The Wire: Golf's Only Daily Transaction Newsletter

Editor's Note: Late last May, Don Padgett II was named as president of Pinehurst Resort, which will host the 2005 U.S. Open. He left his position as general manager of Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio to move to Pinehurst both ClubCorp-managed properties. After getting his feet wet on his new job, Padgett sat down and spoke with Golf Press Association publisher Alex Miceli. Following is their conversation, which covered the upcoming U.S. Open, changes being made at the resort and what the future holds.

Q.: It was July 1 when you took over at Pinehurst. Outside of the normal moving issues that everybody has, how did you find the resort when you got here and how do you feel now?

DON PADGETT: I think when I got here I think the resort was, from the employee standpoint, in a state of question, I guess for lack of a better word. [Former Pinehurst president] Pat [Corso] had been here for so long. They had gone almost six months without a replacement.

I think as each day went by the anxiety level probably got a little bit higher for not only the senior staff, but just the people in general and a lot of these people have been here a long time, it's their livelihood.

So who is the new person going to be? Are they going to be somebody that we have to totally change what we do? What's the direction? And so I think it was kind of coming into a situation where the minute I got here there was a big breath of air that went out of everybody that was in a good way. They somewhat felt like they had a known commodity, certainly with my dad being here for 17 years. My long-term friendship with Pat was important, along with my knowledge of Pinehurst. Even though I sat in this chair as the president of Pinehurst, I have golf in my heart.

So I think that is was what I found. And now what I'm trying to do is to let them know basically that I care about the resort and the direction that it goes in. I think we're back to what I would say is more of a golf-focused tract. I think for awhile there were a lot of issues like the village and [courses Nos.] 9 and 10 and those types of issues, which I don't think were bad initiatives at the time, but with 9-11 and the economy, they just became undoable. So I think that our focus now is certainly, in the immediate future, the 2005 Open, but also bringing the business levels of the resort back to where they were prior to 2000, which, I think, everybody is struggling with a little bit, but it's on our things to do list.

We have got the [U.S.] Amateur in 2008. And hopefully to maintain those types of relationships and continue to be golf driven and be a big part of a positive institution for the Pinehurst community and the Moore County area. So that's kind of where I found it. I think that's where we're going right now. Those sound pretty simplistic, but they're fairly large in nature.

When you're hosting a U.S. Open and things of that magnitude, it's easy to say that, but I think you have been around enough of them to know that's a pretty large undertaking.

Q.: So about the village and Nos. 9 and 10, obviously Nos. 9 and 10 are way off the radar screen.

PADGETT: Well, for the present time. We still own the land for 9. But it certainly isn't anything that we here at Pinehurst or certainly our counterparts in Dallas have on the radar screen. There are no topics of formal conversation or casual conversation about any of that. So a project of that magnitude is at least a couple years in the planning before you really get under way and we haven't even talked about it in a casual manner.

So when you say foreseeable future, it's just not on the radar screen now at all. We really have plenty of golf in the eight golf courses we have. So we really don't need more golf. Five, 10 years down the road, who knows. The area is growing greatly, so I don't think it will -- I think at some day it might come to pass, but not in the near future.

Q.: At the same time, golf course architect Rees Jones came in and renovated did No. 7?

PADGETT: Well, Rees came in and did a major renovation to 7 and then Tom Fazio has done a major renovation on 6.

Q.: If you could just talk generally about the necessity for renovation versus building new courses, and, secondly, about what you're trying to do with 6?

PADGETT: Well, I think on 7 Rees would tell you that some of the greens when they were built were kind of on the borderline in the degree of slope that you would want to have. Then, over a period of time, the way they actually did settle, it was a little bit past what you would like to have.

For the average golfer, the greens were very, very difficult to play. And they had more than the 2 percent slope in a lot of areas. So even though the greens were quite large, the pinable space and cupable space wasn't very big at all. And I think it slowed play down, it caused a lot of frustration. I think he had some holes that he built that, in hindsight, he thought he could do a better job of. So we went back in and did 7 from a playability standpoint. And I have only played the front nine at 7, I haven't seen the back.

