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A Dream Come True
The CMAA National Club Championship
By Rick Coyne
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| Seven years ago, CMAA members attended a cocktail reception at Ballen Isles Country Club in Palm Beach. Along with
celebrity guest, Vic Damone, a discussion ensued that could have a significant and far reaching effect on private golf, not
only in the United States, but in Europe as well. |
| CMAA's President-elect Bill Wagner and entertainer Vic Damone began the first discussions on the merit of a national
tournament specifically for the club champions from private clubs across the country. |
| The U.S. Amateur Public Links Championship happened to be the model, which since 1922 has provided an opportunity to
public links golfers who would not ordinarily compete in a national championship to participate in what has become a very
important annual tournament. From regional qualifying sites, the winners move on to a national final. |
| After that initial discussion, Bill brought in Kurt Kuebler to help conceptualize and put forth a pro forma for the
CMAA National Board. The vision and foundation for having the tournament was to focus on highlighting the champions of the
private clubs versus the public links concept of highlighting only public course champions. |
| It was decided to focus on putting the club management profession in the spotlight and to give back a sense of pride
to the private club community, which in turn would provide a vehicle to fund The Club Foundation. |
| Embracing the idea, CMAA's CEO Jim Singerling turned to Frank Chirkinian. The CBS television legend, who self
admittedly was often politically incorrect and whose management style earned him the nickname "Ayatollah" by Pat Summerall,
had amassed a wealth of golf tournament knowledge, having produced the Masters for CBS Sports for 41 years. |
| Frank told Jim that he loved the idea and the first CMAA National Club Championship was born in 2003. |
| In the first year of production, Chirkinian's son, Frank, Jr. managed the programming for the tournament, which was
hosted on Kiawah Island with the finals in Pinehurst. Some great footage of the event was aired on the Golf Channel. |
| Highlights of the 2004 CMAA National Club Championship were aired in December, 2004 and are also available by
videotape from the CMAA national office. This year, Bruce Lucker of PGA Tour Productions produced the CMAA National Club
Championship and early comments have been extremely positive on the tournament presentation. PGA Tour Productions airs several
nationally recognized golf events on both Fox and the Golf Channel. |
| For the 2004 CMAA National Club Championship, Senior Tour analysts Jim Kelley and Robert Wren joined the production
crew in providing a hole-by-hole narrative of the event. |
| Waterford trophies were presented to 2004 CMAA National Champion Jack Hall of the Atlanta Country Club and runner-up
Jim Grainger of the Charlotte Country Club by George Carroll of the The Club Foundation and event chairman Bill Wagner. |
| On a recent trip to Ireland, Wagner had the occasion to talk about the CMAA National Club Championship with his
European peers and the response was overwhelming. After discovering that one of the participants traveled from as far away as
Seoul, Korea, many of those European club managers thought that their club champions would love to make the trek across the
pond to compete at Pinehurst next year. |
| One very enthusiastic supporter was the great European Ryder Cup champion, Christy O'Connor. In fact, the inclusion of
the Europeans would give a Ryder Cup flavor to the CMAA National Club Championship. |
| With this potential, one would surmise that the concept is a "win-win" for everyone, the private clubs, the managers,
the Club Foundation and the industry. Why then, out of 4,000-plus clubs was there only a field of 130 entrants supporting the
concept? Why aren't the clubs supporting the event? I recently spent the afternoon with Bill Wagner, CMAA president-elect at
his enviable office location in Coral Gables, Florida, the Riviera Country Club to find the answers to some of these questions. |
| BoardRoom magazine: Bill, what is your gut feeling to why there has been such a small response rate to such a
great opportunity?
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| Bill Wagner: Frankly, the first reason may be the newness of the event, but I believe that we have opportunities
to quickly move beyond that point. The event needs more publicity so that the opportunity is clearly understood by boards and
golf committees around the country. Magazines like BoardRoom need to keep the clubs informed, and by bringing in the PGA Tour
Production group, we feel that we will have a better opportunity for broader exposure to the event.
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| BR: What has been the response of the managers around the country to the event?
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| BW: Generally speaking, it has all been very positive, but one of the real challenges is coordinating the
schedules of 4,000 private club championships, and then coordinating the schedules of 4000 club champions to get them all to
play one National Championship. If we were ever fortunate enough to get 3,000-4,000 players, we would, of course, go into
regional qualifiers, which are provided for in the pro forma for this event. Again however, the more the information is
available to the boards and golf committees, and the more they see the benefit of having the exposure that such an event can
give their club, the more we will see this difficult scheduling process fall into place.
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| BR: What are some of the other things that need to happen on more of a grass roots level that can help the
event grow?
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| BW: Well, you asked the question about the response of the managers a minute ago and I would suggest that all
of the key department heads in the club should promote the event. The PGA professionals have enormous influence in our private
clubs, as do the golf course superintendents. If we can get everyone to focus on the benefits to the club and to golf, I
believe that through the support of our professionals, we will see this event grow even faster.
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| BR: Bottom line, what are the benefits that you see to this event's success?
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| BW: Rick, you've written about it many times. We need to supercharge the golf and private club experience and
create renewed interest in the lifestyle. Through this event we create greater pride in our respective clubs, create renewed
interest for the game within our clubs, touch non-members who may see the event as another reason to consider private club
membership and underlying it all, we become caretakers of the private club legacy.
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| Imagine the friendly and competitive camaraderie that could be created by having private clubs represented by their
club champions. I can envision club members gathering around the television at the club, cheering their respective champions.
Imagine even further that the event one day takes on an international flavor. It's really a very interesting and exciting, but
realistic vision.
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| Getting back to the original Public Links Championship, the champion of that event plays in the Masters. I would love
to see the golf champion of the private club community compete in the Masters, as well. It could even be the club champion of
Augusta who makes it. Anything is possible.
The bottom line is this. The event creates another great amateur event for golf leading to a national championship; it provides
new exposure to CMAA and club management, and it funds research, education and development to assist and enhance our industry
for many years to come. It could be our dream come true.
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| In a time when, as an industry, we are generally very active in trying to find ways to enhance the value component in
our clubs, in a time when we are actively seeking to replace lost members and keep our clubs viable and healthy, and in a time
when we need to provide our members more and better reasons to refer their club to prospective members, we need to take
advantage of as many tools as there are available to us.
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| The CMAA National Club Championship enters its third year in 2005 and it would be nice to have an issue that would
unite us all at the grass roots level to increase golf play with renewed interest in the private club experience. Maybe, just
maybe, this is the vehicle we have been waiting for.
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