home and, um, I'll wake up in the middle night and just say stuff and kind of like sleep, sleep talk. Um, that's stopping on six.

You know, look at that. Exactly. And she's like, go to sleep. Um, but. Oh, my God.

Yeah. So, so that's the stress end of it. But, you know, the, the whole, you know, getting angry, screaming at guys.

“I think I got turned off from that early on.”

So back when, when I started is just kind of, just kind of, work at, at Cog Hill, um, they had a superintendent who was great at growing grass, but, um, bad at, uh, interacting with folks that were disrupting his golf course. So, um, we got, you know, that a lot, you know, for a

carts are off the path or, you know, why is this guy here? Or, you know, you guys are whatever it was. And, uh, early on, I'm like, well, that's, that's not very motivating or helpful. Like, I get it.

Like, we shouldn't be there. But, um, no need to, no need to scream. So, uh, if there's, I'm generally not yelling any vendors for doing a bad thing. I'll, I'll certainly talk to him about it.

And, uh, get him straight, but don't need to yell.

So why, so why are you always yelling at us, Neil?

Can you look at some from this? Yeah. No, I, I think I was trying to come up with a way to describe his job because I, I don't think operations, it, it's too, too broad. I, I came up with a disruptive term.

It's, it's problem solving as a service. Peace ass. All right. Uh, and just over the course of 10 weeks, it leading up to this championship. It just, he's rolling around on, on site,

sun up to sun down, solving problems. And, and here's a little taste of that, uh, problem solving. Sal left two openings in the rail, but there's only going to be one.

Mother. That's it.

“So you've got two missing in the back aisle.”

So I've got a 10 in the back row, so now.

So you'll have 11. One foco, a sliver. So you want us to follow that line? Follow this line. Let's, let me show you what I'm thinking.

So you, you want trailers to receive delivers. Yeah. What I was looking at yesterday, these orange marks, they go out 48 feet that way. So this would be the, that's end of your trailer.

You should probably educate them. No, our guys on rope and stay. They bust it a whole spool, yellow rope is just sitting in the trunk, because they, like, try to unreal it and came unraveled. And then we, well, one rope, one spool is definitely compromised.

And then they don't want to tie the knots, they don't. They need education. All right. Hello, this is Patrick. That was probably me calling.

That's just the whole day, basically. Oh, my God. Hey, Patrick, it's Neil. Can't figure out how to open these peanuts. Can you give me a hand?

There's no paper towels in the bathroom. Yeah. So it's like, I mean, and what, what shines through there is it's, it's patience and it's clear communication, right? It's just like, people skills, which I think is, is awesome.

Well, and competence, right?

I mean, it's like, I always think this is a weird analogy,

I always think about this with like video stuff in our business, for a long time. It was like, oh, just, let's delegate the business stuff. It's like, I don't even know how to do it. Let alone, like, delegate it to somebody else.

Like, I don't even know how to ask them for what I'm, what I need, because I don't really know what I need until I just kind of fuss through and figure it out. For something like this is like, no, he has to have the answer to every question, which means he has to know the ins and outs

of every single thing that that goes on. You know, that's just a such an impressive breadth of knowledge. You know, that's not, it's not just management. It's like, no, it's also extreme hard skills and knowing where to point different things.

“I think that's important to like clarify.”

I don't manage, it's not management. Like Patrick, he'll tell you, like he's only as good as his team. Well, he's only technically got three guys working for him on site. I mean, more folks are going to arrive for advanced week, and tournament week, but it's Mitchell, who's kind of another

Mr. Fixett, he's tournament operations manager, and he's got two paid interns, he's got TJ and Jack. And I want to play this, a lot of it's collaboration with like external vendors. So like, yeah, he's there's custom variation.

But it's like he's got a, he's still got to direct them. And yet coordination would be a good way to put in. So I do want to play this clip of kind of how he manages because I think it kind of highlights how clear of a thinker he is.

This kind of came out of a conversation that he and I were having about food, which is, you know, as one does. I'm talking about a cookout that they do with a bunch of the crew and making fresh sauces and five gallon barrels and all this stuff.

So you'll hear how this develops. What are you eating during all of this? Oh. So leave the hotel at, you know, call 5456. Get your coffee.

I'm not a breakfast guy. Lunch is a high note here. I try to make it that. So we've got a couple interns in here now. TJ and Jack.

Those guys are great. We can get into their stories later chat with them. But, you know, we're, this office will have probably a dozen 15 people working in starting like middle and next week. And I, I told those guys day one, you know,

Jack and TJ and like there's, there's a couple rules that we need to abide by here. Number one is your radio.

So always have your radio on you and on.

And so you're prepared. Number two is always have your, we give them like a leatherman multi tool. Always have that because you never know. It's a box or, you know,

“you need to apply it to fix something, whatever.”

And number three is lunches here at noon. Because if it's not, you know, when everybody's running around, everybody's got schedule. Everybody's got calls. Everybody's got meetings.

Everybody's got walkthroughs. Everybody usually clears 12 to 12 30. Everybody comes into the mess hall. You eat. You break bread.

You laugh a little. And then you go back out and do it again. So occasionally we'll have some folks in town. We'll, we'll go out to a nice dinner or something. But even those, it's like, I've really rather spend those two

or two and a half hours. You know, we've got whatever we have left. You know, less than 30 days to do this. It's going to start to be like, oh, I've got less than 10 hours to do this. I wish I would have had two more hours.

And that's all cumulative as we go. So that's, that's why we try to keep, keep lunch timely. And, you know, for me, I, I, I just, I just stay here. I, I, I, I, the repetitive, like the repetitiveness as a comfort sign me.

Sign me up for that. When there's chaos, you got to keep it simple.

Here's your radio, you know, here's your gun. No, here's your tool. And do not.

“And they, the interns are ordering lunch.”

You know, it's like in lunch better be here at noon. Otherwise you're good. I'll tell you everything else as, as needed. Uh, it's just like, we can't plan for all the rest. You know, it's like, let's plan for what we can plan for.

And then, uh, we'll take all the rest of it as it comes. I just, I love, I love that. Love that ethos. Yeah. Before we get to the next step, Neil, uh,

I want to give a shout to our friends of the USGA. At some point, golf starts to follow you home. If you own more golf polos than t-shirts. If you practice your swing with an umbrella, or if you find golf teas in the laundry.

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Visit get a handy cap dot USDA dot org to get started. Again, get a handy cap dot USDA dot org to get started. Okay, Neil. So you said if I'm tracking, he's got three people on his team. He's got vendors constantly coming in and out.

Like, how do they break down? What's the division of labor here?

