From the Driving Range to Driving Change: Inside the Travelers Championship^®

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Text, Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) Webinar Series. 

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A gloved hand places a golf ball on a tee. Text, Travelers Championship 2024. 

Golfers ready themselves and line up shots. A boy in the crowd cranes his neck to watch.

A ball rolls across the green into a hole. A golfer pumps his arms in the air. Other golfers celebrate and cheer.

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(SINGING) Hooray! We ready. 

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Text, Signature Event. Signature Experiences. Signature Competition. 

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Hooray! We ready. 

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A golfer walks through a crowd giving high-fives. 

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Hooray!

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Fans smile and wave. A player lifts a trophy above his head. 

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We ready. Hooray! We ready. 

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Text, There is only one. Travelers Championship. June 19th through 23rd, TPC River Highlands, Cromwell Connecticut. Joan Woodward sits in a chair with a Travelers branded background behind her. 

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JOAN WOODWARD: It's that time of year, everyone. Good afternoon and thank you so much for joining us for a special Travelers Championship edition of Wednesdays with Woodward. I'm Joan Woodward, President of the Travelers Institute, and I'm really thrilled to welcome you to our program today. We're so glad you're here. 

Before we get started, I'd like to share our disclaimer about today's program. 

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Text, About Travelers Institute (registered trademark) Webinars. The Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) educational webinar series is presented by the Travelers Institute, the public policy division of Travelers. This program is offered for informational and educational purposes only. You should consult with your financial, legal, insurance or other advisors about any practices suggested by this program. Please note that this session is being recorded and may be used as Travelers deems appropriate. Travelers Institute (registered trademark). Travelers. The next slide reads, Wednesdays with Woodward (registered trademark) Webinar Series. From the Driving Range to Driving Change: Inside the Travelers Championship. Logos, Travelers Institute, Travelers, Master’s in Financial Technology (FinTech) Program at the University of Connecticut School of Business, Connecticut Business & Industry Association (C.B.I.A.), Trusted Choice dot-com. Metro Hartford Alliance, Travelers Championship, National Association of Professional Insurance Agents. 

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I'd also like to recognize our partners-- TrustedChoice.com, the Master's in FinTech Program at UConn, the National Association of Professional Independent Agents, CBIA, the MetroHartford Alliance, and, of course, the Travelers Championship. Thank you, and welcome to all of your members and your networks. 

I'm thrilled to be here today to discuss an event that I and many others look forward to each year, the Travelers Championship golf tournament, the largest professional sporting event in the state of Connecticut. This June, once again, the world's top golfers will descend on Connecticut for a thrilling week of golf and entertainment. And it happens all at the TPC River Highlands, an award-winning golf course in Cromwell, Connecticut.

I did not think it was possible, but it looks like this year is going to top last year. That's crazy. Last year was amazing. This year, it looks like to be epic. This year, the Travelers Championship is one of eight exclusive PGA TOUR Signature Events, which means commitments from the world's top golfers. It is the only PGA TOUR event in the Northeast this year. I promise it's going to be amazing. 

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Text, Speakers. Joan and two other speakers smile in headshot photos on the slide. Text, Joan Woodward, Executive Vice President, Public Policy; President, Travelers Institute, Travelers. Andy Bessette, Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, Travelers. Nathan Grube, Executive Director, Greater Hartford Community Foundation, Inc.; Tournament Director, Travelers Championship. 

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Joining me today to talk about this year's sure to be history-making tournament are two individuals who are instrumental in making the Travelers Championship possible each year, Travelers Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer Andy Bessette and Travelers Championship Tournament Director Nathan Grube. 

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Andy and Nathan sit in chairs across from Joan. A screen hangs behind the speakers, showing a picture of a crowd around a golf green. Joan wears a white skirt and blazer over a magenta top. Andy wears a dark suit over a button-down shirt. Nathan wears a gray pullover and khakis. 

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In addition to directing the tournament, Nathan is Executive Director of the Greater Hartford Community Foundation. During Nathan's tenure, the Travelers Championship has generated more than $28 million for charity and has been recognized by the PGA TOUR for several awards. 

First, the Players Choice Award, which I think is probably the hardest award to get. So we're going to dig into that and talk about why they got that. Second, the Tournament of the Year, and third, Best Charity Integration.

Nathan is a Class A member of the PGA of America and is an active member of the Connecticut Section of the PGA. He played professional golf from 1996 to 2001, participating in tours throughout the Southeast.

Andy Bessette is Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer here at Travelers. He wears many hats. He has responsibility for Corporate Real Estate, Administrative Services, Community Relations and Internal Investigations, among other things. He's a busy guy.

Notably, he is also responsible for Travelers' sports sponsorships, including our marketing partnership with the PGA TOUR and title sponsorship, of course, of the Travelers Championship. He's active in the community, serving on the boards of the Greater Hartford Community Foundation, as a trustee of the University of Connecticut, as Vice Chairman of the Capital Region Development Authority and as Past Chair of the Board of MetroHartford Alliance, just to name a few, folks.

He's widely recognized for his community support and has been named to Hartford Business Journal's Power 50 and deserved it very well. Finally, Andy was a member of the 1980 United States Olympic team and continues to support Olympic Committee activities.

So thank you both for joining us. We're absolutely thrilled you're here with us today. But before we get started, just to remind our audience that we want to hear from you as well. So drop those questions in the Q&A feature at the bottom of the screen, and we're going to get to as many as we can.

So, guys, welcome to this fabulous studio. We're in Hartford, Connecticut, discussing this today together. It's nice to be in person. But before we get started about this year's event, I really want to back up a minute, Andy, to talk about the history, Travelers’ history, with this tournament.

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah. And you know, and I'll start back in time. But I have to say first, and you're going to see this, Nathan and I have been working together for 20 years, and so we're like brothers. I mean, we're like, punching each other, not physically. We just kind of--

JOAN WOODWARD: No violence on my watch.

ANDY BESSETTE: But just punk jokes, and we make jokes and stuff like that. So it said that Nathan's a Class A member of the PGA, that's really cool stuff. That's really good. But we're members, Joan, of the Class A of Travelers. So we have a class A, too, right? That's us.

JOAN WOODWARD: That's right.

ANDY BESSETTE: So just to make sure we're equal, too.

JOAN WOODWARD: Right.

ANDY BESSETTE: But anyway, so we did. Nathan and I first met each other back in 2005. And at the time, the PGA TOUR was trying to convince us to be one of the proud partners of THE PLAYERS Championship in Florida.

And it didn't really fit what we wanted for community and charity. And so what we did was we kept looking. And believe it or not, in 2006, a company, 84 Lumber in Pennsylvania, decided to no longer be a PGA TOUR title sponsor.

And they called me up and said, hey, Andy, we got a great opportunity the week after the U.S. Open. You can take the spot of 84 Lumber. And at just about that same time, the PGA TOUR had announced that the tournament that had been here in Connecticut since 1960? No, 1952, was off the scoreboard. It was off-- it was no longer a tournament. It was dead.

And so we came in and said, sure, we'll take the spot of 84 Lumber. And we'll become the title sponsor of the new Travelers Championship, which-- I can say this publicly-- which you guys killed, and now it's back to life.

So people in 2006, when this all came out in April of 2006, everybody was going crazy. It was like, Travelers saved it. No more Hartford Whalers moving to Carolina kind of thing and all that. So it was a big, big, big deal, and it still is to this day. I have people stopping me on the street saying thank you for saving this tournament.