But the focus really has been with the green complexes and particularly the slope of the greens. We had a lot of holes where you had uphill shots into the green and you had greens that faced you. Because they tilted, you could see the green, but once you got there the slope on it was almost ... sometimes if you got any kind of speed on them they were almost not puttable. So I think that was the major part of 7. They did some bunker work and did some cosmetics, but I think basically the playability of the greens was the major issue.

No. 6 is a whole other story. Six was built by Diamondhead — I think I'm fairly accurate in saying that George Fazio was the lead architect with Tom being the junior partner and just kind of getting his feet wet. And Diamondhead said to George they wanted to build the golf course and they were going to spend $800,000. Now Tom has kind of conveyed to me and, like I say, this is second or third hand, so it may not be exactly accurate, that they built it for $800,000. And George said to Tom, "We'll start the project and they will figure out that they can't get it done for that." Well, the fact of the matter is they said $800,000 is it, they built a golf course, they routed it, there were a lot of things about No. 6 that were left undone. A lot of the sub-structure of the golf course wasn't right.

I think Brad Kocher [VP. of Grounds and Golf Course Management] feels like now, after almost 15 years of tinkering with it, we have got 6 to where it is truly a Fazio quality golf course. And I think it's something that he and his uncle George would both be proud of. I think it's what they kind of intended to get done initially and we have now fulfilled that. Tom came in and took a look at it. Tom Marzolf, who is one of his senior designers who worked quite a bit on it with us, feels that we have taken the golf course to a different level to where we are going to redate it 2005. It's still going to pay tribute to his uncle's because it is a similar routing. It will say George and Tom Fazio, but it will have 2005 date on it. And I think when you play it, if you've ever played the old No. 6 golf course, there were four or five holes on there that were just not good golf holes.

I liken No. 6 to No. 7 because you do have a housing component, but I don't think that the housing components where we're doing some landscaping, they're not as obvious as they were before. And the four or five holes, some of it was turf quality, drainage issues, things like that. We rectified all that.

We have done a lot of the sand and wire grass features that you see on No. 2 and you see on No. 8. We have added those into it, to bring it more into the [Donald] Ross flavor and more toward 8 and 4. I guess to me it's what you would consider or think a Pinehurst golf course would look like. I think we're there. I'm really excited. It's going to be a great golf course.

Q.: And it opens when?

PADGETT: Well, it will open probably to membership for limited play in the late February time frame to kind of let them have the first crack at it. And then we'll open it officially to guess play probably early March.

Q.: When you came to Pinehurst, even though you had obviously a lot of background from your dad and being involved with ClubCorp, Firestone and Pinehurst are obviously, I would think, two different animals.

PADGETT: They are and they aren't. The one thing that I guess probably most people wouldn't realize is that Firestone was put into what ClubCorp had referred to over the years as their resort group about seven years ago. And so all the meetings involving the numbers and operations and the dealings of Pinehurst, I've sat in for seven years. Because Firestone is by far the biggest club property they have, but we also had a rooming component, we also hosted the NEC Invitational. So I was very familiar with what the, let's just say the 5,000-foot view of Pinehurst was. I worked with Pat on a lot of issues. I was director of golf for that group, so I was not as unfamiliar as people might think.

The other thing is that Firestone basically functioned a lot like Pine Valley would and Caves Valley, where the majority of your people and property are guests. So Firestone's very similar in that we were used to taking care of guests. The culture of the two are not dissimilar in the fact that Firestone has always ranked extremely high in the quality and satisfaction ratings, taking care of people that we didn't particularly know. Now we had members, but the majority of them we didn't. So I think there was a certain commonality there that you, that most people would say well, they're like night and day. They're not.

The other side is that I was having an inside view of Pinehurst for a lot longer time than what people might perceive. So I really had a leg up on whoever would have come here. I would have to tell you that the way I did come here was kind of interesting because I didn't formally apply for the job, it was obvious that after a period of time they were having a hard time getting the right guy. I was very happy at Firestone. I had been there, it was my 25th season. And I mentioned to my boss, Rich Beckert at the time, who was over the whole resort group. I said, "Rich, it seems like you're struggling with that" and I said, "I don't know what you guys would feel about it, but I would go to Pinehurst, if you think that would be something that Bob, Junior and your brother John, who is the president of the company would want to consider." I said, "I think I can do the job and I would consider going."