“How do you kind of like, how do you figure out who's doing what?”

Who's triaging? What's coming in? Who's focused on one thing for six weeks? You know what I mean? How do they kind of break it down?

So I went into this project wondering, like, kind of curious about the vendors. And there's probably 50, 70. But I was like, are these national or are they local? Are you working with a new tent guy every year?

Um, you know, and, and so I asked Patrick one of the first things I asked him in our interviews.

I asked him, all right, I'm planning a new golf tournament. Who's my first call? You know, who's my first draft pick? And this is the clip of him walking through the big stuff. Who you're drafting is tough because there's only probably two or three to choose from.

No, for that big ticket items that events like this do it. Whether it's golf or, you know, big music festivals, things of that nature that need a big temporary footprint. Probably only two or three players in the big structure game. I'll call it to scaffold under structure. The tip seats kind of grandstands, tempting, et cetera.

So you got to pick out somebody to handle that. But in our scenario and what what I've liked and we've done for about 15 of those years is we've got vendor A that does scaffold everything down foundation if you will. And then vendor B is going to come in on top of that and do the tent. So what you're going to learn over the next 15 minutes is like, there's a whole economy to events. So it's a lot of things like that.

It's a lot of things like that. So the big ticket stuff is national. But it's important.

It will get to in a second is it's still the people still matter.

Like who's your form and there's a lot of institutional knowledge of guys you want to work with on the specific big stuff. But then the local shops are going to be trophy polishing dry cleaning. Port of pods buses like also very important stuff that like hey the others some they're like he told me we're still using the same trophy guy from 2018, you know, and the same dry cleaning service, you know. So so there's some there's some clues on where to go with this stuff, but not, you know, it would be some I guess you could say would be great if this was all national, but it's a lot it's a mix of both.

Just real quick dry cleaning is that just for step like server like hospitality service waiters waiters players. I mean they offer the players so much stuff like I was talking to Stephen Cox about like during advanced week I was like so what what do you do then he's like we. The PJ tour does a full walk through like we drive we do like a run of show for the players like we drive the courtesy car into the parking lot we walk. And understand how much walking they have to do to get to the locker room and where we've set up the wellness trailers and the massage and how far is that from the putting green and just.

“Which is like you know, pampered fox but like I think it's Sergio but I cannot wait to be done with this tour.”

I know it's like oh my god what a life right but like they're offering a lot of extra stuff. You know if you yeah dry cleaning but that's also for the yeah service and the hospitality as well. So that's a big ask job you don't even know that but like they're they need those they need the service to look nice the bartenders. What what sticks out to me as well is it's got to be just I can't imagine how much competence is just the number one attractive quality that any of these vendors can have. Yeah, right if you're if you're Patrick and it's like okay I've got 476 different vendors that I've got to figure out here.

If you're the if you're the group that's just like hey man we're going to show up on time and do what we say we're going to do is just like great can you do this for the next 20 years I don't I don't want to I just want to worry about as little as possible.

Just like it's just funny to hear I think the trophy polishing guy was the first thing that you mentioned is like yeah I.

How long would it have taken to think of that guy you know like that's the last thing he wants to be like hey we got a problem with our trophy polishing guy I think he might fall over.

I might be a TJ or Jack issue to deal with yeah that's probably true.

“Yeah, so one of the guys in the dudes conversation is Salad Omar Tina's from San Miguel de Allende who is the scaffolding form and he's kind of I can maybe the DJ pie of the operation in the sense that like he will build you the city.”

He will roll with the punches of the the topography and most importantly he will find his Hollywood hotelings and his Kevin Jackson's who will make something that looks like it was made by 12 people and it was actually made by three. That's like Sal talked a lot about his team and the fact that he's got 25 guys doing a job that's supposed to be a 35 person job and he's like never behind schedule it seems super relaxed and he's the one building those football stadium size. Grandstands everywhere so here's a little clip of me Patrick and I talk to Sal. How many guys do you have in your team? So right now is currently 25 nice okay. Apparently this job is expected for 35 but never use them many.

I mean you've got to have the right guys. Yes. I've got to have the right notice. We've seen that a lot where Sal get you know not they're like more temporary label labor let's say they they're they're there they know I can lift this and bring it from a to be but. They don't have the the background knowledge of experience that Sal's kind of core crew does. Yeah, I do find the right guys. It's working with everybody like all over the past. It's Martin the longest tenure on your team. It's been with me 15 years 15 15 15 15 he's like three years older than me in the company but like pretty much everything that I learned building wise I got it from him so is.

I mean I put my hands on fire for that guy like compared to all the there is good builders in the company. But he's something else he's like he's he's the best the company has like you know it's not because he's in my team but is definitely he comes up with ideas that sometimes I don't see it and he's like not how we can do it this way okay. Let's go so it's a truthful source for me for you know any any bill. I've set my hands on fire for you guys and one thing I'd say here is there's a lot of director set stuff and we'll learn like a lot of stuff that gets repurposed but a lot of this is custom built.

You know it's right in say land escapes gotta be different.

“Yeah and you know they got a build like little rooms inside for meetings and and then just sort of a mountain the slope they built it on a cave's valley and remember on on 18 was like oh my god.”

Yeah Charlie we got the next up Marty Breen one more character here for you. This is Marty who if while Sal is building the foundation as Patrick mentioned of the scaffolding Marty's the 10 guy Marty's putting the roofs on and he's been added while it's very old school character every pen and paper or you know. Patrick was shocked that Marty dialed into a team's meeting at one point while he was he was out of town for something and you'll hear a little bit of that in in this clip. Yeah Marty can ask you what's the hardest part about your job aside from dealing with Patrick.

Yeah get Patrick on the phone is probably the hardest thing.

But yeah you know just keep it keep it keep it keep it not schedule is probably might always might play his worry.

And then the things that I forget was wake me up at two at the morning. Marty and I had been wake up at the same time every night about the same things. We were just talking about memory it was the last thing that woke you up at two in the morning. Just whether or not I've asked for the right parts on the trucks they're being sent from Phoenix you know. And then it's just we get one thing it's not you know ship it overnight.

Yeah so it's always those kind of things that that earned me.

Or if I forget to ask Patrick something or you know those things where you're running out of time.

“Do you find that your your old school methods bought up against any of the new school? Can you coax us peacefully with your paper and your ops dog?”

No I yeah I mean we do pretty well together. We had Patrick have gone through this for a lot of years so you know once I once I get him in front of me I could. Yeah it's easy it's that's pretty easy.

Marty predates me quite a bit my my first Western golf summer was oh two what were you like.

