An Interview with Seth Waugh and Gil Hanse
The UNDERRATED Golf Tour, founded by Steph Curry, kicked off its 2nd season June25-27 at The Park in West Palm Beach, FL. I was invited to attend a panel discussion at the host hotel for the event and was able to sit down with two people who played big roles in the UNDERRATED Tour coming to South Florida: Seth Waugh, CEO of the PGA of America, and Gil Hanse, renowned golf course architect and designer.
Gary Williams leads a panel discussion featuring Seth Waugh, CEO of PGA of America, and golf course architect Gil Hanse.
Dan: “So first off, how did you get involved with the UNDERRATED Tour? Tell me a little bit about your partnership and how it all came about.”
Seth: “Golf is a small place as you know. So I’ve known Gary (Williams) for a long time, I’ve known Steph (Curry) through various things, and Will (Lowry) does a lot of stuff with us. So I knew the players and I had followed UNDERRATED a little bit last year and understood what they were trying to do. And they called me and said ‘Hey, you know, can we take a look at Frisco (Texas)?’ and I said ‘Well, you can take a look at Frisco but you really want to take a look at The Park because I think it’s going to speak to everything you’re doing.’ And so they all came down and fell in love with it.
And, you know, we couldn’t have invented a better first event for us. It speaks to everything we’re trying to accomplish, which is changing lives through the game and making the game look a whole lot more like the rest of the world. So it’s kind of a perfect marriage.”
Dan: “A lot of people when they think of golf or when they talk about golf it’s centered around the pro game and what they see on TV, but with UNDERRATED, the emphasis is on the junior kids and the kid coming up in the game.”
Seth: “In the men’s game, we have two of the five waterfront properties in the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup and then obviously on the women’s side we have the KPMG which was played last week. So during certain weeks, we are in the epicenter of that part of the game. But what we do 24/7 is we have over 20,000 people out there trying to grow the game, basically teachers. And so for us, it’s all about growing the game. And even with the PGA Championship, it’s about telling our story. It’s about Michael Block and all the things that these folks do on the frontline of the game every day. Everyone else kind of has their swimming lane but we kind of have the whole pool.”
Dan: “You mentioned growing the game and over these last couple of years especially, ‘grow the game’ has become kind of a buzzword in the golf world. For you personally and for the PGA of America as a whole, what does growing the game of golf mean to you?”
Seth: “Well, it means an absolute growth. But it also means growing in a very different way. It isn’t about making golf look like how it has always looked. It’s about being invitational to all not just welcoming to all and figuring out how to be intentional about that. I think we have taken some baby steps in that regard over the years and taken advantage of the momentum in the game and the momentum in society to make much bigger leaps than have been made in 50 years.”
Dan: “You touched on it a little during the panel discussion about how golf can look different to different people. Obviously, Top Golf and Drive Shack are huge right now. Do you guys see those entities as assets to the game or do you see it as something keeping people away from playing on actual golf courses?”
Seth: “I think golf is a lot like food. Certain days you may want to put on a coat and tie and have a French meal and other times you want to wear shorts and flip-flops and have a burger. And so there’s places where the traditional game exists and that’s great and then there are places where there’s music on the range. Also, I think we have historically defined golf as 18 holes and I don’t think that’s correct. If you and I played horse tomorrow then we played basketball. So the fact that there are so many different ways to consume golf is fantastic.
When I first started Top Golf was viewed as kind of the enemy but I don’t think it’s the enemy, I think they are actually a partner. In the beginning, they had around 40 locations and no PGA Professionals and I went to the founder and said look people come once for the experience and they don’t really come back. What if they got better at it, do you think they would come back? So now they have over 60 locations and every one of them has PGA Professionals and they’ve seen their conversion rate from Top Golf to green grass go from less than 1% to now around 15%.”
Dan: “Going back to Michael Block for a second, what did his story and that week mean for you all as an organization for him to be featured in the way that he was?”
Seth: “I mean we couldn’t have invented it. That’s the beauty of sports, right? They’re better than movies. The fact that he played as well as he did, the fact that he was as good with an earbud in as he was, the fact that he made the hole-in-one on Sunday with Rory was crazy. And so so I don’t know that we could have ever intended a better advertisement for what our guys do every day, which has been to be on the front line of the game. I think it was perfect timing too in the sense that we’ve spent the last 2 years talking about money. LIV is just code for money. And finally we’re talking about the joy of the game and why you play it.
