[MUSIC] So let, let's go back to some of the clients that you work with. As they go through, like Duval, and they start heading towards the Senior Tour. And your advice and let's find a second career. How does golf course design factor in at this point? So if you ask me the question, I'll ask the question a different way. If you ask me the question, how is professional golf doing? And how is amateur golf doing? It's a completely different answer. Professional golf is still very good. When 2008 happened, a lot of the banks failed. And the fear was a lot of the sponsors on the tour were going to go away. Some went away but a lot of them didn't, and the new sponsors came along. So the economics of professional golf are stronger than ever. Amateur golf changed dramatically and golf courses, just in the area, country clubs are closing because there's not a lot of new people coming to play golf. So whatever it is, too expensive, too much time, other activities, opportunity costs to do something else. So the fear is that the amateur golf is changing. So while golf course design used to be a huge business, it's not that big anymore. Because they aren't building new courses. They're closing courses now. So, you know, getting to your question on Champions Tour and other income streams. The path of the career was that you can play pretty well through age 42 or 43, Then you'd have to wait six or seven years to get on the Senior Tour, and that was the "tough years". That gap is growing. There's so many good young players now, that now it's like 40 now. 40 or 41 and you're not relevant on the regular tour anymore. And then, you have to figure out what to do for nine years. So you better start investing your money and living off your investments that's kind of what the plan is now. You have to fill a ten year gap before you can start the Senior Tour. >>Thank you, that's a great answer. Let's go to your client Vijay, we've prepped on this. That even overseas, where he's so famous, Vijay, where he's from, golf course design is not available to him overseas, for example. >> It might be the only place he has an an active course going in Malaysia right now. He has an active course going in South Africa. So that might be the only place that is still building. China is still building, their infrastructure is still building. So, internationally and that's why it's so important that sports in general went international. International is where the money is if you're going to build golf courses. So Vijay as an example, he hasn't done a course in the states for 15 years. But he has activity over internationally. >> Is it fair to say each of the big three, four, or five. Faldo, let's have Faldo and Vijay have their own sort of golf course design tricks of the trade, as it were. I mean, Palmer's seem to be easier. Nicklaus's seemed to be harder. Does Vijay have his own sort of signature design? >> You know, it's that's a good question. And, and Nicklaus was always, Nicklaus always hit the ball left to right. So, all his courses were designed to hit, for every player to hit it left to right, because he wanted it to suit his eye. so that's the way he designed courses. Vijay is different. He's not left to right or right to left he's more aesthetics. I don't know if it's coming from Fiji. Or he likes the bunkering and the shape of the bunkering and kind of the layout is important to him. 71 00:03:48,755 --> 00:03:53,132
Tom Fazio might be the greatest
designer modern day designer right now. And he's a he's a" landscape it corner to corner" kind of guy. So that just makes it very high maintenance going forward for the owner. But, they all have their own, criteria and signatures. >> I asked your permission ahead of time. It's public. We've been studying the case that Vijay has brought against the Tour. Say only that which you're comfortable in saying. I'm proud and happy that he's gotten as far as he has, I guess, having worked with you on his accounts. Why don't you bring our students up to date on where the lawsuit is? >> Yeah, so I'm not going to hit the legal terms exactly correct. But I think you'll get the gist of the points I'm trying to make. I guess that's been, already, a year and a half ago. He talked to Sports Illustrated. I'll give you the fast version. >> Yeah, take your time, yeah. >> He talked to Sports Illustrated and they asked him a question. Because they knew, they said you're taking this deer antler spray. What do you think it does for you and Vijay in writing admitted, "I practice a lot. I'm trying to take something to take the inflammation out of my back, my arms." He's just turning 50 years old so he's been doing this for a long time. He didn't know it was a banned substance. He had no idea, that's his fault. Dummy, he shouldn't have done that. So Sports Illustrated prints the article just when Ray Lewis is coming out about taking his deer antler spray. So it's big news. Ray Lewis is playing in the Super Bowl when this comes up. Vijay finds this