Ninety two probably take the sweat yeah so yeah but doing this tournament for a long time. Yeah Marty going all the way back to the the sea Alice western open. God he's got that he had must warm your heart Jesus Chicago accent. It got bullish sausage. Yeah yeah we kind of I mentioned this at the beginning when I was circle back to it so they're putting up all these tens.

You know. Sal and the whole gang is is building this city and then it they take it all down at the end I don't know if I'm skipping around but like where where does it go.

I just don't know how I can't really wrap my head around how this works so they build all this and then I mean all this is powered right so that's always something I've been curious about.

“Like first off where does it all go and and the other 51 weeks of the year and there's the I think the best illustration of this or audio of this is Todd Fassano and Woodrow Bosley from a Greco.”

The tournaments provider of generators power and AC that the leading provider of of of climate and mobile climate solutions. A Greco is a power solutions company we deal in and specialize in any type of major projects events. Power generation distribution AC refrigeration chillers things of that nature. Do all of these Jen's living on a Greco warehouse somewhere typically? Yeah they go from site to site some of them were at the women's KPMG in Minnesota so we got a lot of those back here.

“They went from PGA to St. Louis and then St. Louis to Minnesota and then back you know so we're just getting them out.”

Luckily FIFA's loading out right now so we did all the broadcast for FIFA so we're trying to get that equipment here so that we can get it deployed and on the course. Yeah that's all this stuff Charlie like nobody has a warehouse for any of this it just jumps from job job. If Greco you know there was no event for six months for some reason I'm sure they don't have a facility large enough to put all their stuff. Same with the tempting company and the scaffold company is all made to move. They will start to start moving Jen's to the south for hurricane season so after we get done with the events then they go south but then we also do other events formula one.

Biggest and me come auto options a couple of things that we're doing this this fall. All right I know I'm a weirdo but I'm how amazing is that it's just all this stuff the scaffold and generators the heavy duty like stuff. They're going to run 25 miles of cable for all the shot length stuff and all these generators and then it just keeps moving. It's just constant tour of concerts golf tournaments car races boat shows and then all right you know what let's go down south for hurricane season. I just it's like and then you think back to covid when everything you know comes to a screeching halt like.

I mean this there's this is a whole economy around any type of live event and I've just never really dug into this so anyway I just I can't do that.

I don't know where the TC and I have a one camera set between us here in Jackson. I don't know where it is right now. I don't know where that one Pelican is right now. I do not know and they're go to the record go to their website and look at the size of these fucking generators. I mean they're they're basically shipping containers you know what I mean and so it's like it's not like we're we're not moving like a mini split here. Like these are on the backs of trucks just crisscrossing the country going to Minnesota come in back FIFA's here and so you're planning FIFA's was kind of an outlier so then that probably throws everybody off of like oh crap we got to get ready for this massive soccer event around the country.

That's got to throw a wrench and planning for Patrick you know of just supply and demand so all of that just I love that shit.

“That's why I was first to talk to this with I mean we have the event the champions event at Tim Aquana and I was asking somebody like are they're packing up all the stuff where does it go they're like oh up to RSM.”

I was like oh shit like I didn't even think about that like in that timing actually works really well but all the seats and everything that you would sit in the champions event in Jacksonville is the same ones that just end up at RSM.

It was always my my favorite example of it was always the Hawaii events on the PJ tour where you know I don't know how they were doing it at the end of this was still the case but it's.

NBC golf channel whoever was just like all right well you know you they don't have that stuff out there so we just got to put about a big ass boat takes a couple weeks to to float all those cameras it's scaffolding and towers and stuff out there then they finish up and then we float it back for the west coast swing. Yeah, it's just yeah it's just surreal for just us bit to bitch about the telecast and yeah something was too many fucking commercial. Yeah, so you got these big vendor and and again let's go back to Patrick I mean he that the key here and I'm sure anybody in construction knows sequencing right so making sure this stuff shows up so that the next guy can go so I want to go back and forth with Charlie here on on just how.

Patrick handles this and a lot of it it's like John Mason the plans are in my head so Charlie take take it away. Yeah, here's a clip of me asking Patrick about his memory because as we've we've established he's really keeping a lot in there at one time and he was not hamstrung by like looking at his devices all day there wasn't a whole lot of. Oh, let me look that up or I don't know the answer to that it was pretty freaking quick so here's a quick clip of this. How is your memory just in general memory yeah hopefully very good like I you know driving around.

I've looked at the the the map and the planning and all the matrices that go along with it for. Five six years for any of these events so at some point they kind of blend together a little bit. And I might be thinking liberty national or whatever that's what I was wondering about the change of venues and stuff like I guess it's pretty good.

“And I I feel like I kind of expect that up you out of people like if I tell them something and they don't remember that conversation that's always a little disappointing.”

Yeah, sure. You know it's not practical to have all that information with me even if it's you know in the cloud and I got an iPad or something that's still. Oh, hold on hold on. Oh shoot the internet's down or you know I'm sweating I can't work the I like right. You got to know those things. So here's one of near and dear to our heart Patrick kind of outside as per view, but just kind of like reading the need and getting ahead of a developing TIO situation.

This is a clip from the the A.A.M. vendors meeting on my my second day there and I'll explain what happened after this meeting once I play the clip.

You think I'll send on your guys in Mike you good scoreports so we're moving one from seven I don't know I don't know. But I have a feeling that Peter Paul will not like it. So what about Mary? I don't know if this is American. So. Paul Paul didn't like it, but he said he can't step on Peter's toes. There's a hierarchy there.

And so even Peter won't be here to the tenth. So it's right at the like the cart turn around. It's a great spot for the people sitting in the trophy clubs. I think it's it's right here. They don't want to have to make a ruling. Right. They don't want the guy there because it could come in. It would be a line of sight too.

So where would you move it? Where would it probably have in there? Yeah, and then if we move it there like that's where the players walk. So it's it's going to be a conversation. It'll be a conversation with Peter.

“So that one and then can you move it on the other side of the creek?”

Yeah, what about we're not going to do this on the creek? You got to get it over there with a tractor. I don't know if that tractor can get back there.

I've never been that there.

Generator's got to get back there. There will be more sense to be driving really close to the team. We'll take a look. Okay. And so out of the way.

So that one and then you remove the one on 18th Fairway. Are you putting that into looking? A lot of moving parts. So kind of unresolved there. Basically what happened is I asked him about this after the meeting.

I said, like I wanted to unresolved things. Was this leaderboard? What's the deal there? And he goes, you want to go out there? Yeah, of course.

