Stay Tranquilo - Landscape of the PGA TOUR & RECAP of Corales Punta Cana w/ VP of Business Affairs John Norris

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

In this episode of the Stay Tranquilo Podcast & Tranquilo Tee Time, brought to you by Stay Tranquilo Network, we are joined by the VP of Tournament Business Affairs, John Norris. John leads all initiatives on helping tournament directors market, produce, and execute all facets of the tournament. In this conversation with John, we cover: 0:00 - Intro 1:30 - BetterHelp Therapy 2:30 - Intro to John Norris of the PGA TOUR 4:05 - History & Growth of the Corales Punta Cana Tournament 7:45 - PGA TOUR Initiatives to Grow Game Amongst Latinos 12:35 - Favorite Moment from the Famous Devil's Elbow Sign up to BetterHelp and get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com/tranquilo Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

One of the things that we want to do with Stay Tranquilo, and you guys obviously do an amazing job of that as well. But we want to grow the game amongst the U.S. Hispanic audience, Latino audience, and the Caribbean audiences. But what are some of the initiatives that the tour is doing right now to kind of help grow in that audience and those demographics? Sure. You know, the PJ Tour, we take a lot of pride in being a worldwide brand. And we look for markets and areas where there's a huge potential. And certainly the Latin American Hispanic communities is one. of those areas. What happens when we get to those audiences and we come to non-U.S.-based properties,

Nico, who won in Puerto Rico and is a top player on the PJ Tour now, he grew up watching Camilla Villegas, right? And he said, one day I want to grab a golf club and play. When that was happening, we didn't have the reach that we have now. So we're hoping that in banking on the fact that there's 10 guys now that are watching Nico who want to do the same thing. And so, but But providing that opportunity when your question was good because it's also recreational, right? You can't, not everyone's going to grow up on the PJ tour. Exactly. And so to get someone out and play three or four holes or five or six holes and look at the beauty is fantastic.

What's going on, guys? It's Daniel, aka Pooch, taking a break from behind the camera to let you know that this episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. A completely online therapy service designed and suited to all your individual needs. Sometimes things that stay tarantilo can get a little stressful. And we've had our fair share of challenges that we have to get through. And the possibility of having a therapist in our corner can be that factor that gives us a drive, motivation, and determination to keep bringing our vision to life and sharing what we create with all of you. So if you think of therapists might bring you those same benefits, give BetterHelp a try. Just fill out a brief questionnaire on their website and get matched with a licensed therapist today.

Learn to make time from what makes you happy with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Tranquilo to get 10% off your first month today. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P-S-Tanquilo. And now, let's get back to our regular schedule program. What's up, everybody? We are here at the Corales-Punta-Kana Championship. We're here with John Norris, senior vice president of the tournament business affairs.

So thanks again for taking the time. And, I mean, what beautiful place to be and have this type of conversation here. My pleasure. This doesn't really feel like, work right now, so it's pretty, pretty amazing location. Yeah, there's definitely worst places to be at sea. All right. First thing I wanted to ask you about was, can you tell us a little bit about what your role is on the tour and kind of what your job is essentially? Sure. I oversee the tournament

business group, and if you think of it from a golf and business standpoint, we have one group that is responsible for all the competition inside the ropes. And then another group, my group has 35 events that we're the business consultants for everything outside the ropes. So sales, marketing, business development, legal, finance, pretty much everything other than the competition. Our team works week in and week out with each tournament. So this week, it's the group of Punta Kana. And we're there business consultants if they need help with ticketing

or they need help with marketing or how do I get a player to a certain location, all those types of things. So it's a pretty big responsibility, but amazing team week to week that's traveling. a lot of moving parts and a lot of people obviously involved how long have you been with the tour now almost 20 years wow yeah so i've seen a big evolution a lot of change a lot of change a lot of change for sure so can you tell us a little bit about the history of this tournament right now it's been a few years now where it's been here at the at the corales punta cana uh location can you tell us about

how that's kind of evolved and in in punta can specifically sure we the first couple years we're here, we're part of the Corn Ferry Tour. And we're always looking for opportunities to continue to grow our relationships with our sponsors and the communities. And we were so embraced by not just Group O Punta Cana, but the whole region, that when an opportunity came to have it be a regular PJ tour event,

they jumped at that opportunity, as did we, because they're such amazing partners. And when you get to go to a location that has all the ingredients, they have a fantastic resort, which our players love, you know, rolling out of bed and getting to the first tea. a very competitive and beautiful golf course. And world-class hospitality, it made for a perfect match.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, the property itself is pristine. You got all these beautiful houses on the course. I haven't seen the hotel itself. There is a hotel on property as well? Yes, there's Weston. Okay. That is probably, you could walk if you felt like getting a lot of exercise,

but it's a two-minute ride. Okay. And it's part of the resort. And they also have Tortuga Bay, which is a little further down, which is part of the property. And it's just amazing. Yeah. It really is, it is incredible. Can you tell us a little bit also, obviously, RBC's going on the same week, right? That's a signature event now in South Carolina. But what is the significance of having this event at, you know, simultaneously with that going on? Obviously, you have a lot of big names here. But the field here is actually pretty significant as well. You got guys like Joel Damon, Nico Gervideo, which Joel also won here as well. You got Charlie Hoffman, Ogard, you know, who just came off the Masters. So considering everything going on, it's still a pretty,