There was one cool moment in particular that I’ll tell you about. So on 14, he hit it really close and the place is going crazy. I’m on the 15th hole and he hits a really good shot into the green and Justin (Rose) hit a mediocre shot and he starts walking toward the green and Justin does the thing where he pauses and pretends to go into his bag to get something to give Michael his walk up the 15th hole to get his applause without getting in the way. And it was just such a classy move by Justin that nobody even really noticed.”
Dan: “After these last 2 years and after everything we have all gone through with the game of golf, where do you see the state of the game at the moment, both on the men’s and women’s side and also just kind of the game of golf as a whole?”
Seth: “I think the game in every form has never been in better shape. We are seeing some of the highest levels of participation ever at every level. Avid golfers are playing more, juniors are playing more, first-timers are playing more, so day-to-day golf has never been better. I also think it’s true on the professional side. There’s a reason there’s disruption because it’s hot and cool and that’s when people try and disrupt things. So on the men’s side, we will get through this and I don’t know how it will play out. I don’t think it’s going to look exactly like what came out two weeks ago but we will figure it out in some form.
With the women’s game, it definitely felt like a major at Baltustrol. You had two 20-year-olds duking it out down the stretch and one of whom made a putt on 18 to win it which is great theatre yet again. What I’d also say about the women’s game is we just resigned KPMG for another 5 years. Our purse which was $3 million when I started is now $10 million. And so while the ratings still may not be off the charts they are getting better as well. Also what we are seeing on the sponsorship side of things is it used to be our sponsors would kind of do KPMG a favor to us as part of a package. Now though, they are insisting on KPMG or they don’t want to do the package.
I think we should be incredibly bullish on the game and the ways the game is growing is so encouraging for the future. It’s the opposite of baseball. While baseball is aging out we are getting younger and that’s a miracle.”
Dan: “How did you get involved with The Park project and with UNDERRATED Golf?”
Gil: “So once Seth got involved he recruited Dirk Ziff to look at the property and help with financing and brainstorming. Dirk told Seth ‘Well if you can get Gil then I’d be in.’ And so I’ve been good friends with Seth for a long time and if Seth asks you say yes and if with Seth it’s easy to say yes because whatever he is asking about is generally pretty good. So I came down and we went out to the property and walked around and I had a really good feeling about it. There were a lot of similarities to Australian sand belt golf and the course over the 4-5 years that it was closed had evolved into this beautiful landscape. So I had already been hooked in by Seth but once we got out there and actually saw it all it was easy.”
Dan: “So beyond just being the designer of The Park, what made you decide to get more involved with the UNDERRATED Tour as a whole?”
Gil: “Honestly it was just serendipity. I was here for the board meeting which we had planned to have alongside the event and I knew about the event overall but I didn’t fully understand the ramifications of it and the positive nature of it. And so I got in a little early today and just started watching the kids and I talked to Gary Williams about what was going on and I was hooked again.
It’s always fun to watch good players play our courses because you learn something and you see how they tackle it or what their thought process is. So that was really interesting.”
Dan: “When you design a course like The Park of a public course as opposed to a private, country club course or a course that is going to be set up for pros and host Tour events, do you design the courses differently based on the type of golfer that may be playing it?”
Gil: “Jim Wagner, my partner, and I believe that we don’t want to create different courses just because they are public. I think what we have hit on is an understanding that the best golf course, the level of precision required to play them is low. But then the level of precision required to score is high. So if we can provide that on a public golf course or a private course, that’s the base from which we are working from. Now, would we maybe tone down the number of bunkers on a public course? Maybe, but we would replace it with something else like a mound or something that’s a little more playable.”
Dan: “So I asked Seth where he saw the state of the game from his side of things. From the design side of things, where do you see the game right now and where do you see it going?”
Gil: “Like Seth, I’m incredibly bullish on the game because I love it so much. From a design standpoint, COVID wasn’t good for much of anything but was good for golf. And we are seeing a new boom in golf construction. I thought that real estate golf was dead and buried and never coming back but we’ve had people approach us about real estate development courses, so even that’s coming back. So I think the development cycle is positive. The most positive thing is that I think a lot of people thought that COVID is going to bring people to the game and then they would leave but they aren’t leaving.
And as Seth mentioned too, I think we are in a 2nd golden age of golf architecture because the projects now are focused on just golf, playability, interest, character with strategy and angles. It’s not predicated on where’s the cart path going to go, where’s the house going to go, oh you can’t walk this course because you have to cross through a neighborhood to get to the next set of holes. It’s about creating golf in its purest form.”