out and he goes to the Tour. He goes to the commissioner and he says, "hey, I took this. I had no idea it was banned." The golfers don't have a union, so they need the Tour body to represent them and help them in this situation. Basically the Tour said, "we don't believe you, we're going to suspend you." And at that point, so they went down that path, Vijay appealed. And in the middle of the appeal process, the Tour realized that WADA. Which is their guidelines, the World Doping Agency, The guidelines that they follow. Dropped this deer antler spray. And basically had said for a long time that the amount of this substance you would have to take into your body. Was so incredible to actually do any benefit that they're dropping it off their list. Anyway, at that point. We're really curious to see what the Tour really knew. So all Vijay wanted to do was two things: He had to sue the Tour because he's trying to help the other players. This is what happened to the other player. He sued the Tour. This has been dragged on for a long time. They finally opened up the case in November. A judge heard it, dropped ten of the charges, but allowed one to go through. It was an important one because it allowed Vijay's team to go into discovery and see what the Tour had on other players. It's very well known that there are three or four other very high profile players that have been suspended for drug charges. That the Tour has treated differently. And that's all that Vijay's fight is for: to fight this and he's footed all his own legal bills. He's going to fight this because he thinks the Tour did him wrong by not helping him. And, two, they treated him differently than the other players who had, who also had drug charges. So, all we wanted to get was discovery. So, that's where we are right now. The Tour's ask for a lot of information from Vijay a lot of it financial. We've provided it immediately we in turn have asked for a lot of information from the Tour and they haven't give us anything. So we're in this. We need the judge now to step in and and compel them to follow her order. And until then this thing is just going to just continue to be dragged on and go nowhere. >> You know when you have something like that. Just don't pick on Vijay. Does it affect his play? Does it affect his his reputation in terms of trying to get other deals? >> And that's the other part of the case here and that's unfortunate in the timing. So the economics of professional golf change dramatically when your on the regular tour and then when you go to to the Senior Tour. You get paid a lot from endorsers on the regular tour and it drops off ten fold when you go to the Senior Tour. Vijay was just entering that phase. He was one of the guys I actually thought that could crossover. He could play both tours because he's still incredibly healthy, and he's competitive. But yeah it hurts his economics dramatically by having this come forward. And we have companies on record who've said, "hey, we're not going to talk to Vijay because we're afraid of this." And it certainly I, may be a domino effect, it certainly hurts him emotionally and mentally that this has happened. It's hurt his reputation, and it's hurt him in the eyes of the other players, and that's unfortunate. >> When you get to the point of a player just not playing, almost a devolve kind of thing. Psychological. Do you seek out- Not to pick on a player, but I'm thinking about Christina Kim over on the Ladies Tour, who had depression and, publicly admitted almost committed suicide over it. I mean do you go and seek mental health professional care for a hypothetical client who's going through something like that? >> You know, you do. You certainly do. I mean logic tells you to help somebody out. That's where you have to go. So as their advisor or their agent, yeah, but it's very hard to convince. If a player doesn't, if a person, I'm not even going to call it a player. If you don't want to do that, I'm not going to convince you. I'm not going to be able to convince you to do that. We had that conversation for a long time and I just couldn't Vijay was like, "no, I'll get through this by myself." And David Duval was like, "I'll get through this by myself." Well so it's tough. >> I think going all the way back to things we've talked about. Do you recommend prenuptial agreements generally? Let's go all the way back to Jordan Spieth who I don't believe is married yet. >> Not yet, yeah. It's our duty to actually go do that, you have to advise the client to get a prenuptial. Here's how this goes: If you're 20 and it's your first marriage. You're going to say no. But I still going to advise you to do it. If you're 30, and it's your first marriage, you're 50-50 that you might say yes or no. If it's your second marriage, you're going to say yes >> [LAUGH] >> 100% of the time. So it just depends on where in their life they've been and if they've accumulated wealth and I mean, Jordan Spieth is interesting, because he's got a lot