Good field, the largest ever. I know you were mentioning that yesterday and largest purse. So what really is the significance of Corrales-Pentecan? I think, yeah, if you talk about, we'll talk about the field in a second. I just watched Charlie Hoffman putt, and he just had his 500th PGA tour start, which is pretty amazing a couple weeks ago. He's playing great golf right now. He is playing fantastic golf. He almost won the WM. Phoenix Open. So you've got Billy Horshiel who won the FedEx Cup.

You have Francesco Molenari who won the Open. Open Championship. And so I think it shows you the up, the balance of power and talent on the PJ Tour that you can have 70 or so great players and then another 120 plus here. And it's still, there's so many great players. And the Masters is an event that has a different vibe than pretty much everything else. It gets people really excited about golf and it just follows into the next two weeks where you've got two great PJ Tour events happening at the same time. And the stories that are created on this event, if you look back the last couple of years, they've gone on. You mentioned Nikolai. He finished second last year, Matt Wallace, who's injured can't be here this year. So he finished his second. What's he do after that? He goes and makes the Ryder Cup team, the winning Wider Cup team, unfortunately.

It goes on and it's on the first page of the leaderboard at the Masters. And it would have been very easy for him, and it's a tribute to this place. Very easy for him to say, you know what, I've had a tough stretch and I'm going to take a week off. but he's so passionate about golf and this property and what it did for him to launch his career that he said, nope, I'm gonna get on a plane and I'm gonna go play again. Yeah.

So it's pretty neat. It is awesome. And we were having a conversation offline and one of the things that we noticed was there was a couple guys that did withdraw from this tournament prior. And I was like, how can you withdraw from this place? You know, this place is obviously there's probably things

that happen and life happens, right? But, I mean, it is pristine out here and the course is impeccable. But that takes me actually to my next point. One of the things that we want to do with Stay Tranquilo, and you guys obviously do an amazing job of that as well, but we want to grow the game amongst the U.S. Hispanic audience, Latino audience, and the Caribbean audiences,

not only just on the player's side, but on the recreational side and getting more people to just be around the game of golf, right? You come out here, you see this, and you're going to gravitate to this, right? I mean, it's just beautiful. And then you appreciate the art of the game itself, and it's impeccable. But what are some of the initiatives that the tour is doing right now

to kind of help grow in that audience and those demographics? Sure. You know, the PJ Tour, we take a lot of pride in being a worldwide brand and we look for markets and areas where there's a huge potential

and certainly the Latin American Hispanic communities is one of those areas. We have PJ Tour, Espania, which is a complete social media in Spanish directed at our Spanish-speaking fans and wannabe fans. We tell a lot of stories about our Spanish-speaking players. We have,

for example, what happens when we get to those audiences and we come to non-U.S.-based properties is you have someone who watches someone from Latin America, or I'll use Columbia as an example. So, Nico, who won in Puerto Rico and is a top player on the PJ Tour now, He grew up watching Camilla Villegas, right? And he said, one day, I want to grab a golf cub and play. Right. When that was happening, we didn't have the reach that we have now. So we're hoping that in banking on the fact that there's 10 guys now that are watching Nico who want to do the same thing.

And so, but providing that opportunity when your question was good because it's also recreational, right? You can't, not everyone's going to grow up on the PJ tour. Exactly. And so to get someone out and play three or four holes or five or six holes and, look at the beauty is fantastic. And then you've got the developmental tours with PJ Tour Americas. And then for example, our title sponsor of the Mexico Open, the Salinas family, they're sponsoring a program called ARA. And that, basically, they're trying to get and provide opportunities for potential professionals that identify as really big talent. And they're

trying to remove the obstacles of what it costs and how to do all that. And I think you're going to see, as a matter of fact, you had one of their players with the ARA had at the masters, which was pretty cool. That is cool. And I think it's going to exponentially grow as we pay more attention. And it's important to us and it's the right thing to do. Yeah, no, it's a large demographic. Obviously, they represent a lot of different industries and a lot of different sports. Like when you're speaking about the marketing side of things, right? It's a growing demographic in the United States. It's the largest growing right now in the States. Obviously, you're getting an influx from a lot of those South American countries, Cuba, obviously, especially being from Miami,

you've got a bunch of people that are second, third generation Hispanics, right? And those are the ones that, you know, are going to drive the market at the end of the day, right? Especially when you see kind of some of these metrics and where a lot of brands want to move their dollars to. I think that's the thing that's really intriguing because if you're going to find a way to reach new audiences, you've got to be very culturally relevant, I guess you can say, right? And this, I think, is a great opportunity. Puerto Rico open is obviously a great opportunity. Mexico Open being another one. And then you have the PGA Tour America's, right? If that can be amplified in a way as well, like, hey, look at also all these additional things.