Let's go take a look. So it's leaderboard in the left side of seven. It was going to almost certainly lead to line of sight relief from players who blew their drives left. The generator was already in place for this leaderboard that hadn't yet been installed. And so we drove out, waited for a group of members to go through, Patrick kind of surveyed the scene.

And if you're watching on YouTube, the previous clip, there's a photo of him spray painting something in the ground. He just said, all right, we're not getting into cross that bridge. We're not marking up that ravine with the tractors. Let's just put it here in the left side. We're going to get it out of line of sight.

No one's going to almost certainly be banking it this far out of play off the leaderboard. It's still going to be in view of the grandstand. All right. Let me just mark these stakes. Here's where the gen goes.

All Todd and Woodrow from a Greco town to come over here and move that gen solves. So yeah, just like seeing seeing a problem during it, you know, in two weeks, that's going to be a problem in advance week. Like, let me just knock that off the list now. And then one more for you quickly. Just this tower problem kind of sums up the detail that goes into things and the nuance of working with CBS versus NBC.

So try to want you to play this clip. Yeah, this one kind of tickled me because as you can probably tell Patrick is a perfectionist and this this particular problem really grated on his perfectionist sensibilities you'll hear. Another boo boo by the tower boys.

“Tower boys are on a heater right now. What's going on?”

Yeah. Well, this so you learn something new NBC and CBS have different tower layouts, which they haven't agreed on how staircase it were. So this one you can see is is we'll call it external. So the tower's twice as deep as I'd say technically needs to be.

Okay, and I finally learned out learned why I always thought it was just their preference and it turned out it is their preference, but it's their preference based on how they set up their labor.

So NBC, when they build a tower, they have a little pulley system. I guy goes up to receive whatever the receiving cameras and equipment and a guy at the bottom is working the rope and up it goes here. They hand loaded all up and because they hand loaded all up those staircases that go to the top platform are a little bit wide. So now we have this protrusion, which is an aesthetic nuisance out of relative to the flushness of the grandstand. So what's going to happen now?

And it's it's cut to fit that tower perfectly and generally what we do is run what we call our logo mesh on that on this structure and it would run in front of the TV tower so that would be just one clean line.

“Okay, so now it's going to have that little jagged bump which will drive me crazy for the next three weeks but probably only two or three other people will be driven crazy.”

So this needs to be flush with the front and it looked like an hour ago in my take, but Salvador just measured it and said you had two and a half feet here and you got two and a half feet there. Well yeah because of that up there. I get it and it all still fit. So we'll manage the handrail but that'll just keep our keep the rules guys happy keep us happy. So there are two clips there the transition is him deciding no I don't want this to drive me crazy actually I'm going to go back and get them to move this whole tower that's protruding like a foot from the rest of this spectator area and slide the whole thing I want it flush.

Thank you very much. I'm going to go find that next week at BMW and I just do a quick check matters matters to this one.

“Yeah, so yeah, that's just you know a little clips that popped up that that we loved.”

What's so what happens? They get all the blocking tackling done all the grandstands are set up all the towers are set up all the tens are set up like what what's next.

Yeah, so again, it's all it's a big race and it's one of my questions in the first interview is like well why don't you just do it earlier.

So obviously post course you know and so it's all very condensed and it's a big race to advance week and there's just certain things you can't do until the week before the tournament because that's when the shot link. PJ tors send in all their stuff the broadcast they you know they're a traveling circus so they can't set up cameras four weeks in advance. So there's like the last 5% of the job.

“I'm just shocked by how high how intensive the labor is there's like there's no shortcuts to this stuff. So first example I'd give is.”

How much fence you know you put fence around the property so that nobody can you know basically enforce tickets. There's four miles of fence that will be set up temporary.

Fencing tough like an early job that was going to be the dirty job that that I was going to be going to be doing and and that that job stinks, but then not only the fencing the meshing. If you go look at mesh fencing it's like zip ties man it's like it's to do it like there's just no shortcut on that stuff and it's pretty and it's pretty and it's pretty analogs it's. Yeah and one of the and you can do that stuff early but then the meshing internally there's a lot of fencing internally and that's you know so there's just a lot of detail that goes in the week before.

Another one that goes that that happens it's always it seems like a little bit of a fire drill is rope and stake.

I'm here to turn them in. I want you to take a look at rope and stake and here's Patrick on rope and stake is good stuff. So back when I was an intern crew guy the rope and stake job that was like the bottom job because if I soon you guys have never pounded rope and stake but that's it's no fun. Twenty five hundred three thousand stakes out there yeah and don't hit a water line you're pretty much defining the stadium right you're saying here's where the gallery goes here's how players move from green to tea.

And then we have you know there's a guy named Bryce who's our lead and the way that rope and stake process works is pretty good so he's he's the driver right he's going to he's going to be deciding where the lines go. So he'll get a you know carry all golf cart load up as many as he can in the back there usually I don't know 50 or 100 in a time and he's just driving the line and he's going to one handing it in the ground just so it stands up. Then there's you know the labor kind of following behind it will come out pound the stake so stake pounder you know you got your big pipe handles it's 20 30 pounds boom alright so you got to do that 3000 times your following Bryce is he drives around the golf course.

Guy so Bryce is throwing the stake guy behind him's on the stake and then in a perfect world conditions are good and we got the right amount of bodies there's another cart behind him with you know 10 gallons of hunter green paint so this guy's got a paint mitt. Dips his hand in goes in the stake boom boom it's green keep your stakes up that you can't just buy green stakes I wish I could buy green stakes and that's the other thing you know stakes like a business opportunity. Yeah every good rope and stake guy has what's effectively known as a rope to rig so in the back of his cart build a little apparatus that holds two schools of 5000 foot rope.

And he'll you know leave one end with some of the labor and just start driving and kind of slalom through the through the stakes so the line doesn't get lost. And then you've just got a guy or two walk in behind him tying it you know double clue clove inch not on the deal and off you go.

Like that Sally and I got a thought we got Charlie we got to follow up on a bird pick.

It's advanced week we might have to dig dig that up but okay so. I mean a lot there but I was also interviewing a couple other tournament directors and. This job makes people have all rope and stake and it's a good indication of how this is a kind of a cottage industry. He doesn't do it for BMW but there's this Argentinian guy named Kiku that is like the rope and stake he's a specialist and he does a lot of PGA just travels around those rope and stake and and I asked. Patrick I said oh yeah I don't keep we don't we you know we work with price put you know so it's just like a very specific job like the CBS spotter that the guy I love you know you just like oh my god there's just like.

Guys that that do these kind of unique golf tournament jobs just all over the place and again this is stuff that just has to get done.