That was probably the latter part of May. And I got a call back from Rich about three days later saying, "We need to meet in Dallas" and I said, "Who are we going to meet with?" And he said, "Bob and John and you and I." And basically the interview was, are you sure you want to do this? And I said, "Yeah, I'm sure I do." I would be very prideful to be able to be the president of Pinehurst, be a golf guy going from Firestone, which is a great institution, to this, which is probably in my mind the No. 1 golf institution in the country, it doesn't get any better than that. So I feel very blessed that that's how it took place.

So me coming here isn't as odd as what people might think. Is it a change in the discipline? To some degree, but it's a golf-driven property. I certainly understand the culture of golf, I've been in it all my life. I think when you have a property that's this big, you don't run it by yourself. And so you build a team that has talents in the various disciplines that you need to have it all come together. And so that's really what I've done. In that Scott Brewton, who is executive vice president and general manager, really is the hotel piece and the food and beverage piece. Dick Higginbotham is a CFO who I've worked with as a regional at Firestone for six years. So I am very confident in Dick. Beth Kocher has been here almost from day one. So her intellectual capital is invaluable. And with Brad, her husband being the superintendent, you know, the team I'm all familiar with, I've known these people for 20 some years. So I guess that at the end of the day the community, ClubCorp and certainly I think now the employees feel good about me being here. The welcome has been extremely warm. And I think that they feel like I'm the right guy for the job.

Q.: Is there anything specific that you bring from Firestone that you've tried to bring to Pinehurst?

PADGETT: Well, I think that we do so many of the same things that I don't think it's specific to Firestone or specific to Pinehurst, but I think what I do bring is certainly as strong a commitment for us to stay at the very top level of golf in the world. And when you conduct United States Open Championships more than once, you have the Amateur coming up, I think you put yourself in what I call rarified air. And my focus is for us to stay there, to earn and keep that reputation and enhance it. But I don't think when you look at the two properties, the reason that I'm sitting in the chair and probably a likely good candidate for this job is that there are a lot of similarities there. So I don't think that, they're both golf driven. But to say, is there any one thing that I brought from Firestone to Pinehurst specific, I don't think that there's anything that comes to mind in that regard.

Q.: The Pinehurst brand is, no offense to Firestone, but it's probably a more marketable and a larger brand.

PADGETT: I don't think there's any question about that. I look at Firestone as an American golf institution. I look at Pinehurst as an international golf institution. So I think the scope of and the knowledge of people of Pinehurst is certainly worldwide. So I think when you talk about brand, there's no doubt that as far as being well known, I would think just about all the people in the golf community would know Firestone. There's a lot of people outside even the golf community that would have heard of Pinehurst and link it with golf. So, yeah, I think it's a bigger stage, just from the fact that you're operating national championships and been here a hundred years. There's a lot more than been written about Pinehurst specific. You know, Firestone's a private club, so there's certainly, other than our private club magazines and various articles that have been written, that we have not made a specific effort to build a brand. And I think certainly Pinehurst has directly and indirectly been brand building from the day they opened. So, yeah, I think that's accurate, to say that.

Q.: In '99 one of the focuses was the whole issue between this resort and the name Pinehurst and the town and the other courses around here and the use of the name. That's pretty much over, correct?

PADGETT: That's a moot point. It doesn't even come up. I don't think there's any animosity that I'm aware of. I think that it's part of the past. I can tell you I haven't had a conversation with anybody about it since I've been here.

Q.: How much more difficult is it to run or be in charge of a property that's having a U.S. Open versus a property that has an annual PGA Tour event?

PADGETT: Well, I think the difficulty is in the magnitude. But I've been very fortunate in that the Pinehurst championship management is conducting the Open. I think Pinehurst and Pebble Beach are the only two properties that in fact run the Open for the USGA, so with Beth Kocher's group and Reg Jones, they will be, not only marketing and selling the Open, but operating the Open, other than the competition itself, but they're doing that ongoing.

They did the Senior Open at Caves Valley, they're doing the Women's Open at Pine Needles. They did the '99 Open. So we have a group of people that have the discipline that all they think about are operating and running golf tournaments and how they can do it better. So that's been a great luxury and an extreme comfort in coming here.

