The Business Behind Golf’s Wildest Tournament | Jim Fish on the WM Open

Sometimes I would go out on the back of the truck and throw trash. I went out one time when it was 12 below zero was the temperature when we took off.

I contracted what's called coccidioidomycosis. The treatment is pretty difficult. I had 200 spinal taps right kind of at the back of the neck there over a period of two years. If I look back on it, boy, two out of four people being treated for that not making it out the other side was a bit of an eye opener.

Well, I get asked that question a lot, let me tell you. I think there's a number of things that go into why it's turned into what it is. It really has become kind of a bucket list thing. You see bachelor parties out there and I got a note from some kids at Harvard this week saying, 'Hey, could you get us tickets? My buddy's getting married.' Why it's become this. I mean, you could probably give credit to certainly the Thunderbirds have been the host of this for I don't know 85 years or something and they have a big role in it. I do think our sponsorship has really changed this event. It is I think the biggest show out there on grass and whether it's the charity, we give a huge amount to charity and that matters to people. It's the sustainability message which partners up really well with us. I mean, we're a waste and recycling company and so the sustainability message matters. I think the demographic, look, Phoenix is a young city and you get some people kind of say this on Saturday feels a little bit more like a fraternity party than a golf tournament. And so I think the demographic though has helped this event. And then, you know, look, Hole 16 is unique.

It is unique. I've played with a lot of celebrities there. I played with Justin Verlander a few years ago and we walked in and you know, this guy's a future Hall of Famer and played on the biggest stage and he's looking around like he said, 'I feel like Russell Crowe in Gladiator here.'

Yeah. So, I think there's a bunch of reasons why it's turned into what it has, but it's certainly been good for the community and it's been good for us.

Yeah, it is amazing. They prepare not just for you, they prepare for every player. They know where every player went to college. They know what their favorite NBA team is or MLB team. They know a lot about these players and in a fun way they call them out on it. I think 16, I think the players, having asked a lot of the players, it's not something it's not a hole they want to play every week, but when they get to play it once a year, they all look forward to it. And it is super unique for so many reasons.

You know, it was my predecessor is the one that made the call on it. And it was during the great recession there in '08, '09. The previous title sponsor pulled out pretty close to the event. I think as I recall it might have been October and so the Thunderbirds...

That's right. That's right. So they've been running it for a long time. So they reached out to David Steiner who was my predecessor and said, 'Look, we've got this title sponsorship. We think it'd be good for you. What do you think?' And credit to David. I mean, he had the foresight to see this thing was going to be huge for us. And so we took it on. And then we resigned. I think we've resigned a couple times with the PGA. But I'm not sure anybody really foresaw how big this thing could become. And when we three years after we signed the original deal decided to make this a zero-waste event that was big for our customers and a lot of the constituents who focus on our business. So it's been great for our brand but a lot of the uniqueness of it has just been an evolution.

I tell you one inflection point which was well before we took over the title sponsorship role was when Tiger made that hole in one in '97 and I think a lot of people still remember that certainly golf fans. If you look at photos of that versus a photo this week. I mean that 16th hole talk about a change. I mean it just looks it kind of looks like a couple of small grandstands for a high school football game. And now it looks like almost like a Major League Baseball stadium. I mean, so but people do remember that. And funny enough, I was living in Phoenix at the time and I was at the tournament that day. I wasn't working for WM at the time, but I was at the tournament with some buddies, but I was not on hole 16, of course. I was on hole four and so when he made that hole in one, you knew something big had happened.

The ground shook. I think it registered on the Richter scale. So, that was one of the things that happened that probably put this on the map. Some of it has been the growth of Phoenix itself and Scottsdale and the surrounding areas. And then I think some of it has been the fact that we put so much effort as a management team, as a company. We really want to make it an event that stands out. And really our two biggest sports investments for us are the WM Phoenix Open and then our official sustainability partner of Major League Baseball. And those are the two big ones.

All the time. All the time. I mean, we really do. It's because of that uniqueness. They're trying to see how do I recreate it or maybe not recreate your event, but how do I give my event an identity? When I was playing a couple years ago with Rory and he made the point, he said, 'Jim, your event has an identity and that's not the same for every event.' And I said, 'Well, what do you think makes it gives it that identity?' And he said, 'You could kind of go down a list, whether it's the sustainability, the zero waste piece, or Hole 16 or the huge crowds overall or the amount of money that goes to charity. There's just a number of things that give this event an identity.' And as I think about other events that have an identity, there is something unique about. You think about the AT&T, I mean, that's at Pebble Beach, and that in and of itself gives it an identity. So, I do get reached out to pretty often by other CEOs saying, 'We'd love to be able to kind of create the same uniqueness.' I think there are other stadium holes out there, but this one because it's grown so much. I mean, I don't know what the exact attendance is on the stadium hole, it's always full. And I think it's somewhere near 20,000, maybe 21,000. So, when you go in there, it is something that you don't experience anywhere else as a player on the PGA Tour, for that matter around the world.

Yeah.

