SEI PENNSYLVANIA CLASSIC MEDIA DAY

July 11, 2000

Tim Finchem

Jim Furyk

Mike McCullough

Rocco Mediate

Joe Rotellini

JOE ROTELLINI: Hopefully everybody enjoyed their round of golf this morning. The course is in great shape. Hopefully played a little tough for you so you can see what the TOUR players will be experiencing in September. I'd like to start out by acknowledging some people that are here today, let you know who they and what they are doing for us. The first group is Raymond Kondziela, who is the general manager here at Waynesborough Country Club, his staff, golf professional Al Sutton, superintendent Mitch Trent. It's been a real pleasure working with them, and they are working hard along with us to make it a great event. Other people I'd like to acknowledge, Tony Cook, the past president of the club and currently our volunteer chairman and most recently on the board here as well, also Diana Drake, and also Dick Leaman, Phil Cottone, Steve Smith and your security chair, Jeff Gordon. So I really appreciate all of the work they are doing, which takes me to the point I really want to emphasize with you today. In order for this event to be successful, we really rely on a large number of volunteers, and our volunteer staff our vice chairman are working very hard in this matter, but we still have a need for several hundred more volunteers, particularly marshals and transportation. So if you can help us and spread the word, let people know, I'd really, really appreciate it, because that is very important, the volunteers, to have a successful event. I'd also like to acknowledge our tournament staff, people who work in our office, Chad Burgess, Jackie Allison and Chuck Barton. In the short time that we've been here, less than a year, things have been going very, very well. I've really appreciated the relationships that we've developed, particularly with Waynesborough Country Club; again, Ray and his staff have been easy to work with and the members are stepping up and doing some great things for the tournament. Also, SEI, our sponsor. It's unique and very positive for us to have our sponsor basically right in our backyard at Oaks, Pennsylvania, and their staff has been again very helpful, Mr. West, Mark Samuels, Karen Taylor-Lucia. Again, very good group to work with and they have been very, very supportive. We are progressing very smoothly. Things are going well. We've been selling hospitality, corporate opportunities. There are still some available spots there. So, if you know some companies that have some interest, corporations, we can sell them these opportunities. Ticket sales have been going along for several months, going very well. And I really want to emphasize a big point to you that we anticipate a sellout here in September. The golf purse will be great, the weather will be great. I'm sure we'll have a real strong field. So if you can really let the public know that tickets are going to be limited, and once we sell out, we're sold out -- we just won't have any more to provide. And we really want to create a sense of urgency here, because it really is. So if you can help us with that and educate the people, I'd really, really appreciate that. Lastly, and very importantly is at this time today, we want to announce some of our charities that we're going to be donating charitable dollars to, and there will be some others that we will announce later on as we get closer to the tournament. So I do want to take the time to recognize these groups that we've chosen at this time. First is Paoli Memorial Hospital; NAMI, National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, through their national office and local Chester County office, as well; Abrhamson Family Cancer Institute of Pennsylvania; and the First Tee of Delaware and Chester County. Now, I'd like to thank everybody for coming out today. Hopefully, you enjoyed yourself and really saw hat this is a great area in the community of Philadelphia. Surrounding areas have been supportive and have welcomed us with open arms and we're excited about being here, excited about September. So, thank you for coming.