I was equally blessed at Firestone in that you had volunteer groups that were in their third, fourth generation, because they celebrated their 50th year of consecutive golf in Akron this last year. So in each of those instances I've had great support and like I say, that's certainly been a blessing. So I think the magnitude of this one won't affect me as much because the team's already in place, certainly the state is behind us. The Carolinas and all the business people have supported us extremely well. So I think when you have all that type of synergy, usually things come off pretty well.

Q.: Is there anything that you have to do differently here for this Open that you know of that you didn't have to do for '99?

PADGETT: Well, I think in everybody's mind is security. And we don't know what that's going to be yet. We have not had the USGA and their people assess the site from a security standpoint. And I would have to tell you that I'm, I may or may not even know when that happens because the Pinehurst championship management people will deal with that. I think certainly you will see metal detectors. You might see a little stricter requirement as to like size of bags and things that you can take on property. Barcoding of the tickets, which they did at Shinnecock. They have started that. The number of gates. Do you need more, do you need less, or are you just going to have more walk pass throughs at the same positions? We don't know that yet. But I think without question in every major event, supporting event or whatever we're doing now, whether it's the Republican or Democratic convention or holding the U.S. Open, the first thing that comes to the forefront is what do we do about security? And we don't have those answers yet. But it definitely will change.

Q.: How much across the board, I guess, because you were at Firestone and now here, the 9-11 issues. Where are you, at least from a Pinehurst standpoint, business-wise from where you were pre-9/11?

PADGETT: We're starting to get back to the number of people coming, just barely. It's stronger from what we call the social spend, which would be you and I with our wives coming to play. The business spend is a lot softer. If they do come, the number is usually not as much, the stay not as long, and the spend per person not as great. And that's, I think if you talk to the people in the industry, we're pretty much in the same boat. In our case we're probably doing a little bit better than the norm. I think that our golf courses this year have been probably as good as they have ever been, and obviously with the open coming we think that helps us a little bit. But I think the industry as a whole has taken a hit. It's rebounded to some degree, but will it ever get back to the levels of the late '90s? I don't know as in my business lifetime you'll see that because you're not going to see the stock market probably where it was at. Those are economy-related issues that we can't control. I think that we all are aware of it, we all have our set of issues and we're addressing them. And hopefully we'll find some answers. And if the economy gives us any help, I think we'll be in pretty good shape. We're doing fine, but I think everybody has a tendency to look to what you would say maybe the benchmark years. Will we ever get there or not? I don't know.

Q.: Pinehurst is a destination. You have to want to come here. It's not a place …

PADGETT: Yeah, right, you don't just drop in.

Q.: Right. I think that you've done surveys internally of where your market is, percentage of market within a hundred miles, percentage of market outside of a hundred miles. The fact that there's more social than there is business. Are you having to make adjustments from a Pinehurst standpoint on who are you focusing on now? Do we make some changes or adjustments in our marketing, our procedures to try to bring in people where we maybe have a better chance because of maybe post 9/11?

PADGETT: I think that the biggest thrust that we have right now is that in our summer months we would certainly like to be more family friendly and certainly to be able to appeal to people who want to do other things than just play golf. I think what we're trying to do is broaden our offering and the most obvious and biggest and best example of that is the creation of the spa, where, hopefully, if someone really wanted to play golf and yet maybe their spouse or the rest of their family were not particularly interested in golf, that the spa is available. Our tennis facilities are excellent. We have a beach club that I don't think too many people are aware of. We're starting to develop relationships for sporting clays to be a little bit more well rounded in our offering and particularly the 10 weeks of summer, the idea would be if you've got a couple of your family members that really are avid golfers and maybe you have two that aren't, that you're not the first crossed off the list because there's nothing else for the two who don't play golf to do. So that's where I think we're making some headway in that regard to try to be a little bit more well rounded. We're always going to be golf driven, our heritage is golf, it's what we do the best, we're not going to quit doing that, we just want to supplement that with other a men tease that can be attractive to people who basically aren't golf enthusiasts.

Q.: It's the Pebble Beach dilemma?