Three days before the tournament starts and and like he said it's defining the arena you know it's and don't hit a water main like there's just a lot can go wrong and and it seems like such a simple thing.

“You know why you know once you paint the put you know everything keeps getting moved around you paint the post screen what happens to the green posts why I think they rust rain.”

I think it's just like they just get beat up and it's weatherized so anyway. As you guys are probably feeling like it's stressful so let's just especially you know we asked Patrick about this but. You do it all this and he's got a handle on it all but then there's still inspections that have to go on so try let's queue this one up. If you think back over the last 20 years what's the what's the most stressful. Event you know I might be weather related but when can you think when does that when those that stress level the highest for you.

You know we we go through all the proper procedures to get everything engineered stamped out draw drawn properly executed properly. But at the end of the day there's a little bit of you know opinion from the inspectors whether that's a fire marshal or a. Building inspector or health inspector that sort of thing because we kind of live in this gray area where we're not permanent infrastructure and generally municipalities don't have codes that specifically address what. What we're doing at this scale so it's in between you know.

State fair where there's a 30 by 30 tent selling corn dogs and you know building a house we're in the middle somewhere there because we do have you know we got air conditioning elevators and we got all these things but it's a temporary event so.

“I can remember at the first year at Crooked Stick 2012 inspection you know four days out and the list we got from the building inspector was.”

Something that would take a month to execute to you know get to get the doors open and we did it and that was a that was a challenging advanced week I'll say but it was. Taking down structures rebuilding and I'm not talking you know 10 by 10 10s these were you know grandstands that might have been hey they forgot one thing in the foundation now we got it started over.

So those are those are never fun but yeah weather weather weather and the worst case was here in a way where.

You know flood all that to deal with but that's so you roll with the punches there. Got that inspector thing is talking about something I never thought about just and that happens during advance week so you do all this. Work and you know because the inspectors don't want to show up until it's you know like they don't they got a million other things to inspect again temporary thing so. Just kind of drilling down on this isn't a backyard party you know this requires civic. Stuff so in my research for this pod I came across a permit and variance approved by Baltimore County last year right before the tournament an environmental easement at caves Valley ahead of last year's tournament.

“I asked Patrick about it he chocolate and said yeah we we wanted to put a TV tower I think it was left of one or two.”

Like a creek or a marsh turns out that was a protected like environmentally protected wetland and that guy he was like oh god you know like that and he's like it got caught ahead of advance week but he had to go through the permitting process guys I have a protected wetland in my backyard. I can't imagine navigating environmental variance like that while trying to like not puncture the irrigation lines and getting the fire marshal to like approve my points of egress. But that's so diverse and strategies and how to get around some of this.

Yeah exactly a lot of people just do it. It's yeah so then and then this is one of my favorite clips so throw that stuff in like heavy duty civic stuff in with a very relatable very avoidable problem. Let's cue this one up Charlie. It's got a digression question how many typos you take care of what an annual basis.

And there was this enormous banner behind the first tee that made a past every possible you know approval from our side and BMW the tour and this and that.

That you know had a picture of a couple of hot players at the time and a car and said you know gentlemen start your engines but nobody noticed until the twenty foot tall thing got installed and said gentlemen start your engines. So the the E in the A was an over there and that was a you know then we learn so.

Good for us bad for the sign printers but we learn that they can produce that in an hour and it doesn't really take them the ten days that they tell us it takes.

“General man I don't know I've vivid I was at that turn of a two and I vividly remember vividly remember that sign he's talking to you remember who's on it was on the poster.”

I remember Roy won the tournament I'm guessing he was probably on there will be it's open the year before I'm sure it was like Rory Dustin Johnson Tiger. So it sounds like crooked sick was it was a. It's kind of a random yeah kind of random one off and you circle it all the way back to like this event moves around to the end and I that's another thing I've always not there's just so much signage and BMW does such a good job with the branding.

“Just a lot of approvals on on typos man and so that was a when I was curious about so last one unrelated to Patrick but I learned from some conversations with Patrick and some other tournament staff like the nuance like in complexity.”

How how nuanced and complex the title sponsor branding can be so there's this German guy named Clements that works for BMW and he's based in Munich based out at the mother ship and his job he sights the branding and car displays for all BMW golf events around the world so he as as I was told he has a wizardly eye for how on site signage and branding and product placement will look specifically for TV. And and and and basically maximizing exposure so his job is to like frame up the car behind nance in the in the tower on 18 and make sure the car the camera like shooting back from the green picks up the car behind 16 t and what's interesting about this and talking to Stephen Cox about this is it becomes a massive factor for the competition you know team.

They want to move the T's up one day or change you know kind of flex the course they have to plan for that because so and know is this is the sign removing or like and he this guy's I will hold on just a second we have a camera over there on 13 it's going to shoot back.

“And that ex seven is in the background because you know BMW's measuring how many you know how many minutes of exposure like and they should they're spending a ton of money so.”

I just I just like love it that there's like a got there's a guy for that and so I'm going to see I got to seek out Clemens if he's there this week I'm going to go take a picture with him because I want to I want to meet that guy. I want to meet that guy I want to meet that guy I want to meet that guy I want to meet that guy. I want to meet that guy I want to meet that guy I want to meet that guy. That's not going to be me that puts a. I think he does like a tour where he he's in the US for a couple weeks he'll make a site visit to Belrie then he's going to go to Liberty National get ahead of that and start to like put stuff on the map of like you know like I picture him with a monical like yes I like this you know so anyway I love that shit a couple others police relationships something I've always been curious about so.

This is dependent on the market and it's a interesting one for the MW as they move around some police departments local police have a big enough.

The team it's usually sheriff's department kind of falls in their purview but like you if you watch there's always a cop with every group especially BMW only 50 players and I've always wondered like.

Is that do they select a golfer because it's like if you don't play golf like those guys could get in the way and he's like yeah you know what we try to.

You know walking security so a lot of those cops are you know it's a it's a good job to have and you know then WJ is responsible for all the other security.

“I know the actors all that stuff and then the last one is HOA Patrick was at some HOA meetings make it sure neighbors have tags to get through barricaded streets that are shut down parking passes.”

You know you got to make sure all of these and that's just like a thousands of people that have nothing to do with the tournament but like you can't have them complaining so there's just so much that goes into like. Working with the local. How and the local services to make sure you got got what you need yeah it's like running a little city government yes almost you know it's just so impressive to be dial on all that. All right let's talk a little finance. So I'm going to try to do a quick run through this as we outlined earlier we got four stakeholders yet the host organizations so WGA they collect everything outside the ropes tickets local sponsors hospitality merchandise concessions.