SAMUEL McCULLOUGH: Ready for a long political speech, talking about vice presidential candidates and all that kind of stuff? I'm not it. I can tell you about having played your golf course today. You find some places to put those pins! Those big guys are going to have a hard time on those greens come September. It was a treat to play it, and I really appreciated playing with Neal Hartman of ComCast. Is Neal still here? That big, long knock, long drive guy, Greg Russell from First Tee. I learned a lot about First Tee today, and I hope that we'll be able to do some work together with that organization. And Mike of WIP Radio couldn't take anymore. He walked off the course after nine holes. I can't wait to listen to him again. But I'll tell you, it's great to welcome the PGA back to Pennsylvania, on behalf of the governor, we are really delighted. Tony and I were arguing whether it was 19 years ago or 20 years ago the last PGA TOUR event was held in Pennsylvania; this is a great spot for competitive golf. We do have lots of tournaments here. We just completed the 2000 U.S. Senior Open at Saucon Valley; we had the BUY.COM TOUR that's been around Lehigh Valley, and at Hershey, just completed a tournament at Hershey. And we had the First Union Betsy King Classic, which is now, I guess, in it's four fourth or fifth year, which I had fun kind of putting together and starting, and that's now doing well. But I want to tell you the business of golf is very important to Pennsylvania. It's a significant role and plays a significant role in the tourism industry in Pennsylvania. Tourism is not just hotels and rental cars and all that kind of stuff. It has a far-reaching effect on the economy of Pennsylvania. It's a $27 billion industry in Pennsylvania with about 465,000 Pennsylvanians working on tourism in the state, and golf plays a very major role in that. We've got some 500 public golf courses in this state, I think that's probably correct -- I haven't counted the number of private courses, but as you know, with Waynesborough and lots of the courses are that are private courses that are located here in the southeastern part of the state, names that you all know and certainly the same in the western part of the state, we've got a lot of great golf in this commonwealth and a lot of great places to play. And I think First Tee is going to play an important role for golf in Pennsylvania, and really looking forward to seeing what Greg can do with that, having just started probably six or seven months ago. So anyway, golf plays a very important part of the tourism activity of Pennsylvania, and I would invite all of the golf fans to who come here to this state to look at what else happens around Pennsylvania, the historic areas of Philadelphia and Gettysburg. You can ride up to Mt. Washington on the incline and look at skyline of Pittsburgh, or you can have fun shopping in Pennsylvania's outlets and malls tax-free. Those of you who don't live in Pennsylvania, we don't have a sales tax on golf shirts, golf shoes, any clothing. So come shop tax-free in Pennsylvania. The SEI Pennsylvania Classic is good for golf, good for Pennsylvania and I can't wait for September to get this thing started. Thank you very much.

CARMEN ROMEO: Thank you so much. Did you say you were going to eliminate the sales tax in Pennsylvania? Oh, okay. Great. Well, I want to thank you all for coming here today. I want to thank Commissioner Tim Finchem and his staff for selecting Pennsylvania for a TOUR stop, and specifically this country club, which is my country club, and for all the work that Samuel McCullough has done to bring it back to Pennsylvania. I'm here pinch-hitting for Al West, and I can't really replace him so much as I'd like to, but he is out on his back literally in his bedroom. He was in the middle of a meeting this morning at SEI and had to excuse himself and go home. So he would be here today if he could, but he's not; so I'm sort of his replacement. And this tournament literally is in his backyard. And when we were given the opportunity to participate in this wonderful event that took us literally a second or two to say, yeah, we're in this game, we think it's a great event for Philadelphia, for Philadelphia golf, which has a lot of tradition in here, after 20 years, it's been too long for SEI, for Philadelphia to be sort of involved in the PGA TOUR. So we're happy to be part of it. For those of you who don't know much about SEI Investments, we're located in Oaks, Pennsylvania, which is just up the road here on 422. We're an investment services company with over 1,600 employees and over 4,000 clients that service primarily high net worth individuals and institutional funds. It's great for them, the notoriety that we give to our employees for this kind of an event; the notoriety and the feeling of partnership that we give with your clients as part of this event; it's really one of the reasons why we did this event, our way to pay back something to the community of Philadelphia area. So with that, we couldn't be more happy to be part of this event. So I hope you all had a great time playing golf here today. This course does play tough, and it can get real, real tough, right, Al? And it will get tougher in September, I'm sure it will. So with that, again, I say thank you, welcome to Waynesborough Country Club. It will be a great event in September. Thank you.

JIM FURYK: I consider Pennsylvania my home and that's where I grew up and when I consider going back home, that's where I'm talking about. So, you know I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to have a lot of family a lot of friends there, and it will be an exciting week. It will be a hectic week, also, but I'm looking forward to it. Very excited about it. They have not since a major event has come to the area so I'm looking forward to it and I think that there's been a lot of support in the area, and when I'm home, I definitely hear a lot of talk about the event.