And so in '07, when Nathan and I first put on the first tournament, we had one rule-- status quo is unacceptable. We have to always get better because we want to be world-class.

We could barely get a player to come play the tournament in 2007. Right, Nathan? It was like brutal, brutal recruiting. But every year, we stepped up further. We renewed. Jay Fishman was our Chairman and CEO at the time.

And we stepped up further. We did more commitments to the TOUR, longer term extensions. And we did it because it fit the community and charity that we embrace so strongly at Travelers with volunteerism and charity. And last year, we gave over $24 million to travel-- at Travelers. And the Travelers Championship, we gave over $3 million to 180 charities. So it really fits together very, very well. And it has all the way through time.

And fast-forwarding to 2001, we signed up until 2030. And then we were an elevated event-- I have to get all these words right. In 2023, we were, quote unquote, "an elevated event," which means we had a bigger purse than all the other tournaments.

And then right after the '23 tournament, I negotiated the Signature status, which gave us-- that's a whole different thing. And we laid that on top of our commitment to 2030. And we are the only Signature partner on the PGA TOUR that goes out to 2030.

JOAN WOODWARD: Is that right?

ANDY BESSETTE: Yup.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. All right, so that's unique. So wonderful. Thank you for that history. Nathan, what’s it mean really for the community that a company like ours dedicates such resources, time, money, volunteers? I mean, this is embedded in our culture now. I mean, this is really part of our DNA at Travelers to host this tournament. What does it mean from a community perspective?

NATHAN GRUBE: Totally unique. And first of all, thanks for having us, Joan. There is not another relationship like this on the PGA TOUR, where the title sponsor is this engaged with the tournament.

And honestly, the other tournaments around the country often say to me, how did you get your title this involved? How did you get them to care this much? How did you get them to have close to 1,000 volunteers? How did you get the executive leadership so engaged in the event to take this event to the next level?

And I said, this is the only way they do business. They do business-- they-- this event is something that they care about deeply. They take it personal. And everybody out here is their customer.

And they're like, what do you mean? And I'm like, the players, the fans, the corporate partners, the media, they treat this tournament exactly how they run their business. These are our customers. How do we serve them? How do we take care of them? How do we provide them what they need? How do we anticipate what they're going to need?

And from the beginning, that is how Travelers has treated this. So from a tournament standpoint, it's unheard of that you get a title that engaged, and they look at it that way. A lot of other titles will look at tournaments and say, what can I get out of this event?

JOAN WOODWARD: Yeah, what’s in it for us?

NATHAN GRUBE: I'm going to put my logo on it. What's in it for-- and again, I don't fault them for that. But it's like, how do we get our branding out of this? And Travelers does all that. Obviously, they look at that, but they also look at how do we treat people like they're our customer, and from the charities as well?

So when you start with that mentality of how do we take care of the people that we now basically we’re responsible for, it just flipped the paradigm on what this event was, where it's going. And the players notice the difference. Andy started coming out with me on TOUR immediately to talk to the guys. And he would say, how do we make this better?

ANDY BESSETTE: You came with me on TOUR.

NATHAN GRUBE: That's fair. That's fair. I came with him on TOUR. One of the greatest-- one of the greatest stories is right at the beginning, Andy said, I want to know how to make this event better. What do we do? So we started asking the players, the caddies.

One of the greatest things is we actually went to-- into the TV compound at an event, which is a scary place to go at events. I mean, there's tents. It's a very dark place from a lighting standpoint, and just food and beverage. And it's all the people that are responsible for putting on the show-- all the crews that are laying the wires, the camera people.

JOAN WOODWARD: It's a lot, right?

NATHAN GRUBE: It's all the people that are putting down sandbags. They're there at 4:00 a.m. They stay until midnight. It's the crew that puts on the show.

And we were at an event, and we walk in behind this tent and sit down and start eating lunch with these crews. And they don't know who we are. And Andy's like, hey, how do we make the Travelers Championship better? And the people are like, I'm sorry, what?

And we're like, no, no. How do we make it better for you? And they're like, well, actually, it would be helpful if we had this. Or, you know, water is hard to get. You know, water bottles, or, you know, rain gear or whatever.

So sure enough, the crew starts showing up at our event, they start getting rain gear. They start getting gifts. They start getting-- I mean, it is-- I would say Travelers took the TOUR by storm in how they did their business.

ANDY BESSETTE: And that's how we-- remember back in 2006, before we were title. Well, we were title in-- we were title in title. But remember, it was-- the 2006 tournament was still the old title.

And our single purpose of that whole tournament was to watch, learn what they-- what could be done better. And we sat-- I'll never forget this. I sat with Mike Tirico. And I said, Mike, what can we do to be better? I want to be the best.

And he knew my background, and he said, Andy, come and sit down. And we sat down, and he gave me a list of 10 things to do. And I've known Mike very well for all these years. I just saw him at the Masters. And I said to him, I think I finished the list of 10. He goes, you finished my list of 10 10 years ago. He said, you're onto a list I never made up.

But we got Jim Nantz's feedback. We got Mike Tirico's feedback. We got the players, the golfers, the caddies, Joey LaCava. We had everybody, everybody on TOUR, anybody that would listen to us, right?

NATHAN GRUBE: Not that anybody would listen to us.

ANDY BESSETTE: They-- they'd say, oh, you should do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Last piece of that is Jay Monahan, now Commissioner of the TOUR, has become a really close, dear friend. Because in '06 I called him up and said, hey, Jay, I heard-- he was working for Fenway Partners at the time.

And I said, what can we do to be a world-class golf tournament? He goes, I'm coming up with a couple of my people. We're going to spend a half a day. Really? So he came from Boston. He came over to Hartford, sat down with us.

And he said, this is what you need to do, in half a day. And that started a friendship that's been strong ever since. But that's what you do in the first year, right? What Nathan was saying was you engage everybody, anybody that'll talk to you.

JOAN WOODWARD: Absorbing mode, right?

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah.

NATHAN GRUBE: And it's two things. I think there are two key pieces. You have to be willing to ask, and then you have to be willing to actually do what they suggest. And so there are people who will ask and go "thanks." They put that opinion away.

But when the players-- when everybody started seeing we were actually making the changes they were recommending, then people were like, oh, this is different. It's different.

JOAN WOODWARD: And we only do-- at Travelers, we only do things while we're all in. We have to be all in to something because we want to own it.

ANDY BESSETTE: That's us.

JOAN WOODWARD: We are all in on this. So, Nathan, as you talk to other tournament directors that have title sponsors, different companies, a lot of insurance companies have tournaments. In your experience, when you hear from those other tournament directors, they're not having that much engagement with the companies that they're working with?

NATHAN GRUBE: So I'll give you an example.

JOAN WOODWARD: And do they want that?

NATHAN GRUBE: That's a great question.

JOAN WOODWARD: Do they want that?

NATHAN GRUBE: So sometimes there's competing agendas between host organization and title. I would say that from the beginning, we have tried to be completely aligned with what our goals were with this event, between my team and the Travelers team. We are one.

But it's funny you ask that question about just communication and feedback. I have my counterparts that will say we have-- they will say this. We have quarterly meetings with our title sponsor, four times a year. So that is their engagement.