They bear all expenses for setup PJ tour collects the big money that's the BMW the the check from the title sponsor they're right and one check.

They might be doing some stuff on the you know with Evan scholars separately but for the event. You know stuff it's it's one check they national TV partnership official marketing partners kind of mothership revenue and then they're working with the. The title sponsor on following some of that money to TV as again reference to Denny cash episode go back and listen to that there's a lot of good stuff there. On how that works and then BMW they just spend money they don't collect any revenue they spend towards the purse and.

“The host course I believe is paid by WGA I actually didn't confirm this but I think that's part of kind of the P and L with WGA I think the PGA tour helps with.”

The advertising and he renovations you know making sure that that's done properly and and working with them on a grown. So a simplified exclamation for how it works on the revenue side. Most PJ like regular PGA tour events title sponsor shoulders like the lion share of the purse so from research and conversations.

And it's typical sponsor fee is roughly like 125 150% of the purse so if it's 20 million dollar purse 30 million dollar check that money is going to cover.

Pay for all I say most are all the prize money that's changed a lot you know the WGA will it does kick in a percentage of that I don't know what it is and I wonder if that changes depending on. I think it varies a little bit. They're going to pay payment to the host organization fees paid back to the tour you know motherships got you got to pay for the water bill at the global mode. And then activation costs hospitality on site branding marketing campaigns all that jazz in several conversations I did learn that it's gotten more complicated since the.

You know and PGA tour enterprises and the purses have gone up significantly so one thing that's changed starting in 2025 each tournament post pays an additional purse fee.

“Plus a share of tournament revenue now goes back to the tour so I think that was 1% in 2025 I believe it's still 1% and I've heard it's going to rise to 2% in 2027 so.”

You know some coupon clipping going on from from the PGA tour on WGA you know so that's that's a that's a thing so. So let's focus on the expenses go ahead and start well the other thing I was going to say to draw conclusions and maybe there's an over simplification apologies if it is but I mean that money has to come from somewhere. Yes, which if the event is supposedly put on for charity it seems like it's just coming out of the charity pool. So and and I want to get to that clip right after this kind of the the charity component but I do want to go over to the expense side because a big take away is how complicated the expenses are.

For WGA and how important and vital it is to have somebody like Patrick that can manage that because that's directly related the the competence is directly related to what the scholars get. Right, so try let's queue this one up. All right, so there are 1,770 budget categories. Yeah, so if I look at. You know, we're going to add six more something there. It is the 250 three right like some of them like flags for flag sticks that's a one you know one invoice dot great. But if I'm looking at let's see here something like main entrance that big long floor we drove on yeah so all right all that scaffold all the carpet goes on top of it all the handrail that goes along the side that floor.

The tent. The graphics that go inside that tent. The audio because we we play like a loop to welcome the beam to chip chip. All that sort of stuff. What else goes in there. So then once you get down to the actual entry to the metal detectors. The signage is allocated towards the main entrance.

That's all allocated by.

“It's an individual within the 1770 categories. Yeah. So one of the 1770 is main entrance and then in that main entrance there's all nice.”

All those.

Okay. So if you look at like that double-decker structure, you can imagine all the all the invoices more or less that are allocated to that structure.

So this is not necessarily like a carpet is, you know, all carpets across property are one category. It's allocated to represent what's used there. So if that's, you know, that's 400 feet long that's probably eight or 12 rolls of carpet. So when we get our big carpet bill, I'll say, all right, 12 of these, allocate to main entrance. Okay. 50 of these, allocate to skybox, 10 of them, player movement, you know, all those all the different areas where carpet is applied, we then push the money there accordingly.

Yeah. Whoa. Next I'm ready to talk about our, our books being too long to close or whatever. We're going to play that for. Yeah. Yeah. So, but I mean, that's this again. This is the game.

And so allow me to kind of back up or pontificate for a second. Something I've come to understand in my old age is that, you know, you,

you have to create a memorable experience and a good experience to generate like big returns on charitable stuff. And I used to shake my head when I worked at Google and I saw the amount of money that united way or some of these other big charities spent on like Google ads. I'm like, God, that's, why doesn't that money go to the, you know, to the charity, you know, and so you people, some of these nonprofits get thing for like, how much executives make. But then you hear how complicated it is and you got, you, it's all about the people, right?

And I think over the last 20 years, these golf events and these buildouts have doubled as Patrick told us. And it's, and some ways come, kind of become an arms race. Like, we got to keep creating a memorable experience for the title sponsor to keep them happy. You know, it's just kind of the game. The anti goes up. And I think there's some of this too is the economies of scale. So, if you're asking someone to pay 300 plus for a hospitality package over four or five days, it needs to feel big.

“And I think with the agrechos and with the tent companies, it's like, they, they, you know, it's economy for them of like, well, let's just, why don't we build another one?”

And then we'll sell that one for 300 K, right? And so I think the, the scale almost, you know, it overwhelms me to think about with these budget categories.

But the scale, you almost have to go bigger, go home at this point. And that's what kind of evens it out. So anyway, another clip from Patrick on the evolution of the, the kind of the build out over the last 20 years. Can you give me a percentage split on where the revenue comes from for you guys across ticket sales, concession sales, merch sales and hospitality. And am I missing a bucket there? Yeah, so off the top of my head, I can, I can give you largest of smalls.

I need to poke around a little bit to give you a percentage, but corporate hospitality is certainly the line share. So I'd say that's double if not triple the next next numbers that feed in. So that's selling all the, you know, anything from selling, you know, a corporate package of 10 tickets to, you know, the law firm to, selling a big sponsorship of a space or a venue or a, you know, a hospitality suite that might host a hundred people. You know, so that can be somewhere.

“Those units can be anywhere from, you know, $5,000 to $400,000 depending on what folks are buying.”

So collectively, that's the line share of the revenue that we generate on site. Next is usually kind of like hand in hand, merchant ticket sales. Those are those are in the same realm, and then concessions falls below that. Now certainly there's other buckets that get fed into that, but they're not as, not as memorable. Yeah, okay.

And then over the last 20 years, have those percentage splits changed has hospitality like ramp way way up. Like, you know, talk, talk to me about that a little bit. Our, I mean, just everything about our event, and I imagine that's across the tour has, has gone up, you know, pretty strongly over the last 20 years, where corporate sales, you know, for us, you know, are just related to our building, our builds doubled over those yes in terms of square footage. So you've got imagine the revenue goes right along with it.