ROCCO MEDIATE: I've been on TOUR for 16 years now, and finally after all this time, we have a tournament coming to Pennsylvania, the SEI Pennsylvania Classic in September. September in Pennsylvania is this the best time to have a golf tournament. All of the players will be asking how it is. I said: "Come on, they are going to make it perfect." You just can't say enough about it. I can't wait to be there. I know it will be a tremendous turnout. We're all looking forward to it.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Thank you very much, Ana, and I thank all of you for coming out and being with us today. It would seem to me appropriate that the commissioner ought to be able to play a little bit. I always come to these things and everybody is just playing or they are going to play, but I hope you enjoyed being out there on the golf course. We understand it's tremendous, and the players are looking forward to it. We are delighted to bring the PGA TOUR back to Pennsylvania after, based on Jim's comment, either 19, 20 or 21 years, but I must tell you, my staff and my briefing documents said 20 years and they are always right; so it's got to be 20 years since the IVB in 1980, but we'll check that. Let me make a few comments about the PGA TOUR and this tournament, but I first of all would like to deeply thank the governor and Samuel McCullough for their efforts to work with us to structure the concept of the Pennsylvania Classic, to create a PGA TOUR week that will help us reach golf fans in two major sporting markets in this country, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. We think it's a great concept, and it would not have happened without the governor's support and assistance, and Sam has done all the work for the governor. So Sam, we appreciate that. Carmen, the people at SEI have just been tremendous in their enthusiasm about what can happen here in Philadelphia with this event. And Carmen was the first guy, and he took the idea and worked with us to develop the concept with SEI. And obviously, in this business, you cannot reach the fans without sponsorship and volunteers, and SEI stepping forward to utilize this tournament to build their brand was a major key step in us being able to be here today and we thank, not only Carmen, but everybody, Al, at SEI as well. The original idea of trying to get Pennsylvania back on the PGA TOUR schedule belongs to Arnold. Arnold, when I first became commissioner, started a tap dance on me about, "it's time to get the PGA TOUR back to Philadelphia and perhaps Pittsburgh, it's been too long." And we're just really pleased that we can rotate this event between two great golf courses here at Waynesborough and over at Laurel Valley in Pittsburgh, and we look forward to Arnold's being involved in the event, and as sort of an unofficial host representing Pennsylvania. I think you saw the enthusiasm from Rocco and Jim Furyk, and I think that enthusiasm about coming back to this state and playing is reflected by the attitudes of all of our players. We play 48 TOUR, Official Money events in the course of the year. Usually, when you play at a private club, some of the members want to give up their club for what happens to be a key week in the season. A lot of members don't. But the enthusiasm amongst membership here at Waynesborough has been really, really something to see when you have, I guess, over 200 members who have said, "I will volunteer to work in the tournament." That is really great to see that kind of support, and not only the volunteer assistance from the members, but the fact that the club was willing to work with our staff to rebuild 12 tees, to renovate and make the practice area something that will work for a PGA TOUR event is also a testament to their enthusiasm, and we really appreciate what's going to happen here because of that this fall. I might finally say with respect to the tournament on the charity side, you know PGA TOUR events, going back over the decades, have now generated over $525 million. Leaving dollars behind in the community where we play has become part of the culture of this sport. And we'd like to think it's one of the unique things about the sport that stands out amongst fans and separates us perhaps a little bit from other sports. We'd like to say that if you're in the other sports, and you want to raise money for charity, you hold a golf tournament, which has happened. But I'm pleased that we announced some of the charitable recipients today. I'm particularly pleased that First Tee is among those, and Greg Russell who is running the First Tee Program here in this area is with us. Where is Greg? Just want to point out Greg Russell, and he's here today, if any of you all have questions about the First Tee and what the First Tee can do here locally. The First Tee is two and a half years old. It will reach it's first goal of getting the 100 facilities in production in the first three years. And this fall, at the Golf 20-20 Conference at the World Golf Village down in Florida, we'll be announcing the long-term plan for First Tee, which we think can have an impact on the growth of the game and bringing golf to kids who historically have not had access to it as well, in the decades to come. A few comments about the PGA TOUR generally and golf in general. I don't have to tell you all who cover sports that golf is doing very, very well. I just saw yet another survey today, the Shelton Survey that ESPN runs that indicated golf, again, for the third consecutive year is the fastest growing sport in terms of the creation of fans. When you have that kind of growth in the growing demographic we have of reaching younger people, and increasingly, women, some of which is related to the overall