going on. We have a tournament going on in Brazil right now, which is really cool, right? So those are little things that I can see, right, with a lot of potential where, hey, I'm a six-year-old kid in Brazil and I want to go watch that tournament. Now all of a sudden I've gravitated to the game and then hopefully, you know, play. And that young person, we take it as a responsibility to grow the different segments of not just fans, but people play in the game, right? Because a lot of the countries you're talking about, they don't, they've never thought about golf. And now all of a sudden it's become a more cool sport, the clothing, the shoes, the hats, the brands. And our stars are young and they're athletes, right? And so I think it's changing the whole

dynamic of a young Hispanic kids saying, I want to play, you know, whatever sport they're playing, whether it's soccer or baseball or to say, you know what, that golf's pretty cool. And I have someone I can look up to. And it's really neat. And we have to do everything we can to tell that story. Absolutely. No, I agree. I think something I'm very passionate about, my grandparents are Cuban. So I've always kind of just gravitated to my my culture, obviously, which it's weird, because some people are not like that. Some people are almost like not proud to represent where they're from, which totally understand that too. But I've seen the gap in that space and I'm like, you know what, I want to kind of take this on. I love golf. Yeah. Not the best golfer, but I love golf. That's fine.

That's fine. Same with me. I mean, when you're out here, you can't beat it. So we're actually sitting right next to what's called the devil's elbow, right? A very tough stretch of three holes, 16, 17, 18. win is pretty much always in your face when you play here. Do you have a core memory of these, of this stretch from some past tournaments? Yeah, I think, you know, just looking back on the last two, three, four years, it is, it's not often when you can combine the pressure to win a PJ tour event on 16, 17, and 18 no matter where is, is huge. The beauty is, I mean, it's hard not to be distracted if you're at Pebble Beach or if you're here. And then, then you've got the pressure of trying to win a lot of the times for the first time,

and you have the conditions. The wind's always blowing. You can never come out here. I hope the wins. It's like if it blows 20, you're happy. And so you take all those things, the competitive piece, the beauty, and the pressure. And you look at, you know, last year, I would just go back to the last couple of years. So with Matt Wallace winning, he came from behind.

He had Nikolai charging. Nikolai finishes second and then goes on an amazing run. And Matt has had a great last year, too, without. the size of the fact that he's injured. The year before that, when you had Chad Ramey win, what was amazing to me was it was his first win, but the emotion that Ben Martin had when you watch the interview with him, I mean, I got goosebumps because he was almost shaking it in tears

of what it meant to him to be in contention and feel the pressure of whether you're doing a penalty kick or relieving in the ninth inning of a baseball game. An athlete understands that and wants to drive on it. And he was so emotionally overtaken by the last three holes. and what it meant to him. And then the year before, when Joel won, you know, it's hilarious. He's winning and his wife's running on, his hat blows off. Gina was catty, jumps over and you can't see the bunker. It's like, he just jumped off into infinity. And so that was amazing. But even as,

even as good as Joel's win was, and I'll never take that away from because it was, it catapulted his career to what he is now and Netflix and everything else. But what I remember from that event, when you talk about Hispanic community is Rafa Kamenai. So I've gotten to know Rafa very well over the last five, six years. He's a player from Puerto Rico. And when he plays in the Puerto Rico open, he's a superstar. And he came on the leaderboard, three holes to go, tied for the lead, lost by one shot. That gave him by finishing second an opportunity to go on a stretch of other PJ tour events.

That's awesome. And so those are just three examples of every year coming down the stretch with the pressure that's on them and the conditions is pretty special place. Absolutely. I think that's a great point to the whole pressure aspect, because I'm looking at I'm not, that's not even like processing in my head, but it's true. You're staring over this water and you're like, I got to hit a shot right now. And sometimes you might be down a stroke and you might be a lot, have to be forced to be a little bit more aggressive, right? So that is, that is a good point. It's, it's, it's a good point. And when to your point, in perfect conditions, golf's hard enough. But when mother nature decides and someone says, oh, it's blowing 15 to 25. Well, 25 is a lot different than 15. Absolutely. And to your point, that should, shot that clears there ends up in the water or not. And then so.

Yeah, one miss it and you have a little bit of spin on the ball. You're going right down. And you're looking at a double bogey out of the out of the gate. So yeah, it's a pretty special stretch of holes. Yeah, definitely. Well, I appreciate the time. That's my pleasure. Great conversation.

My pleasure. And again, I think there's not a better place that have this. And it's, it's impressive what you guys have put together. Thank you. Corrales has done obviously an amazing job, too, putting this together. And we'll definitely be back. Well, anything I can ever do, whether it's on a golf course or off, just feel free because we got the same goal in mind.

Absolutely, thank you. All right, my pleasure.