Not to mention that, you know, just the way the world works in inflation and things go up price to doing business, all that. So the ticket to buy those things have gone up and the demand and/or our efforts to sell them have gone up to, to make that grow a ton. Merchandice has changed completely. You know, back at cog Hill 20 years ago, it was, you know, a little pop-up tent. You know, they had a couple pro shops, they had two buildings there.

It wasn't, you know, a big fan shop or anything like that. It was run the mill off you go, people got it if they wanted it, but it wasn't, you know, a beacon. You know, here, you know, we're having this thing on Sunday prior to the championship that's open to the public just to kind of be an open house.

And we've got like 2,000 people signed up to come out here and do that. So at the end of the day, you know, Patrick said this later on in that clip in the, this is a fundraiser in the coming from the WGA's perspective. So money raised for having scholars, whatever's left after he expenses and player purse. But like the increase in those expenses goes that hospitality is really what's driving that up.

“I was surprised to hear about the merch growing, you know, I'm just like, man, like, anyway, I think that helps them, though, because they bounce around.”

So that's a real special thing in certain markets. Totally.

But as Patrick said, if Turner profits 3 million, he used that as an example, the funding that's funding for the Heaven Scholars.

So since 2021, here's the amount that's been raised for the scholars, 2021 at K's Valley 5.6 million, 2022 4.5 at Wilmington Country Club in Delaware, 5.5 at Olympia Fields in 23, 10.2 million at Castle Pines in 24. And then it, I couldn't. The finance has been released for 25, but I know Castle Pines was the high watermark.

So then natural question. Again, back to the earlier in this conversation, why do you go back to Castle Pines? And it's like, well, there's some other stuff about, you know, the identity of the tournament, certain markets are important. There's some, you know, donations stuff that happens year round.

And so it's, it's not just a go maximize the millions. That's not like the exact success metric they're looking for. Yeah, it could be a, you know, a sizable donor in particular in Denver that might not last the next time.

And then the other thing here, too, is there's variable costs in certain markets.

Like, I asked him, what's the biggest variable? And he said, you know, parking, like, and and bossing in shuttles. Because he's like, that's, that those are expensive vendors. And that's gas. So how much diesel do you guys think they needed? This week. It could be because it's like generators.

Yeah. And buses and all that stuff.

“Knowing the fact that most, I think 98% of the power that's used on side are coming from the generators.”

Yeah. This is, this is the shoes on the other foot here. Because these two, you and you say a dumb thing and we laugh at you. Uh, I'm going to, I'm going to say, uh, Uh, my god. I don't know, five, five thousand gallons.

30,000. 30,000. 35,000 gallons.

Hey, and they locked in the price in February before the straight-up.

It was fired up about that. It was like, I locked that price in February. So, uh, it's a dollar of gallon difference. I mean, that's yeah, about 35 grand. And that's, again, that's the kind of stuff that he's responsible for. Because, and knowing that it's going directly to the mission, you know, after all the costs are done. It's, you know, that makes those 700 and set, you know, we're 1,707, 70 budget categories, like, let's track this shit. So anyway, here's a kind of a, I hit them with some rapid fire questions on stats, which is just a good indicator.

It's just a good indicator on how dialed Patrick is. All right. I want to run through, like, rapid fire section here, some fun stats. How many volunteers? 2200. Uh, what's the busiest day on site? Hmm.

Toss up. I'll say, I'll say Friday seems the busiest because that's the, all those corporate hospitality venues are homin. General spectators are about 90% what they are on Saturday, but Friday just seems busier. Okay. How many buses shuttles this year?

“Who, we got eight routes. I think at peak, we're probably in the neighborhood of, um,”

say just over a hundred pieces of shuttle equipment moving. Okay. How many miles of fence? Uh, on the perimeter, we're at four and a half, five, and then we got to do the interior, which will be another two. Okay. How many miles of rope? Let's see here. It's a 73-hundred-yard golf course, times two, 14.

So, call it about 20,000 feet of rope, so about three miles of rope. Okay. Four miles. How many cars you expect in? Cars.

Um, I'd say 12,000. Okay. How much carpet? 360-ish thousand square feet, so call it nine acres if you want. Uh, how much beer? Hmm, I can't spit that one out.

A lot. Okay. But I can, I can give you that data. Uh, yeah, I was going to say the same with water, hot dogs. Yep.

You know. Don't have it off the top of my head, but. Okay. Uh, yeah, that was a test, right? How many porta-potties? 270.

I love that you know that number. That's good. Well, that one is, uh, we're, uh, approaching, you know, sell out here for Saturday grounds. And generally all those questions come to me is like, all right, when are we sold out? And that's based on all sorts of things. Um, some of it's parking, some of it's assets here at the club.

And a lot of it is, you know, porta-potties and concessions. It's just practical stuff. Yeah. I love that.

I don't know. It depends. Yeah. Right.

So I've had never actually thought about that.

That's, that makes the tone sense. Uh, so I did get dig up a few stats from, from Castle Pines or Patrick's cinema over. But 25 miles of various cabling for data and video connections. Seven, uh, seven acres of carpet at Castle Pines. 4,000 cases of beer were consumed.

8,200 milkshakes were served. Taste it. Jack. Can you believe it? And it's run out milkshaked.

Uh, and then 252 BMWs were delivered, detailed and detailed for championship usage. Uh, at the 2024. Uh, being championship. Yeah. It's like, it's like two people.

I had to drive those like it's just insane.

“One of the last questions I asked Patrick was, what does success look like?”

And I loved, I loved his answer here. What's the success metric you're looking at? Um, you know, after a week of, you know, a BMW championship week. The, the easiest one is, all right, how much did we generate for the event scholars? That's dollar events and easy answer for me.

If championship week, if I can, if I can sit in my office and watch the golf tournament. It's, it's, it's working. That's good. Okay. It's working.

If, if my phone has a full battery, isn't ringing. That means there's not problems. Um, so the last people talked to me. He tournament week. The more successful the event is in my eyes.

So I was thinking, maybe we try to call them on the live show. That's Sunday. And ask him what his battery. What, what, how is battery is? Uh, I love that.

That's a great idea. A very, just. I really, really liked that answer. Um, so. It's like, imagine all this again, the year, year round job this is.

It just, oh, yeah, brain. Sorry, man. Yeah. We'll get blown up. That place sucks.

We asked today. Yeah. We were asking a lot of staff for Charlie was asking, like, what's,

“what are you stressing about a weather was just an easy answer for everybody on?”

But even that, you don't hear about weather in the lead-ups ever, like, up. They couldn't build the grandstand because of weather.

Like, that never, even weather interruptions don't.