hype that the game is getting; a lot has to do with the attraction of our great young players, Tiger, Justin and Ernie and many, many others. We are what generally is referred to, I guess, in your business as "on a roll," and it looks like it's going to continue. The two things that we have to concentrate on in the short term are, we have to figure out how to best utilize the Internet in conjunction with television to bring our sport to our fans, and in the long term, we have to figure out how we can get the game from a participation standpoint to enough people where it can be a mass sport from a participation standpoint, and that's why programs like First Tee are so important, even though The First Tee's primary mission is to bring the ability to play to kids because it's important in their lives. We had a great year this year, in addition to the last three; so many great performances. We've had six players who have won more than once. We now have over 20 players who have earned over $1 million. We have more and more international players coming to play here on a regular basis, virtually every great player around the World comes and becomes a member, or, in the case of a Colin Montgomerie, may not be a member, but plays an awful lot here; so that today we have 42 of the Top 50 players of the world as members of our TOUR, and that strengthens us further because the audiences in Japan and Australia and South Africa, and now South America, want to watch PGA TOUR golf in the United States, which strengthens our international television distribution and strengthens everything else we do. So we look forward to the rest of the year with more individual performances, of course long-term, watching whether Tiger can challenge Jack Nicklaus's record, as we look forward this fall to The Presidents Cup, which we know is going to be extremely interesting, given the International Team's victory a couple years ago. And we couldn't be more delighted with the progress that we're making. Back to the SEI Pennsylvania Classic for a second. I would just summarize all this by saying that there are so many reasons why this can and should and in our judgment will be a first-rate event on the PGA TOUR. And let me just tick them off for you: We have a great sponsor; we have two great golf courses to play; we are going to play in two of the best sports markets in America, in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; we are playing in a time of the year where the golf courses will be superb, No. 1; and also at a time of the year where it's very important to a lot of different categories of our players to play, and play well. Because when you get into September, players at the very top are focused on Player of the Year honors, they are focused on the Vardon Trophy, Byron Nelson Award; they are focused on Arnold Palmer Award, winning for Money Leader, and all of those things. They are also focused on the Top-30, because it provides eligibility to the TOUR Championship and other tournaments next year, the Top-70, which are eligible for the Invitational tournaments and of course in that 110, 120 range, trying to make that 125 and trying to maintain their position at 125. So when you add all of those things up, this can and should be in our judgment a first-rate tournament going forward. And typically, it takes about five years for a tournament on our TOUR to mature. When I say "mature," become financially stable; start to generate significant revenues for charity; attract more and more of a field as the players learn from each other more about the quality of the golf course. The two main reasons player play in a tournament in their schedule is quality of the golf course and the prize money, and in both of those things, we're going to have a very, very solid start, and I think we can beat that five-year ramp-up period to get to the point to where we are well established here in Pennsylvania. Thanks very much for being here today. Thanks for your support. I'll be happy to answer any questions after I finish, and then I'll be around for a few minutes afterwards.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, the Olympics is an atypical situation for September, simply because it's in Australia. Usually, the Olympics are in late August. So we can't let an off-type event like the Olympics start to drive our scheduling. As far as the general position of being in the fall, given football and other sports, historically, I'd say we've come reasonably far in terms of building our audience in the fall. We are no longer as a sport from a television audience standpoint or ticket sales, corporate hospitality or any of that, afraid of any particular time of the year, whether it's NCAA basketball, the NBA, which we beat in audience share a number of times this year, Major League baseball in the summer or now, even the NFL in the fall. Although, frankly, from a television standpoint it is a little bit more difficult when you've got college football on Saturday, NFL on Sunday. On the other hand, we have seen increasing signs that our fall schedule is getting stronger, and if you recall three or four years ago, we focused a lot of attention or our West Coast Swing and we have really strengthened the West Coast Swing the first eight weeks of year. We now intend to do the same thing with the fall. We think if you look at our schedule after 2000 in terms of where we're going to play, the kind of sponsorship levels that we have, the purse levels, we're going to have players playing more in the fall; we're going to have good fields, and we're going to see increasing impact in terms of audience penetration. So we're real bullish on playing in the fall.