PADGETT: Well, yeah, I think so. It's funny, I think that some of the people who have been here a long time say, we're not the mountains, we're not the ocean. But I think that the thing that I would tell you is that we're a lot more than what I felt we were before I came here. I wasn't aware we had the Beach Club and a 200-acre spring fed lake that we stock with bass and catfish and the fishing is excellent. I was not even aware of that before I came here. The Beach Club is very nice. And it's an amenity that certainly families can go and enjoy and I think during the 10 weeks of summer that you have summer vacation, I think that we can do a better job of saying to people, you can bring a family here and really have a pretty good time coming to Pinehurst.

Q.: Listening to you, is it fair to say that during Pat's regime he did X, Y, and Z and in the time you've been here, you've have not made too many changes?

PADGETT: Well, I think that where I'm going back to is probably back to where their focus was in '96, '97, which is back focusing on this property per se. I think that in the two or three years that Pat was here at the end, most of the focus was really on the growth of the village and those issues. I don't think that it was particularly a focus on Pinehurst. And I think he was commissioned to do that. So I think if you say that nothing's changed, it's a subtle change, it's an internal change, but it definitely is a change as to where we're spending our time and where the senior management is focused. And it's really refocused on Pinehurst resort.

Q.: Looking at a 25,000-foot view, 10 years from now, what would you, back in Dallas, want them to say that?

PADGETT: Well, I think that what we would certainly like to do is to maintain our status in golf. I think we would like to continue to have a relationship with the United States Golf Association and certainly the PGA and the PGA Tour. That would allow us to host events that would keep us at the level that we are now, and that I think that if we do a good job of that and then operate and run this property the rest of the time at what people expect of Pinehurst, then I think that the people in Dallas will be extremely satisfied with that. I don't think they expect anything more than that.

Q.: Do you think everybody would be fairly happy with that?

PADGETT: I think that's fair to say. The property is not broken. We certainly are holding our own in the, given the economy. I think you get to a point of excellence. It's always easy to get to the top of the mountain. The hard part is staying there. I think for us certainly, when you put us in the business of conducting Opens and it seems like on a somewhat regular basis, for golf you're kind of at the top of the mountain. And our job is to certainly fulfill that the rest of the times that we're not conducting the championships. But I think that that would be my mission is to keep us at a high level, at that peak.

Q.: Is it imperative for you, for this property to have major championships or PGA Tour and PGA of America events?

PADGETT: I don't know that it's imperative, I think it's part of our heritage that we want to pursue. We have become a great modern day venue for golf. It kind of was in the 1950s venue and then amateur through the North & South kind of carried it.

It started coming back to being a major venue in the early '90s with the Tour Championships and then I think with the success of the '99 Open — which people thought because of the village and the logistics it would be very difficult to host here, but they found out that none of that proved to be true. In fact, it was the opposite. It was a pretty delightful event. In fact I think a lot of people would say that the '99 Open from a logistical point, might have been the best golf tournament ever held at that time. Bethpage proved to be a little bit bigger, but Pinehurst now, I would think, would be considered one of the very top venues for high level golf in the world. And I think that's been a relatively new — and I say new, meaning the last 10 years — kind of revelation, that, 'Wow, it doesn't have any drawback, they're all positives.' So when they conducted the '99 Open and it all ran so seamlessly, they went, 'Wow, this is pretty neat.' And that's why it came back so quick.

They all agreed at the USGA that this is one place we know we can go that everybody is going to like it. The press liked it, the USGA liked it, the fans liked it, the players liked it, very rarely do you ever get a golf tournament where when you are all done with it, and particularly an Open, you say, 'Well, if we could have had this or we could have had ... ' there weren't, there wasn't a list like that. That's pretty unique. So we're hoping basically to recreate perfection in 2005.

Q.: You're on what would be the unofficial rota list for the U.S. Open — you, Bethpage, Pebble Beach.

PADGETT: Right.

Q.: Would you be comfortable with that and not seeing another PGA Tour event or PGA of America event?

PADGETT: Yes. I think that the United States Open arguably is the top golf tournament in the world. The folks in Europe might give you a different opinion, but if we were in the business of hosting United States Golf Association events on a somewhat regular basis, and then having our North & South events on an annual basis, I feel like that we're positioned in the golf world where Pinehurst should be.