of wealth at 20 years old. But I still think when that day comes he's going to say, "no. I think this will last forever," and go forward. >> Last series of questions. Through all the sports that we explore, social media, tweeting, Facebook, Instagram have become such an important way in which the athlete communicates with his public or her public. What, what do you recommend your clients do in that space to to maximize their exposures but minimize their liability? >> Yeah, it's interesting. Now, you can buy insurance, we just found you can buy insurance for social media damage. For people who are active in it, we recommend they buy the insurance. And it's surprisingly, not that expensive. Is it going to work when we have to face the claim. >> [LAUGH] >> I don't know, but it's a whole new world there. Yeah, it's a balance, you've gotta balance. It can't be a distraction. Tweeting and whatever else you're doing can't be a distraction. But it certainly can enhance your brand awareness and your brand appeal. So you try to get, I guess in life, you, you're looking for balance in everything, between work and family. And you do the same thing in your business. You have to find balance. And I think that's what we're trying to get them to get to. >> And is it fair to say, going back to our Rory, the whole "you must assume that your life is lived in, in the public eye." I mean, the way he tried, in fact, did cut off his engagement. The whole world knew about it a minute after it happened. Is that, is that what your athletes now have to understand as a reality. >> Yeah In business, too, if I do something, it's instantaneous how fast word can get around now, because of all the social media. And, but it's more so with these guys in the public eye. Now, the young kids coming up. They know it. It's part of their DNA. So it's not as much, the older guys are kind of like trying to adjust to this. The younger guys, I think it's part of their life. They've grown up with it. >> Very interesting. We're getting near the end. I did just want to explore, all the way back at the beginning when a client leaves. Okay, now you've had a representation agreement. You've had a long relationship. but it gets to the point where, god forbid, someone in your agency now wants to take a client away. How does a commission stream generally flow? I guess I'm getting at Mark Steinberg leaving, and going to Excel Sports. Hypothetically, how would those commission streams flow, generally speaking? >> So, in the old days. In the old days, the big agency, and I came from IMG. So IMG fought, and fought for indefinite income stream, if they did the initial deal. And you're making the case of, if you're in a third year of a five year Nike deal. IMG's case says we introduced this company to you. So if you renew this, we want the renewal. The other end of this is, where the black and white area is, you usually, in this case Tiger's agent leaving, I think the agent will gladly allow the cash flow to go back to the big company, the X company as long as that contract is in existence, but the fight becomes for renewal. And then the question is, do you then just say automatically, "well, as an agent, I'm going to go negotiate with another company because then I won't have to pay them?" Yeah. but that's not the right answer, either. So, that's where the gray area becomes and you might reach a compromise where you pay the big company portions of it back. But it's getting harder and harder and harder for the big companies to win these battles in the long term income streams. Short terms, they deserve it and should get it. >> And as part of a, not to talk ill of our former employer, the bigger the company, the greater potential for conflict of interest. You have a right sized company. But, you know, we used to get that all the time. Well, why didn't you put me in to the specialty event? Why did you pick x, y, z instead of me, to go into the made for TV golf event. How do you manage conflict of interest? You have, just the right size agency for doing that now. >> Yeah, it's still an issue. And, in theory, you say, "if I disclose it, then there's no conflict, or at least I've communicated." It's not really the answer. I mean, conflict of interest is really hard. We always played, when we were on the IMG side, we always said, "this is a good thing." The phone rings off the hook for Greg Norman. The phone rings off the hook for Tiger Woods. They can't do all the deals. So it filters down to the smaller players. I think that's a true statement. Again you just have to balance it and be aware of it and deal with it when it surfaces, that's it. >> That was a great 360 look at the golf industry. Beginning, middle, end of a professional golfer's career, both male and female professional golfers. And even a little bit on the amateur side. Thank you very much for being with us and best of luck to your great agency, proud to be associated with you. >> Great, it was great to be here and thank you. [MUSIC]
