Looking Back: 2017 Presidents Cup
By Hank Gola
Excitement-wise, it wasn’t much: the United States nearly clinched the Presidents Cup before any of the singles matches teed off, continuing its dominance of the series against the International Team. Exciting or not, the PGA Tour considers its stop at Liberty National to be a huge success.
“It couldn’t have gone better,” said Matt Kamienski, the event’s Executive Tournament Director. “Overall, the weather, how everything worked ran, it was a great week and I think we accomplished our goals and objectives and vision we had for making it the global week of golf. Just wish the competition had been better. Not much you can do about that.”
Related: The Road to the Majors: 2017 Presidents Cup
If the matches didn’t create much of a buzz, Kamineski said the presence of the last four U.S. presidents did, with George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama at the opening ceremony, the first time three chief executives were together at the biennial event; Donald Trump was at the post-match presentation, where he dedicated the trophy to those affected by the recent hurricanes. It was the first time a sitting president took part in the ceremonies.
“What other sport -- or event, for that matter, other than an inauguration or a funeral, do you get three Presidents in one place?” Kamienski asked. “All there, wanting to be there, because of the game of golf, because of their affinity for the game of golf, because of their affinity for the Presidents Cup and the PGA Tour. They came out to support that. It was huge for the event.”
He also hailed the New York-New Jersey area as the perfect location to deliver on the PGA Tour’s vision to make the event bigger than just a golf event.
“When we looked at it, we were taking our most global event to arguably the most global market in New York and New Jersey,” Kamienski said. “So how do we use the Presidents Cup to elevate not only the PGA Tour and its supporting brands but elevate the game of golf? We had a lot of goals going into it, to take advantage of all the iconic locations, the unique opportunities between Manhattan, Ellis Island, and the World Trade Center. Liberty National is a unique venue and we couldn’t have been more pleased with it.”
The week kicked off with Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player as honorary captains of the Junior Presidents Cup. It continued with the World Golf Hall of Fame inductions Tuesday night with 35 Hall of Famers in attendance. “Looking at Liberty National, we knew we could only put 25,000 people out there, so how do we connect it to New York City and bring it to the masses, so to speak?” Kamienski added. “We did our Presidents Cup fan experience at the base of the World Trade Center at the Oculus where 469,000 people went through every single day and had the opportunity to see, touch, and feel golf.”
The event also took advantage of New York as a media market on all platforms, deciding against a traditional opening ceremony in favor of a “media takeover” at 30 Rock, where the teams were presented on “The Today Show.” According to Kamienski, that generated 300 million media impressions compared to 2.1 million media impressions at the last U.S. Presidents Cup at Muirfield Village in Ohio and 3.1 million at last year’s Ryder Cup at Hazeltine.
“We took the guys to Twitter and Facebook. We utilized the power of the media market in New York to hopefully reach a different fan base than what we saw at the golf course,” he said.
Future U.S. venues are set through 2025 when Harding Park in San Francisco returns as host. Kamienski can foresee the same for Liberty. “It showed we can take golf and make a big splash in that market. It’s not easy to with any event. It’s such a hard place to cut through the clutter, there’s just so much going on all the time. People knew we were there.”