They say, what's your engagement with your title? And I say Fridays at 10:00 a.m. They're like, what, leading into the tournament? I'm like, no, from September through July. They're like, wait a minute, whoa, whoa. You spend every Friday with your title sponsor, an hour with your title sponsor, and you have their leadership engaged? You have--

And I said, 100%. We are meeting with them. And they're like, I don't even know what I would do with that type of engagement. But that was the only way-- to your point, you guys both said it. That is the only way that Travelers knows how to do things.

ANDY BESSETTE: It is.

NATHAN GRUBE: How do we make it better? And so literally every Friday for the entire year, starting in September-- we get August. We get to take some time off. But--

ANDY BESSETTE: You do. We start without you.

NATHAN GRUBE: You do start without-- we have to catch up on the--

ANDY BESSETTE: No, I'm only kidding. But I would say it's unprecedented on the TOUR.

JOAN WOODWARD: So I have to say, all of this, we just talked about the total engagement, the fact that we are all in on this. That had to have something to do with us being labeled a Signature Event. When you say you've known Jay Monahan and asked for his advice for the last 15 years how to make us better, we had to have been viewed by the PGA as one of the top entities. No, it wasn't that way?

ANDY BESSETTE: No way.

JOAN WOODWARD: No way.

ANDY BESSETTE: No way.

JOAN WOODWARD: We had no upper hand in getting Signature? So how did it happen?

ANDY BESSETTE: In '07, '08, '09, '10, '11, '12, we were like-- I can't say it. But we were just like-- we were like a pain.

NATHAN GRUBE: We were begging for everything.

ANDY BESSETTE: We were nothing.

JOAN WOODWARD: But now-- but the fact that you listened, and you've changed, and you've adjusted the tourn-- absorbed all the feedback, that had to have helped us get the Signature.

ANDY BESSETTE: Well, it did. It built over the years. And I would say about '17, '18, so maybe 10 years into it, our fields were starting to improve, and that's a different conversation we'll have in a minute.

But our fields were starting to improve, and we were getting a lot of phenomenal feedback, winning awards and all this stuff. And then by, I would say, 2019-ish, the TOUR was saying, geez, you guys do-- everybody was starting to recognize what we were doing. And that's what-- I would say from '19 to '24, that's what catapulted us to the Signature status now.

NATHAN GRUBE: I'll give you one story on this, Joan. So when we started, I remember a reporter put a microphone in my face and said, what did you do to make the PGA TOUR so angry that they gave you the week after the U.S. Open?

And for those listening and watching, the week after the U.S. Open had historically always been a very difficult day to get players to come. The guys and their families are exhausted after the U.S. Open. They usually like to take the week after the Open off.

So the tournaments that historically had been placed after the U.S. Open had been the oh, let's just put them there. So I remember literally the microphone in my face, what did you do to make the TOUR so angry to get the week after the Open?

I gave some media answer. I don't even remember what it was. So fast-forward to Andy's point. About 10 or 12 years later, the tournament starts to be what it is. The player fields, the hard work that we were putting in is starting to pay off. You start to see it.

And I remember. It was a different reporter stuck a microphone in my face and said, what did you do to get so lucky to be the week after the U.S. Open? Because obviously it's the week that just made things. And Andy and I were like, huh, how the world has turned.

But there was a statement that we used. It was a mantra that we kept saying, going, the date will not make the tournament. The tournament will make the date. And we flipped it to that week becoming one of the premier weeks on TOUR, where the TOUR was basically like-- actually the week after the U.S. Open.

ANDY BESSETTE: Actually, it brought out the competitiveness in both of our teams. And we said, OK, you think we're going to fail being the week after? We're going to show you. And nothing gets-- nothing makes a better athlete than being a little bit irritated.

NATHAN GRUBE: Let me tell you what you never want to say to this man is "you can't do it."

JOAN WOODWARD: Yes, I found out.

NATHAN GRUBE: I've seen it happen, and I've seen the look on his face.

JOAN WOODWARD: I never said it.

NATHAN GRUBE: And so let's just say I think he felt like the TOUR was saying you can't make that week successful. Just have fun with this tournament. Andy’s like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

JOAN WOODWARD: So, OK, I'm going to reclaim the conversation.

NATHAN GRUBE: Sorry, sorry. Apologize.

JOAN WOODWARD: I have to assert my moderator--

NATHAN GRUBE: Yes.

JOAN WOODWARD: So we're a Signature Event now. Last year, we were. This year we are. There's no guarantee for the future, right?

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah. Well, well, yeah. Our contract goes out to 2030 as a Signature Event.

JOAN WOODWARD: As a Signature Event, to 2030?

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah. But the TOUR-- but the TOUR could change any time.

JOAN WOODWARD: Any time.

ANDY BESSETTE: They could say, well, we're going to change the concept and not do this, not do that. So you're right. I mean, you earn your stripes every year.

JOAN WOODWARD: Every year, OK. So for this year, the designation, what does it mean for the player field? I want to talk about do players now view this as a must-do or almost must-do? And is that different than being a non-Signature Event? Obviously, the money is different, right?

ANDY BESSETTE: This is a technicality, OK?

JOAN WOODWARD: Go ahead.

ANDY BESSETTE: So being a Signature Event just means there’s qualification standards that each-- that each player has to meet to be able-- to be able to play the event. None of them have to play the event. None.

And so all the work, Nathan, that you and I've done over the last 20 years-- 18 years, 19 years at building relationships has come in even more handy now that we're Signature with a $20 million purse, the winner gets $3.6 million, no cut for four days. All that stuff, that's all great.

But that's why this year we've been out three, four-- four times. And we go see the guys all the time, building our relationship, send out onesies. Talked to Meredith and Scottie about the baby before the baby was born now.

And life goes on, right? And so we build relationships with the players as much as last week, we were in Charlotte at Wells Fargo.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, so how's the prep different for this event versus a non-elevated event or a Signature Event? Is there a different prep from your end, Nathan, with your team on the ground? We're going to talk about the course in a minute, but do we have more sponsors, for example, because of it?

NATHAN GRUBE: We do. So I'll start with just the basics. More sponsors, more people spending money with us, more ticket buyers that just everybody-- there's more people that want to be involved with the event, which is awesome. We're pulling more from Boston than we ever have. Obviously, with Keegan Bradley as our champion, that helped.

But more Boston media are paying attention. We're the only PGA TOUR event in New England. And that has mattered. So I would say there's just there's more, just kind of everything.

But what I kind of feel for our team is there is a sense of pressure of like, OK, you're one of the top events on the PGA TOUR now. What are you going to do with it? And how-- you have taken your week that you had before, and you have been one of the best.

Now we're giving you a platform of the best. And Andy and I have said, well, we want to be the best of the best. And we made that very clear at media day. We said we want to be, of the eight Signature Events, we want to be the top Signature Event.

So what does that mean? And that means taking our same mentality and just raising the bar for everyone on property. And the players have already noticed it. The stuff that we're talking about doing, the media has already noticed it. Our sponsors who are getting involved with us, new sponsors for the first time, have already noticed it.

And all that is going to translate, Joan, to more dollars for charity. So, I mean, it's all like-- at the end of the day, if we do our job well, if we compete and we win our definition of winning, what's going to translate is we are going to continually break charity records for this tournament. And that is-- that's a goal.

ANDY BESSETTE: But what's still important, though, is that we run it like a business. This is a business. This is a business, just like any business. And I think this is important, Nathan, because Nathan-- in order to have net revenues go to charity, that means revenues have to be greater than guess what? Expenses.