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: I don't think it's been done with a regular TOUR event, but we've been doing it for the last dozen years with THE TOUR Championship, and in the last playing three or four years, we've basically played Atlanta and Huston. And I can tell you, you are echoing the sentiments that our staff echoed when we got into that with THE TOUR Championship. You know, leave for a year and it's going to be harder to do it coming back; and we've found out the opposite: The volunteers are fresh, everything can be done on a 24-month cycle, the public is looking forward to it, and it's worked quite well. So we think that's what will happen here.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: We don't have that many first-year events to really have a good feel. We do know that the golf course is an important piece of a player's scheduling, and some players will wait, hear what their comrades have to say or their peers have to say about what they thought of the golf course. Others will jump in there and play it the first year. You will see some players floating in here to try the play the golf course; find Carmen and another member to take them out and try it. But I think that given the reputation of the course, and given the commentary we'll have from Arnold and other players, we'll have a good field. What we are facing in the sport and we've been focused on the last four years is really to compete for our players against other interests. If a player is going to play 20 times, that doesn't mean he's only playing golf 20 weeks. He's doing something on a golf course, improving his living. So to compete effectively, you have to raise prize money to the point where you can compete. We've done a good job of doing that and we have to get good, solid golf tournaments with good exposure and good venues to play on. And different events are going to meet this criteria. So I think we are going to have a very solid field here and in the years to come, and I think we're going to be off to a good start in September.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: You know, I can speculate. I think that, you know, the PGA TOUR left Pennsylvania, and that was about the time of the beginning of The SENIOR TOUR, and by the mid-80s or late 80s, say, six or seven years after IVB, we had a proliferation of SENIOR TOUR events, both in Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh. That doesn't mean you can't do both in an awful lot of markets. That was probably a factor. Just watching, we went for about ten years where we really didn't move out of any tournaments. And now in the last five, we have tried to prioritize, trying to reach the major markets in this country and we've left some smaller markets. So we really are excited about being in Philadelphia/Pittsburgh, because obviously, what we're dealing with in terms of the number of fans we are going to be reaching.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: Well, we don't like to get in the position of favoring one week over another, because all of our tournaments are partners and all of our sponsors are our sponsors. We do two things: One is we make information available to players which will impact their schedules, and we do that very aggressively. And two, if a particular week is showing signs of having a weak field, then we will go to players and encourage them to play. Now in this particular case, making them aware of what is happening here is going to have a big impact in terms of purse, golf course, local support, potential future in Pennsylvania and all of those things. Well, they do for membership purposes and retirement plan purposes, they have to play 15 events. Obviously, most of them play -- the average number for top 50 is now up to 26. The Top 10, 30, 50, 100 players in any one of those categories, we have increased the number of their tournaments each of the last four years in a row and we anticipate that to continue to increase. We also have more players who are moving their schedules around a little bit because of some of the details of some of our retirement plans, in which you have to vest, so there is an incentive to play more tournaments. Clearly, Tiger, does a bit of that; each year he's playing one or two different tournaments. Davis Love is focused on playing at least every tournament at least once in four years. That's something -- a lot of the top players have adopted that philosophy. That's a good philosophy to have. Payne Stewart was very much committed to playing in every tournament on the TOUR. That kind of philosophy can hurt you competitively, because some golf courses just don't set up for a certain player's game, but we see more and more players doing that. And so I think the combination of all those things have resulted in strengthening the field, and like I say, we're going to be announcing soon some additional enhancements for the entire Fall Swing, which will additionally benefit drawing more players to focus on playing in the fall.

COMMISSIONER FINCHEM: That's an option we have. Right now, we are focused on Waynesborough and Laurel Valley. Our intention is to continue to play there for a while. But it's the Pennsylvania Classic; so we want to maintain our flexibility. If it makes sense to play someplace else one year to make sure the tournament is accessible to everybody, we'll consider that. But right now, in our immediate future, we'll focus on Waynesborough.

JOE ROTELLINI: I would like to thank everybody for coming. A really special thank you to the Commissioner and Secretary for taking time out of their busy schedules to be with us today, and also to Ana for her hard work. Thank you all for coming, and again, I hope you had a great time. Looking forwards to seeing you in September.