Page 11 - GBC winter issue ENG 2019

world number one Jin Young Ko get the better of defending champion, Brooke Henderson in a thrilling duel of two of the game’s marquee players.
Both events featured an array of fan-focused, value-added activations highlighted by the world’s top countrygroup,FloridaGeorgiaLine, playing a sold-out show on site at Hamilton at the conclusion of round two. Marketing to a demographic segment that never might have given a professional golf tournament a single thought (country & western fans) is not only proactive but it’s actually quite visionary. It further punctuates that more mainstream, consumer-friendly mindset this game continues to adopt.
Let’s take a deeper dive into a few of the aforementioned activations and other adoptions making golf cool again in 2019.
COOL INFLUENCERS
Tiger Woods is the 2019 Masters champion. A couple of years ago that seemed like a fantasy but the 15-time major winner’s comeback, one of the greatest in professional sports history, is a renaissance with industry-wide implications.
As it has been so often said, Woods doesn’t move the needle in professional golf, he is the needle. His return to winning form is
putting more global focus on the game through the trickle down effect of attention only he alone can generate.
Especially cool about Woods’ win last year at the season ending Tour Championship in 2018 and this past April at Augusta National is how the next generation was able to experience it. Baby boomers vividly can recall Tiger at his zenith. Millennials, for the most part, never got the opportunity. What the next generation after us has been able to see with Woods carrying the torch is an in ux of exciting new stars into the professional game.
McIlroy? Now there’s a player who evokes cool. Henderson possesses similar qualities. In their own respective ways, both inspire in a manner the late, great, Arnold Palmer once did, as unpretentious role models, void of arrogance and self-indulgence, each with a good heart, a quick smile, and an unadulterated passion for what they do. That shines through for the Smiths Falls, Ontario native with the prominent role she plays in the LPGA Tour’s #DriveOn marketing campaign.
“Brooke loves the game to death,” says LPGA commissioner Mike Whan. “She’s taken all this in stride; the stardom, the fame, the victories and all that comes with
that, and she’s still the same ne person. We see a lot of athletes fail at that; we see a lot who change. When I see Brooke now, she’s the same Brooke I met 4-5 years ago before all the wins.”
While the women’s pro game in Canada awaits a next wave to join Henderson and Alena Sharpe, men’s professional golf in Canada nds itself in a good place currently. Adam Hadwin, Nick Taylor, Mackenzie Hughes and Corey Conners – all PGA Tour winners – along with Roger Sloan, rookie Michael Gligic, all portray a cooler, more youthful image. That resonates with fans of the game and remains a key media talking point.
COOL NEW PROFILES FOR
RBC CANADIAN OPEN AND CP WOMEN’S OPEN
There was a time not all that long ago when a ticket into one of our national opens gave you an opportunity to watch the best players in the world. It still does. But value-added incentives and activations have turned these tournaments into entertainment infused, family driven experiences using the pro game as an ideal marketing platform.
Already mentioned was the sold-out crowd of 20,000 to see
Golf Business Canada 11