And so we're managing expenses all the time. We just made an expense decision last week that saved $45,000. And every day, we look to cut expenses-- not cut the experience but cut expenses and sell more revenue.

Last week-- I get so silly sometimes-- I sold a sponsorship to a candy manufacturer in Connecticut for a few thousand dollars. And I was so excited. It was not the biggest one that you've had. But it was like--

NATHAN GRUBE: I give him a quota every day that he has to hit for a CO.

JOAN WOODWARD: Do you give him a quota?

NATHAN GRUBE: I do, 100% I give him a week. I'm like, OK, did you hit your quota this week?

ANDY BESSETTE: But it's fun. I mean, it's a little stuff. It's a battle-- it's a battle of little wins. And there's the big ones, too. Stanley Black & Decker was a great, great. Don Allan, who's their chairman and CEO--

JOAN WOODWARD: Don Allan sat with me about a year ago on this show, Andy, so you're in very good company, as did Karen Lynch.

ANDY BESSETTE: He's one of our--

NATHAN GRUBE: Wonderful. Another big partner.

ANDY BESSETTE: Karen has been great, too. So, I wonder how that happens. That's really good. I wonder who else we know.

JOAN WOODWARD: I have a friend who has a really nice Rolodex who lets me borrow it from time to time. Thank you, Andy. Bring us Stanley and bring us--

ANDY BESSETTE: They have a big sponsorship now, much bigger. And Don has been--

JOAN WOODWARD: Wonderful.

ANDY BESSETTE: --such a great sponsor, and Karen is at CVS. They both are. But there are others, too. Webster Bank subsidizes and runs Nathan's whole Birdies for Charity program. And so that's phenomenal.

JOAN WOODWARD: All right, back to the script.

NATHAN GRUBE: She's like, again, I go back. Sorry.

JOAN WOODWARD: We are going to talk about the players now because let's talk about who we're going to see on the green. We have six kind of, you would say, true rock stars out there.

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On a slide, action shots of six golfers sit below each of their signatures. Text, Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, Ludvig Aberg, Patrick Cantlay, Viktor Hovland, Keegan Bradley. The Northeast's only PGA Tour signature event. In Keegan's photo, he lifts a trophy. 

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Andy, talk about Scottie. You said they just had their baby? 

ANDY BESSETTE: They had the baby, Bennett. 

JOAN WOODWARD: Did we send them a little onesie with the Travelers--

ANDY BESSETTE: Oh, yeah. Actually, we're going bigger, bigger with that. Scottie is a really close friend of the tournament and me and Nathan. And Rory is. I spent a half an hour with Rory in Wells Fargo last week. I haven't talked to Rory that long for years. And so we had great conversations about stuff.

The 70 to 80 players in our field will all be world-class players, who, the top 70 to 80 in the world who are qualified to play in a PGA tournament, you have to be careful of that. because there are few LIV guys that are still in there.

But hopefully that all gets worked out, too, here before the end of the year. And I get good vibes from people. We'll see what happens. But I think it would be good and be helpful to reunify golf a little bit and get us back on track.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. All right, Nathan, how about some of these players we're seeing on the screen now.

NATHAN GRUBE: Yeah. It's--

JOAN WOODWARD: Any stories, any thoughts?

NATHAN GRUBE: Oh, stories on all of them. But I would say that--

JOAN WOODWARD: One you can tell on this public program?

NATHAN GRUBE: It's funny. I'm looking at this, and you see the No. 1 ranked player in the world, No. 2, No. 6, No. 8, number-- I mean, I'm looking at the top 10 just on that list with Rory and Ludvig and Patrick and Viktor and Keegan.

I mean, Andy, in the first few years, we had probably three of the top 50. And now there's six or seven of the top 10 that are already committed this early, 32 days out.

And you are going to see the strongest field we've ever seen. I mean, the players that are going to be added to this list, I mean, for our fans, for our corporate sponsors, for those that are going to watch on TV, I mean, it's just going to be an amazing show.

And so I look at these guys, and I look at the guys we're going to announce, and then the ones that Andy announces, you know, outside.

ANDY BESSETTE: But I didn't announce-- a funny story.

NATHAN GRUBE: I'm pretty sure you're saying Jordan's coming.

ANDY BESSETTE: If you want a story. So Keegan Bradley is so cute. What a great guy, great family. And he calls me up. OK, this is back, like in maybe October. November. We're talking about something, whether we were going to use him in Boston for something.

And he said to me, you wouldn't believe what happened to me yesterday. What happened? I was at a coffee shop. He has a home up north of Boston on the shore. And he said, I went into the coffee shop with my son-- not Cooper.

NATHAN GRUBE: Logan?

ANDY BESSETTE: Logan.

NATHAN GRUBE: Yeah.

ANDY BESSETTE: And we go into the coffee shop. We go up to the counter and say, what's your name to put on the coffee cup. Keegan. Just call me Keegan. And Logan goes, you know, my dad won the Travelers Championship. He's the champion of the Travelers Championship.

And so Keegan says to me, Andy, I was so embarrassed because he's not like that at all. He's not going to go-- And so he says, OK, Logan. They get their coffee and his hot chocolate. And they go sit down and drink it.

They're getting ready to leave. So they get up towards the door. And he said, just as we're getting ready to leave, Logan thought it would be helpful to just remind everybody. So he said, this is Keegan Bradley, the champion of the Travelers Championship. Bye! And then they left.

And Keegan said, I was dying. I was so mortified. He said--

JOAN WOODWARD: So adorable.

ANDY BESSETTE: And he is. But isn't that cool? That's the way that Keegan talks about the week before he played the Travelers last year and won, he missed the cut at the U.S. Open. And so he went out on Saturday night because he went home early, and he played mini golf with his kids.

And he said, you know, that's what re-energized me. And so we can go on and on and tell stories. Literally right now, we could tell stories about every one of those guys. And every one-- every one of them. They just have unique stories. Some of them were our young players we gave exemptions to.

JOAN WOODWARD: Who is that of this--

ANDY BESSETTE: Viktor Hovland.

NATHAN GRUBE: Oh, Viktor spilled ice cream on his shirt before his press conference where he was going to announce that he's turned pro. And we were trying to clean it up. Patrick is a freshman at UCLA and gets an exemption, shoots 60.

ANDY BESSETTE: 60.

JOAN WOODWARD: What year was Patrick?

NATHAN GRUBE: Oh, 2011?

JOAN WOODWARD: About 10 years ago?

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah.

JOAN WOODWARD: And Viktor was how long ago? Oh, he was class of--

ANDY BESSETTE: '19? '20?

NATHAN GRUBE: Yeah, in '18.

ANDY BESSETTE: Just before. He is more recent. But Patrick, you know, shot that 60 on a Friday night as just a kid in college. And people were-- it was like when Jim Furyk shot the 58, people were running around the course like crazy. I said, what? Is there a tornado coming? What's going on? And the tornado was Jim Furyk. And they were running around.

Same thing for Patrick that night, that Friday night. I'll never forget it. People were running around and going like, what's happening? Patrick Cantlay is about to shoot a 60, the lowest by an amateur in a PGA TOUR event ever.

NATHAN GRUBE: Yeah.

ANDY BESSETTE: Whoa.

NATHAN GRUBE: Well, I got to say one, too, about Rory. Rory had never played our tournament before. And I want to say it was probably 2014. Andy is having a conversation with him in the locker room down at The Players.

