Travelers Championship: Andy Bessette, Executive VP for Travelers

Good to see you too.

Yeah, you know, Tim, the tournament's so great for our community, so great for charity. The ethos of Travelers, the company is all about charity and non-profits and being supportive, and we have over 22 million dollars a year to different organizations. And so the fit is so perfect between the two of us as to why we're here and what we do. And you know, over the last two years, OK, to answer that question: weird, weird, weird. Right. So we came out of 2019, we had great player fields, we had a great champion, a lot of moving parts and pieces. And then all of a sudden in March of 2020, everything goes into lockdown. And our last trip out just to another tournament was Genesis out on the West Coast, and we had a lot of great conversations with guys. Well, then the whole thing shut down right in April and May of 2020. And so Nathan and I are figuring out where we're going to have a tournament, not have a tournament. And finally the third tournament back in after the break. Right. And it was, you know what, it was really weird last year. Getting that, having no fans here was so depressing. I mean, it was really disappointing. It was like this really is just a bunch of really good people playing golf. And I imagine you were one of the what? Thirty eight? Well, I think Nathan's here at the end of it. Nathan and I are out there fighting each other, thinking about like who else can we find to high five? And you know, but the great part was we had a great field last year. We lost some of the top players to exposure to COVID, but we made it through it. We had a great tournament. We gave one point six million to charity, last or over one hundred and fifteen charities and non-profits. So it was a great, great year given what we were dealt this year.

I'll tell you that Nathan and I, I think we worked harder than we worked in 2007 when we first took over, because neither of us kind of knew what we were doing. And your job was to rescue those. We were right on the verge of oblivion. We were gone. The tour had written us off the tournament schedule, off the tour schedule. And so when 84 Lumber went out, they said, hey, we have a tournament for you a year before we put it together. But we were still learning. And so, you know, in '07 we get so many pivots to make sure that it was a great tournament for the first one. Well, this year since January, think of how many differences to COVID protocol that we, while seeing Nathan, I lived through every one of those. And every time one of those things changed, we had a different model. And I can't tell you how many models were ready to implement. And then the fan attendance went from zero to twenty three to four to five to ten to seventy five hundred to ten. So and this morning, I'll tell you, I just end the story. I was out there watching Adam Scott tee off. I was looking right at Bryson and Patrick Reed tee off and Lanto Griffin and great guys. I mean, they're just really good. We have great relationships with them. And all these people were walking down the fairway watching, and I'm like, wow, we're back. This is great. The people are here. I love our fans. Our fans are great. They know golf. And I was so excited to see them all back. And it's good to see. Hey, Patrick Reed, Lanto Griffin are up on the leaderboard earlier about two or three under. They're great. Streelman playing great. I mean, these guys are so good. I'm telling you, you know, I've talked to every one of them this week and they're so focused. They are focused and ready to go. So I think we're going to see some fantastic golf over the next four days. And whether fans like golf or not, the weather is going to be great. Come out, have a great time with your family. Yes.

I have — well, no one in the camp is critically important, right? Not only in the tournament but as a company. And we do a lot of things to support camp. We have hundreds of our employees who volunteer up there between sessions in the summer. And so it's really important, really important organization to us. But I got a call from a good friend of mine who you all guys know at 61 at Fox. And I said, 'Hey, you hear there's a fire?' And I said, 'No, really.' And so no sooner they hung up, I'm like, call Jimmy. Jimmy, there's a fire at camp. And he goes, 'Wait a minute, they just told me. How do you know?' I said, 'I have no people in high places.' And so, and so that's how it happened. And it was so devastating that weekend. Alan Schnitzer, our Chairman and CEO, and I talked most of the weekend. And by Monday morning, we were ready to announce that we were going to do a million dollar match. Right. If camp could raise a million, we pay a million. And that we announced that Monday morning. By Friday morning, I guess that's technically four days, they had surpassed the million dollars. It's amazing. And so we went, we kicked it Friday, and I think we ended up at two, three, four, whatever. And many others jumped in. And I think the camp raised probably close to four million. And the camp's going to get rebuilt. The kids will be back next summer. And we're excited. And that just rebuilt, rebuilt bigger and better. Now a chance to work in ways that they didn't before. We could talk for another fifteen minutes. I'm sorry.