End up with, with lack of construction happening there. But, uh, Neil, did you get a sense, like, I mean, I know what you said about the charity dollars, but is, is there preferred venues or favorite venue? Does it, do they have to, how do they kind of look at that?

I think with BMW's sponsor, like, for 20 years, there's starting to become some continuity of, like, you know, they've been the Caves Valley Olympia, you know, getting back to Chicago's important to, uh, to WGA. And I tried to ask, like, what was the most, you know,

hey, what was your favorite BMW? And the answer I was kind of getting from everybody was like, it's, like, naming your favorite kid. But I feel like Castle Pines was kind of the leader in the clubhouse. And that was 2024.

It's obviously the high watermark for WGA. It was a great turnout in a, in a golf market that I think is starved. I mean, you know, the international with the stable firm used to be at Castle Pines. Uh, it's a really interesting golf course. Um, it's on the side of a mountain.

And so it was a really, uh, it was a complex build for them. Very hilly course.

“Um, but I think it was a great example from an execution standpoint of,”

they had a really good plan. And being there, they did a really good job of, of moving people, even, and people in Denver like to hike. So they leaned into that. And I think once you get the big stuff,

if you're operating at a high level, they were able to do a lot of creative stuff. They customized the core signage to look like ski maps. That was really cool. Yeah, and so, and I think that's the kind of little stuff that like is really what differentiates BMW.

And it's because they can do all the big stuff. And they're, and they're also not on like auto pilot with like, well, we know where this is going to go, you know, so they're able to, they're, I don't know, it's just a high sign of competence to me.

And I think that's, uh, I think that's telling of, of the, the execution they had. So that, that tournament was, uh, was kind of seemed like the one that was like that. That one was sweet.

I have never really thought about it that way, but I could see the,

yeah, and my head, I'm always like, well, it'd be so much better if you just do it in the same place every time. But it would be so much easier to get complacent in that way as well. It makes a lot of sense. So buzz would be different to, you know, yeah.

Yeah. And there's pros to being the same market. You kind of have your sales dial. You can forecast better. You know, it's, it's easier.

But there is market fatigue and talking to a couple of the tournament direction. Sometimes it's like, like, and we, I don't, like, the analogy I make is sometimes in the, in the pro shop for us. It's like, all right. Uh, whatever's, what's going to be the first major collection this year.

You know, like, it's, it's kind of, you're running the same blueprint. So in closing, you know, we're, we're around towards home here. I want to send it over to Nick White, uh, who was called out by, uh, Carlos, uh, a Raya, the GM CEO of Bell Revis, as an unsung hero.

And Charlie, why don't you tea this one up? Carlos, hooray. Yes, here we go. Here's Nick White. As far as just a day-to-day, like standard job that I think is really hard.

Is clean up. Mowing any cleanup pass. I'm very particular about cleanup passes.

It's the, the last pass or two, you know, in front of the collar on the green.

“So as a mower setting down to mow his pass, they're late, right?”

They can't get the very edge. So somebody has to come through with another mower and mow the circle around the green to essentially clean it up. Okay. Well, it's, it takes a lot of focus and precision because you don't want to mow into the collar,

but you don't want to be scared to not get close enough for the collar because then you're going to leave, you know, skips. So it's a really detailed job. So the guy that we have do in his name's Austin Kern and everyone we call him Colonel Cleanup, because he mows the cleanups on the fairways and the greens. And I don't want to mow the cleanup.

I mean, I get on that mower off-scalput immediately, so it sounds very surgical. Somebody else doing it. Yep, I don't have the patience for that. It's like you want your barber with the straight razor. It's not really like, you know, little scruffy patches.

I'm on a percent. Maybe they look good, man. Leave it.

I always say like, hey, anytime someone leaves a job, I always say, hey, man,

that's got your name on it. So if somebody is, you know, we need something and they do a, you know, terrible job, and they scalp all around the tree because they, we need to get down to the dirt or they, where they miss an area or whatever. It's like, hey, man, let's get your name on it.

You were the last person to touch that. Is that how you, you feel good about that? I'm stealing that one. That's important, too, with like, you know, is the ball on the green or off the green.

And if that is a little hairy there, that could, that could weigh into something. I mean, ruling and then expose that. Yeah. And so, you know, first off shout out to Nick. Chows the supers everywhere.

Shout out to Colonel Cleanup. But I feel like, and shout out to all the turfheads. I can't wait to hear what, what about Cody's, clean up process down and forward. But I bring this one up.

One, like, we focused on Patrick.

“But I think Nick whites doing the same thing with his crew.”

You know, like, he, he's solving a million problems all day long.

He's collaborating with the PGA tour to make sure the agronomy's dialed. And then Carlos doing the same thing with Bell Reeve membership. Make it sure everybody's like on board. And, and so you kind of have these like captains and then they're all working together. And then just the last line, I think sums it all up.

Like that, that's got your name on it. You know, like, I love that. And I think it sums up Patrick's. Well, it's also, so. And I'll, I'll say this.

You, Neil and Charlie, you cut your name on this one. Yeah. This is big great. Yeah. And once you get, you guys feel good about this one.

I think so. I think so. Yeah. I feel like we were, we were, uh, we were doing it. Well, and also felt like we were working towards advanced week as well.

Like, now we got to get this one done.

So what do we miss? Anything, anything you guys are curious about? Yeah. I mean, there's zillion things. But nothing like, it's to your point that it's like, okay.

Well, this all makes sense for the ops. Like, now, yeah, let's do the agronomy. Okay. Yeah. Let's figure out how the, how the setup stuff works.

“You know, it's like, I think that's such a good point that you can.”

Everything you said about Patrick, I'm like that. That, that sounds like the most invigorating, hardest job ever. And there's also like three more jobs around the earths are kind of trying to run similar little little kingdoms, you know, it's, it's fascinating. Cannot wait to get to Thursday.

All of everything that has gone into all this tournament. The plan that clean a place. It's all right. It's ruined. It's all right.

Can you believe he's got to play and live clean in place? I can't believe it. I just think, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think, I just think the camera angle stink.

You know, I just think, I just think, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think, I just think, I just think, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think the camera angle stink.

You know, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think the camera angle stink. You know, I just think the camera angle stink.

You know, I just think the camera angle stink. And that's not a, that's a problem at the, I think, with the USGA. We'll take that off line. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna, let's not spoil this one. You know what?

Charlie, play us out on this last clip. Hey, what, uh, we got to get a lunch over him. Taco Tuesday? I like it. Let's do that same place.

Copy that. Ah. That's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing.

It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing.

It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing. It's not going to be a good thing.

It's not going to be a good thing.