And they're talking about the upcoming Olympics. And Rory wasn't sure, honestly, which country he was going to play for-- Northern Ireland. There was a whole debate. He was wrestling with it.

JOAN WOODWARD: Really?

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah.

NATHAN GRUBE: Andy sat down and talked for probably 15 minutes. And Andy talked about his experience with the Olympics. And Rory was like, how did you do this? What did you do here? And this and that.

And then Rory said, Andy, I can't play you next year-- well, he said I can't play you this year-- it was a couple months away. I can't play you next year. But in two years, I'm going to come and play. And so Rory was like because of part of that relationship--

ANDY BESSETTE: And he's stayed with us, too.

NATHAN GRUBE: I want to come. He has-- every year, he has loved it.

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah, we did the same thing last year, I guess. But Xander Schauffele.

NATHAN GRUBE: Oh, yeah.

ANDY BESSETTE: So Xander never played us. Didn't play us, didn't play. So I went up on the range. I said, I've had enough, in a nice way. I said, Xander. I said, hey, brother.

He looked at me, and he said, brother? What do you mean? He stopped hitting. He stopped practicing. And I said, don't you know? He said, no.

I said, if you're a member of an Olympic team, we're brothers and sisters. That's how we refer to each other. And he said, oh, so you're my brother? And I said, yeah. I said, will you come play us? Absolutely. And so he was--

JOAN WOODWARD: If you got to play the Olympic card, you got to play it.

ANDY BESSETTE: Right. Every card you have.

NATHAN GRUBE: I have never had a brother with anybody.

ANDY BESSETTE: Well, I called you my brother earlier in the show.

JOAN WOODWARD: No. Well, good for you, Andy. Pulling all the tools out. Whatever works.

ANDY BESSETTE: Whatever works.

JOAN WOODWARD: That's so funny. Good stories. So what do you actually do maybe days of or a week before, or a month before, to make it easier for these players to come here?

Other than creating this magical event that they are all hearing about on TOUR. It is the players' tour. I mean, we got the award for best from the players, which says a lot. But do you do anything else special throughout the--

ANDY BESSETTE: This is my joke, and I'll shut up.

JOAN WOODWARD: Don't shut up.

ANDY BESSETTE: Pray for no rain.

JOAN WOODWARD: Pray for no rain?

ANDY BESSETTE: We read the Farmer's Almanac together. We say no rain. Please, no rain. Please.

NATHAN GRUBE: I will say that I'm going to start backwards, Joan. I'm going to tell you one thing that a player said to us. And to your point, we're the only tournament on TOUR to win the Players Choice Award twice. And we take that very, very seriously that the guys actually said, hey, that's our favorite event, period.

But I'm going to work backwards from a comment that a guy gave us a few years ago. He said, I have no idea how you do it. He was not from the United States. I think he was a Canadian player.

He said, I have no idea how you do it, but you make this feel like a home game for every single player in this field. And I have no idea how you do it but thank you very much. And that, to me, I'm like, that is the biggest compliment.

Because what we do, Joan, to try to work up to that statement. We try to say to the guys, OK, how do we make this the easiest trip for you and your family and your whole entourage? And so we start with daycare. We start with the wives and the girlfriends.

We start with the caddies, and we say, we do a charter for the players and two guests, a complimentary charter that they get for free. And they start, they're going, wait, you guys are going to take care of us getting there? Like, yep. That's all taken care of.

And then when they get here, this year, with the caddies, we're providing the caddies cars this year, which is unheard of. I think one tournament in the last 20 years has done that. And the caddies are like, wait, you basically you care about us enough that you're giving us cars? And we're like, yeah. And that was a deal that Andy and the team, we all worked out together.

So again, the kids-- it's funny, the kids call it Camp Travelers to the parents. And they tell us that because they come here, and they have face painting. They have a 5K-- or they have a road race run, where they decorate their shirts. They have a Wiffle ball game. There's all kinds of-- there's dinners for the parents at night.

And then we have a volunteer team that basically babysits the kids. And the kids say, we want to go back to Camp Travelers. We have had players say to us when we became a Signature Event, they said, my kids are going to be furious with me if I don't qualify for your event. And we're like, sorry, but yay, we love that, you know.

ANDY BESSETTE: And even the wives. The wives, we provide outstanding clothing, Vuori. We've provided yoga pants. We've got one-piece jumpsuits. This year, we have another piece of clothing. And I was talking to Austin Eckroat's wife, Sally, at the Masters. And I said, you won't believe what we have for clothing for you because it's his first time with us. And I said, because you're a first-timer, I've got three years of clothing for you.

JOAN WOODWARD: Aw, that's so nice.

ANDY BESSETTE: And she was like, so sweet. She was so appreciative. But we take care of-- to Nathan's point, we take care of the caddies, the wives, the kids, the players.

JOAN WOODWARD: You provide the infrastructure, so it's easy. It's like a no-brainer to come here because--

NATHAN GRUBE: It's easy.

JOAN WOODWARD: --no one's complaining about the kids or the wives. No one's complaining I got to worry about this. You just take care of it. And so it's easy for them to say yes. So that's great.

NATHAN GRUBE: They can't play every week. And I think we started with we want to eliminate every single reason that somebody could possibly think as a--

ANDY BESSETTE: Not to come. Yeah.

JOAN WOODWARD: Right. OK, let's talk about the course because how difficult is this course compared to other PGA courses? That's No. 1. Because there is a rumor out there that it might be easier, or it might be shorter. But did you make changes to-- did you make changes from last year? Because there was some comments that-- tell us about that.

But tell us about the process because Travelers isn't deciding what changes to make and when and if changes should be made. Who decides when they should be made, what they should look like in terms of the changes? And then, how hard is it when the person or the decider tells you guys, all right, you have one year to change this course?

NATHAN GRUBE: Well, you want to go first?

ANDY BESSETTE: I was just going to say, though, what you said, Travelers has a lot of influence on everything that happens because we pay the bills. So the TOUR does listen to us. And then Nathan can tell the story about how this all works, really.

But every time a player makes a comment, Nathan and I talk. And we make sure that the TOUR knows what was said. That happened-- that happened last year with Rory's comment, but they knew what he said.

But Rory wasn't the only one that made comments. There were five or six guys that made comments. So I just want to make sure.

NATHAN GRUBE: So I would say this, Joan. The biggest compliment that you can get, again, as a course, I think they've given to us. They've said it is a fair golf course, and it is fun. And when you get the best players in the world to say that is fair and fun, that is an incredible place to start. If a guy doesn't like your course, you can't overcome that.

And there are courses on TOUR that players don't like. They're like, uh, I just really don't want to go play that event because the golf course is terrible. So that is not our case. The guys like it. It's fair and it's fun. They say it rewards us for good shots. It punishes us for bad shots. And it's a really fun golf course that you can think your way around.

And so there have been tweaks made to the golf course for the last 15 years. They changed the bunkers out because they were getting tired, and just they weren't competitive anymore, how they were shaped. They put a new tee box up on 17 a few years ago because they wanted a different sight line for the tee shot. They put in a new irrigation system to grow rough in different ways. So they are constantly—

ANDY BESSETTE: And because of our complaining loudly all the time about the cart path on 18 fairway, there was the biggest joke. Guys would hit their drives 320. It'd hit the cart path, and it'd go 400. And so we had that removed and taken out to make the course more fair, more playable. But we've had the shortest and the longest-- players on the TOUR win here.