You know, look, I think there's I don't know that I would characterize it as a concern. I think it's a recognition as much as a concern that there is this evolution taking place within the sport of golf in particular. If you look at our event as an example, and I was talking to the new commissioner the other day, I think the demographic in our event is significantly different than the demographic for the average PGA event. Might be as much as 20 years, particularly on Friday and Saturday. Some of that is because Phoenix, as I mentioned, is a young city. But what is really changing is that Gen Z and millennials have a different expectation than I'm a baby boomer and they have a different expectation from the sport of golf than maybe my generation or maybe my dad's generation. They still appreciate the sport itself, but it's also they expect that it's going to be entertainment for them. And especially when you think about it as a televised event, when you look at this event on television, a lot of time they spend a lot of time on those holes like 16 and 17. And I think the reason for that is not because 16 is a great golf hole. I mean, if you take the stands away, it's kind of a nondescript golf hole. It's a 145 yard par three with a couple of traps around it. But when you put a stadium around it, it becomes kind of an entertainment event. And I do believe that this transition that's taking place from my generation to my daughter's generation, for example, is that they don't just expect to watch the sport. They expect to watch a sport that is entertaining. And so therefore I think it's actually a positive for the sport of golf.

That's true.

Yeah, I started out at UT and then one summer I went out to visit some relatives out in Scottsdale and I contracted what's called coccidioidomycosis and ended up being treated for a couple of years for it. There were three other folks I was being treated with them. Two of them didn't make it through the treatments. So it's a...

You know, not to talk too much about medicine here but the treatment is pretty difficult. I had 200 spinal taps right in kind of the back of the neck there over a period of two years. So I ended up going to Arizona State. I got those taps three days a week and the other four days a week I didn't know anybody. My parents rented an apartment for me and I was literally doing nothing. And then the three days I had to go in the hospital I was knocked out for the day. So I ended up taking classes at Arizona State and graduating from ASU. So, I have a warm spot for both University of Texas and for Arizona State. And that's why that's ultimately why I ended up living in Phoenix. I don't think I'd ever even been to Phoenix other than to go out and visit my great aunt and uncle at my mom's request. And so I guess things work out for a reason. But I ended up graduating there at Arizona State, staying in Phoenix. That's why I had gone to the Phoenix Open a couple of times back in the 80s and then ultimately meeting the CEO at Waste Management two CEOs ago, a guy named Mury Myers. I met him. I was working for a small airline there and so it is strange how things work out and then ended up here starting here in 2001. But yeah, you're right. I think if I look back on it, boy, two out of four people being treated for that, not making it out the other side was a bit of an eye opener.

What they say is that Phoenix, it was through valley fever and valley fever is a spore that's carried through the dust there, a lot of dust in the air there. And what the neurologist said was it just kind of overwhelmed your system. He said you might have gone past a work site or something and kind of sucked in a lot of dust and it just overwhelmed the system and manifested itself as meningitis. Some people it turns into the flu, some people it turns into pneumonia and in my case it turned into meningitis and it was a particularly difficult type of meningitis to treat because you had to inject straight into the spinal column and it wasn't something I could just take a pill for. So I don't know exactly how I got it but I'm glad that was 40 years ago. I'm glad I don't have it anymore. That's for sure.

You know, I guess I kind of compare it to my wife going through childbirth. I guess she said that was not fun. So I would say that hers was probably worse than a spinal tap. But spinal tap wasn't any fun, for sure. And was it painful? Yeah, I think it was. I kind of blacked a lot of that out or blocked a lot of that out. I think the main thing about those was the psychological side of it. I felt like every time I came into that hospital and smelled that kind of pungent smell in the hospital, I'd get this queasy feeling and so that to me was the worst part of it. It wasn't the spinal tap itself.

You know, I never met Herb, but I was clearly working for an airline knew of him and he wrote a book called Nuts. I'm not going to tell you I've read a lot of business books because they do kind of start to sound the same. But his was very different. And he talked about the importance of culture. In his book he said there's you really have three constituents. You have your employees, you have your customers, and you have your shareholders. And I've kind of expanded that to five constituents. I think our communities are in there and then I think the environment, which I call the voiceless constituents, is one, but I agree with him. Your employees, your customers, and your shareholders are all important. But he said, 'Look, you got to have them in the right order because the model just doesn't work very well if you don't have them in the right order.' And he said the order is your employees are first and then if they feel valued and they feel like their opinions mattered and they're included in decisions and then they feel good about what they do and how they're really adding to the service that you provide, then they'll make your customers feel valued. And if your customers feel good, then your shareholders inevitably are going to be happy. And I think Southwest shareholders have been happy over five decades and certainly during Herb's run they were very happy. So I really kind of it wasn't a long book. I think it was maybe a couple hundred pages and I took a lot from that and when you combine that with my parents particularly my mom was very much a people person and as kids we would I remember she took us to these old nursing homes. Remember the old nursing homes where people basically you just kind of put old folks to unfortunately you've kind of put them there to go die and she would take us to these nursing homes when we were kids and she would go up to the front desk and say who doesn't have any visitors.

And then she just made friends. We used to call it mom's little old ladies but she would go make friends with these little old ladies and as kids we're like oh my gosh we hated it. It was terrible and we got to go meet these little old ladies that we don't know. But at the end of the day, I think what she was teaching us was the importance of caring for your fellow man. And she would bring these little ladies, she'd bring them Christmas cards or birthday cards or Valentine's, box of chocolates or something. And I honestly think she extended their lives by 10 years because they had nobody visited them. That was her question up front at the desk was who doesn't have any visitors? And so what I learned, people ultimately are what this world is about. And I think sometimes we miss that in today's world and forget that yeah, there's lots of important things that we do. I mean, sure, I'm trying to run a company, but the most important thing I do every day is build a culture around 63,000 people. That's what matters. And to Herb's point, if I do that well, then I think our customers will be happy and our shareholders will be happy.