JOAN WOODWARD: The shortest and the longest? That's a good point, actually.

NATHAN GRUBE: I'm going to go back to-- there was a year, Joan, we had a playoff where, at the time, statistically the PGA TOUR's longest hitter was in the playoff, and the PGA TOUR's shortest hitter was in the playoff.

JOAN WOODWARD: Oh, really? Oh, wow.

NATHAN GRUBE: So when you have a course that doesn't favor any type player, that's what they like. So there was a few tweaks again made this year. Rough had grown up in a few areas. They narrowed a fairway. They did a few things. But they called them competitive enhancements, and they ran it by the players. So many players said, whatever you do, do not mess up the golf course. And when you have that at your back--

JOAN WOODWARD: When you have that.

NATHAN GRUBE: --that is a good spot.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, great. Let's talk about the fan experience. So, Nathan, you always have a Fan Zone down there. Lots of kids running around, the mini golf. We have the chip and putt kind of experience, Travelers’ area. We have the Travelers Institute. We have a SHE Golfs area this year that's new. So what can fans expect maybe different this year, or Andy, from years past?

NATHAN GRUBE: I would say they are going to-- what we are doing for the general fan. I feel like on the corporate level, we provide a world-class experience that competes with any of the other professional sporting things in the region. So we kind of have an experience there.

For the general admission fan, they are going to see things on-site that they've never seen before. We have five venues again this year on property that are free and open to the fans. Climate control, great viewing areas. That's unheard of on the PGA TOUR that my general admission ticket's going to get me into all these private hospitality venues.

And then also Andy mentioned one of our partners, Stanley Black & Decker with Don, he said, I want to create a really cool, engaging, fan experience down at the practice facility. What can we do? So we brainstormed on a bunch of ideas.

And we're building a massive video monitor down on the practice facility this year with-- it’s basically the Shot Tracer technology. It almost looks like a video game where you can see the players hit the ball. It shows how far it goes. The players start to compete against each other who can get closest to the pin.

And we built bleachers where the fans can basically engage what's happening with the pros on the putting green and on this huge monitor. So they're going to-- people are going to walk in and go, oh, my goodness, what is that? right away. And so we have other viewing areas that we've built out.

To your point, the Fan Zone-- I love the fact that kids 15 and under get in free to our tournament. And I love the fact that families will spend hours at our tournament and never watch a shot of golf. They will go down and do arts and crafts, get their face painted, do mini golf, and go, oh, my gosh, we are at the Super Bowl of a golf tournament.

The best players in the world are here. But my family can spend the entire day here. I mean, golf goes on all day. You can spend 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 o’clock at night at the tournament with all this stuff to do. So I would put our fan experience against anything else in the region when it comes to the value and then what people can do on property.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, great. We have to go quickly through some of these items. So Andy, you want to talk about volunteers. So we have 1,000 or so Travelers employees, very, very important to our employees. They're out there volunteering early in the morning, late at night. Is it too late to sign up, or can they still sign up?

ANDY BESSETTE: No, no, we still have openings in some of the areas.

JOAN WOODWARD: We have openings?

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah. So anybody that's interested, just contact us, and we'll set you up with the right person on Nathan's staff, with Taylor Whiting, and get it all done.

JOAN WOODWARD: Good. I want to take a moment here to actually talk to the audience about something that's really near and dear to my heart. And I know you all are very hugely supportive of this.

But I'm proud to share that our SHE Golfs now is celebrating two years at Travelers. This is an initiative we founded. And our goal is to get more women playing the game.

Here's why. Golf has traditionally been a male-dominated sport, as we all know. Even today, women only make up 25% of all golfers. So that's a missed opportunity in my mind, our minds. Because one of the greatest things about golf, as you all just said, it's a great way to build friendships, connections, grow your network, grow your business and your career.

So the idea to start this SHE Golfs program really grew out of the 2022 Women's Day, which we're going to talk about in a second, at The Championship. I thought we could do something more meaningful to get women involved into the game of golf. So we created a few clinics for golfers and non-golfers who just want to maybe dabble in the sport with a no-pressure situation at a lot of the great municipal golf courses we have here in Hartford.

So all of our clinics over the past 18 months or so have sold out. And so far, I'm going to announce today that including agents and brokers and our business partners out in the field and in Canada, we've had more than 1,500 employees, agents and brokers go through our clinics, men and women alike.

Because guess what? Young men coming into the insurance industry, we welcome them to be part of our SHE Golfs movement. So those 100 clinics we had and events have just-- and we have lots more planned in the fall. So we have a SHE Golfs template that any of you out there listening to tell you how to create your own SHE Golfs events.

Again, no-pressure situations on municipal golf courses. And it's just to dabble to see if you like the sport. So it's been a huge success. Watch your emails because we're going to be sending some out to fill up our clinics for the spring and the fall.

So this is all a big windup to ask you both to talk about how phenomenally successful our Women's Day program has been over the last 15 years or so. What's on deck for this year? Andy, maybe make some news here a little bit. What are we going to-- what are we going to see?

ANDY BESSETTE: You know, we started this-- and you and I talk about this all the time. Because SHE Golfs work-- fits right into this. When we started Women's Day 15 years ago or whatever, we started it because we wanted women to come out to a male-dominated event and to make it a part of it.

Because just being at a golf event is a lot of fun. You come out-- in our case, you could go to Women's Day, then you go out and enjoy the food and all of the suites and things like that and walk around in green grass. And it's a lot of fun. It's just a fun day.

And so we've grown it a lot over the last 15 years. And I think this year is going to be, again, another great year. We have Lesley Stahl from 60 Minutes, which I'm looking forward to. Her last version this week, she was over in somewhere with a flak jacket on. I want to ask questions about that. But I think that having Leslie Stahl there will be phenomenal.

But then we have another section-- another segment with influencers. Because I think the world of influencers is such a remarkable area. So we have one young woman called Lamb Chop 97. And we have another woman who is one of four sisters who have a site called Sister Snacking.

And two phenomenal-- between the two of them-- and our host is going to be Amanda Balionis from CBS.

JOAN WOODWARD: Wonderful.

ANDY BESSETTE: Between Amanda and Lamb Chop 97 and Sister Snacking, we have well over a million followers with those three on TikTok and well over a couple of million-- I'm sorry, a million in Instagram? Yeah, Instagram, and 2 million on TikTok.

So these people are highly popular. And we thought it would be very interesting for the audience to listen about how did you get started? Because they're small business.

JOAN WOODWARD: They're small business women.

ANDY BESSETTE: Right. And this is so exciting because I know Lamb Chop 97 well. I know her family well. And I just think this would be so fascinating to listen to how did you get into it and how do you grow it?

JOAN WOODWARD: What is her-- what is her content? What is she talking about?

ANDY BESSETTE: Foodie.

JOAN WOODWARD: She's a foodie?

ANDY BESSETTE: Foodie.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, so Lamb Chop 97?

ANDY BESSETTE: Yep.

JOAN WOODWARD: Follow her before the tournament.

ANDY BESSETTE: Foodie.

JOAN WOODWARD: Get a taste of--

ANDY BESSETTE: Sister Snacking. Sister Snacking is kind of food, too, but they kind of travel fooding.

NATHAN GRUBE: Food travel.

ANDY BESSETTE: You’re going to go to a city, and you want the best restaurants, you get to Sister Snacking--

JOAN WOODWARD: And see where they are.

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK.

ANDY BESSETTE: And so it's going to be remarkable. And Amanda Balionis has about 250,000 on Instagram. So all of them. This is going to be a really good-- I'm excited about it. I'm excited about both of them. And then it will have Citizen Travelers for a small segment at the beginning as well.

JOAN WOODWARD: Wonderful.

ANDY BESSETTE: And so it's going to be a fun day. Great food, great weather.

JOAN WOODWARD: Sounds great. So Lesley Stahl from 60 Minutes is our headliner. Social media influencers and a little Citizen Travelers civic engagement sprinkled on top. So you don't want to miss Women's Day.

All right, let's also talk about one of the biggest parts of this, which is charity. So it's really at the heart of the championship, with 100% of the tournament's net proceeds going to charitable organizations like the First Tee program and other programs.

So can you talk about this aspect of the tournament and how it fits with the Travelers Promise? Maybe, Nathan, you first. You're a chair of the board here in Hartford of charity organizations. What does it mean for this community and what-- let's talk about first, golf is really the only sport that has net proceeds going to a charity. I don't see the NBA. I don't see the NFL. I don't see the Tennis Association. No one's donating through their sport's--

NATHAN GRUBE: Correct.

JOAN WOODWARD: --proceeds. They may have a charitable foundation.

NATHAN GRUBE: Correct.

ANDY BESSETTE: Yes.

JOAN WOODWARD: But it's a different animal. How's it different?

NATHAN GRUBE: I would say probably different priorities, to be honest. But the way that the TOUR is set up, and I think one of the reasons-- I don't want to speak for Andy. One of the reasons Travelers got so excited about this event is when you look at the PGA TOUR, to your point, if you take the NFL, NHL, Major League Baseball, NASCAR, you take all the other professional sporting organizations and you combine what they give to charity, the PGA TOUR gives more to charity than all of those combined.

And you just let that resonate for a second on what that means. That is a massive number. And I give this analogy sometimes that if you had called the New England Patriots, if you had Robert Kraft after a New England Patriots playoff game get on the microphone and say, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for all your support. Thanks for the suites. Thanks for the tickets. Thanks for all the advertising support. Everything that we made tonight, we're going to give back to Boston and New England charities. It'd be the biggest news story ever.

JOAN WOODWARD: Yeah, right.

NATHAN GRUBE: But we do that every Sunday. Alan gets on the green and says thank you for the corporate support, for the tickets. Everything we made we're giving back to charity. And that is a motivator for our sales team. That's a motivator for us. 

To Andy's point, we run a business. And the tighter we run our business, the more profitable we run our business, that means more charities that we know. We work with these charities. We know them personally by name. We know they're going to be able to do more amazing work in the community.

So that is an incredibly motivating factor to the fact that 180 charities last year changed thousands of lives in our region because of support we were able to give them. And when you make that connection, if that's not motivating to you to do your job well, I'm not sure what is.

ANDY BESSETTE: We're always trying to grow it. And there are-- I would like to see more of the charitable organizations that we give to be focused on issues that in society are today-- mental health, critically important, food, food security.

JOAN WOODWARD: Food security, homelessness.

ANDY BESSETTE: Critically, homelessness. And so we're trying to get more. And so if people know of charitable organizations in those areas, they need to go to Nathan because those are critical areas that need help today. We need to be supportive of it.

Listen, we do tremendous work. We've given over $28 million to over 900 charities since '07. So we've done a lot of good, but there's a lot of good to be done in the years ahead.

JOAN WOODWARD: Just for the audience who's listening, are you looking for new charities to come on board?

ANDY BESSETTE: All the time.

JOAN WOODWARD: All the time.

NATHAN GRUBE: Every year, we try to recruit charities to get involved with us, just like we recruit players. There is no cap on the number of charities that we can work with. And there is zero cost to get involved with us. When you--

JOAN WOODWARD: Did you hear this?

NATHAN GRUBE: When you get involved in our charitable programs, we pay for all of the website back maintenance and build-out. We pay for-- there's ways to make donations. We handle all the credit card fees. Webster Bank does a match, a 15% match.

There is so much. I'm going to challenge everyone listening today. If you sit on a board, if you care about something in your community, and your charity is not involved with the tournament, you are missing out on money, and you're missing out on a platform. Period, end of story. Send them our way, ngrube@travelerschampionship.com.

Taylor Whiting runs all of our charitable programs. If you care about something and you're involved and they're not involved, you're missing out. They're missing out. I mean, it is the thing that distinguishes the PGA TOUR from, I think, every other sports property.

ANDY BESSETTE: I was going to-- the last thing I was going to add was that you made an important point a minute ago. Alan Schnitzer, our Chairman and CEO, Alan is so supportive and behind this that it's unbelievable. Jay Fishman was, and Alan has been for many years and is our critical partner. And without Alan being supportive of this, it doesn't go. It doesn't go the way it's going now.

And so having-- and Alan knows that we give over $24 million a year at Travelers to organizations. And to say that we gave over $28 million to 900 organizations since 2007, this is all big stuff. This is important stuff for our communities to be better, to take care of people who have to be taken care of and need help. This is really important stuff.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, wonderful. We could go on and on and on, but we have a lot of audience questions coming in. I'm trying to get the cue cards here of what we're going to ask you.

(DESCRIPTION)
A person hands Joan a stack of note cards. 

(SPEECH)
First question coming in from one of our agent and brokers in Colorado. Wants to know any amateurs this year and who are they and how do they get selected? Because it's different now, right? 

ANDY BESSETTE: It is. 

JOAN WOODWARD: Is this different this year?

ANDY BESSETTE: We can go back and forth. I mean, I was going to say, just the rules around being a Signature Event is that we only get four exemptions these days. We used to get eight. So now we only get four.

And when we got eight, we used to give two or three to the young collegiate players coming out of college who wanted to go on PGA TOUR. Now we only have four. And one of the rules of being a Signature Event is that you have to have your PGA TOUR card to actually play in the tournament. So we can't give it to them. But the winner--

NATHAN GRUBE: But here's the kicker. But--

ANDY BESSETTE: The winner-- the winner of PGA TOUR University, which is a new thing, the winner is a collegiate golfer. They come out-- when they win PGA TOUR U, they get their PGA TOUR card. Ah, we can invite them.

So we're going to have one of our four exemptions go to the winner of the PGA TOUR U who will have their-- he will have his card. We can invite him, but he's basically was an amateur yesterday, and today, he's a pro.

JOAN WOODWARD: Is he already a pro, or we don't know?

ANDY BESSETTE: Not until he wins.

JOAN WOODWARD: No, not until he wins.

NATHAN GRUBE: There's somebody-- there's--

JOAN WOODWARD: When does that happen?

NATHAN GRUBE: It happens at the end of this month. There's two young kids that are competing right now to win PGA TOUR U. They're college players.

And to Andy's point-- and let's just say it's no accident that we worked out a deal with the PGA TOUR to make sure we were able to give that exemption to that winner because our bridge to the young kids is very, very important.

So to Andy's point, the TOUR listens when he picks up the phone and says, hey, this is important to us as title. So we will have one of the-- well, we will have the top college player in our field this year that wins PGA TOUR U. So that's how we're able to do that.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK, OK. You knew this was coming at you. So we have a few questions on the partnership between the PGA and LIV. So can you please tell us-- and again, don't give any inside information away. Let's just talk about what's in the public domain and based on your decades of doing this.

How do you think this is going to end? Or can you just tell us the-- actually, tell us the process of where we are in the negotiations now. I know there's lots of talk about funding and who's funding what. But you don't have to get into that. But given where we are now, what should we expect over the next year? And where do you see this ending, if you want to talk about that?

NATHAN GRUBE: Let me tee this up.

JOAN WOODWARD: Why don't you tee it up.

NATHAN GRUBE: Because there's a lot more that he's involved in that I'm not involved in.

ANDY BESSETTE: I can't say. Most of what I know, I can't say.

NATHAN GRUBE: I would say this. The PGA TOUR has always been an aspirational place for the best players in the world to get. If you played on the European Tour, you wanted to get here. If you were in college, you wanted to get here. If you were a PGA TOUR card member holder, you wanted to stay here.

That is no different. When you talk to the LIV guys, Andy and I talk to them at Augusta, we talk. They all talk about how are we going to get back? How are we going to combine? How are we-- I want to be there. How do we work together? It is still-- the PGA TOUR is aspirationally what it has always been.

Now, there is a massive money game in play here with the Saudis. And the amount of money that those guys were offered to leave the PGA TOUR and go play somewhere else was just-- enormous sums of money.

But even still taking that, you still get the guys-- Rahm still talks about, hey, how are we going to get back? Bryson talks about, hey, we're going to figure out a way to get back together.

And so the TOUR is still what it always has been. People want to get here. It might be a little more complicated now because of the interjection of a whole new tour and things like that. But I don't know, that's my two cents to tee it up. The guys still talk about wanting to get here. How do we get back and play Travelers? I mean, you talk to a handful of those guys. That's going to be the first event we play when we get back.

JOAN WOODWARD: So the player intentions have to be driving the negotiations because everybody who's negotiating this is hearing from them they want to get back, somewhat.

NATHAN GRUBE: Yeah.

ANDY BESSETTE: Somewhat.

NATHAN GRUBE: Yeah.

ANDY BESSETTE: I think that-- all I would say-- all I can say.

JOAN WOODWARD: All you can say.

ANDY BESSETTE: All I can say is that I have spent time with John Henry. I've spent time with Sam Kennedy. And just a tidge to say hi to Art Blank. But there are some very, very powerful sports executives. John Henry owns Liverpool in the Premier League. He owns Red Sox. He owns Pittsburgh Penguins.

And based on a couple of conversations with John, some with Sam Kennedy, some with the other investors in SSG, which is the Strategic Sports Group that invested $3 billion-- up to $3,000,000,000 in the TOUR, I have great confidence in those people.

These guys are all seasoned sports executives. They're the CEOs of their companies. They know what they're doing. So I feel really good that-- and I do talk to the commissioner once in a while.

But I think that-- I feel very confident that-- I don't know when, but I think I'm very hopeful, I guess I'll say, that sometime in 2024, we'll see things get back closer to being aligned for golf. Because I think it's important for golf to have golf aligned.

But I think we've got the right people working and talking with PIF. And PIF is the source of the funding. Let's see what happens. But I'm hopeful. I think we’ve got some really good people working with Jay Monahan, talking to the PIF people. And if it can happen, I think it will happen.

JOAN WOODWARD: So the right players are in place?

ANDY BESSETTE: Yes, the right players are in place.

JOAN WOODWARD: Give them time and maybe take the bright shining light of the media off of them and let them--

ANDY BESSETTE: And Tiger's involved, and Rory's involved.

JOAN WOODWARD: How's Tiger and Rory involved? What is their role. Do they have a specific role?

ANDY BESSETTE: Part of the negotiating team. There's a committee of the investment for profit element of the TOUR that's new. So there's a committee of that. I think there's five of them. But John Henry is one of them. I know Tiger's one. I know Rory's one. And I think one of the other board members is a member. But we've got the right people. I think they have the right people working on it.

JOAN WOODWARD: OK. How about this question from an audience member? Another agent and broker in California. Can you share one of the most unexpected turn of events or the most memorable highlight that occurred during one of our tournaments over the last 15 years ago for you personally? What was the personal, oh, my gosh, was it Jim Furyk and the 58? Was it Jordan Spieth coming out of the bunker there?

ANDY BESSETTE: You know what? What I'm going to tell you is none of that.

JOAN WOODWARD: None of that.

ANDY BESSETTE: My most memorable moment was in 2008. A guy named Webb Simpson said to me on the range, Mr. Bessette, thank you very much for my exemption. I really appreciate it.

He was a kid out of college. We gave him an exemption. He was on the range. And I said, Webb, all I ask of you is when you get famous someday, don't forget about us. Remember us.

Fast-forward in 2012, Webb Simpson wins the U.S. Open. He came back a week later, and he found me. And it gives me-- it gives me shivers up my spine to even to tell you this story.

And he said-- by then it was gone with Mr. Bessette. Andy, I told you that I would be back when I did something famous. And I gave him a hug. And I said-- and I talk to Webb all the time, every year.

And to me, that's one of the most important things in life is that when people keep their word when they don't have to--

JOAN WOODWARD: When they don't have to.

ANDY BESSETTE: --and they come back, that's the real person. That's hard to do sometimes. And so that's a story. Of all the stuff, I'll never forget that as long as I live.

JOAN WOODWARD: Nathan, how about you?

NATHAN GRUBE: I look at that picture behind you, Joan. And I look at-- that's 18, with the crowds and the fans. And I think one of the moments for me in 2020 when there were no fans allowed on property. You still put the tournament on. Andy and I were standing there.

JOAN WOODWARD: It was like 100 of us or something, just about.

NATHAN GRUBE: Thirty-seven around the green.

JOAN WOODWARD: Thirty-seven around the green?

NATHAN GRUBE: But no, Andy and I were standing there. And at the end of it, we were looking at each other going, the energy, the passion makes this event. The people that care so much, the volunteers, the fans, that is what I think makes us unique.

And the players see it, the fans. And we didn't have it that year. And Andy and I looked at each other. We're like, oh, the personality of who we are, the energy, the ownership of what this event means to our community and what it means from a sense of pride to everybody involved.

It was like we had this punch to the gut that nobody got to have it that year. And so we were like, oh, my gosh. 364 days. It is coming back in '21. We're going to come back. So it was this moment where you realize what this event means to the community. And you're like, we are going-- you feel a sense of responsibility that you want this to be what people are proud of.

ANDY BESSETTE: Yeah.

JOAN WOODWARD: Well, it sure is, and all that. Listen, our time has flown by. I cannot thank you both enough--

ANDY BESSETTE: Thank you, Joan.

JOAN WOODWARD: --for an amazing conversation. We broke some news here today. But we--

NATHAN GRUBE: I broke no news. I broke no news. I'm keeping my job.

ANDY BESSETTE: And he didn't kick me either. This was really good.

JOAN WOODWARD: Please come back next year, please.

ANDY BESSETTE: Absolutely.

JOAN WOODWARD: All right.

ANDY BESSETTE: Absolutely.

JOAN WOODWARD: All right.

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Thank you for being with us today. It's really been an amazing pleasure to speak with you both. And we're just so grateful, one, that you're both in the roles that you're in. I can see you absolutely love your jobs, so why would you ever leave? 

But we're grateful and thankful to have you in. The fact that you go out and talk to the players to bring them to Hartford, Connecticut, the week after the Open, you've done a tremendous job with this. So thank you very much for your engagement. And have a great afternoon, everyone. Speak soon.

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