The basic reason we’re here is today we’re announcing a redirection, if you will, of some of our efforts as it relates to charitable
activity on the PGA TOUR. We do that with a focus on trying to elevate the impact of what’s happening through our tournament structure and also to some extent what’s happening with respect to what the players do themselves. Let me go through each one of these six and ask these three guys to comment on a couple of them. The first one is messaging and communications, and this really goes to the question of reaching out and educating people about what does happen with PGA TOUR golf as it relates to charity. Over the years, countless times I’ve had people come up to me and say, Tim, you really need to tell the story better about what happens with charity. It’s too good a message. A lot of people don’t know about it. And we know from experience that when people learn about what’s happening and the lives that are impacted, they become involved. They help us more. We’re able to grow the impact of what we’re doing. So we will be reaching out aggressively to people to educate them and for a call to action to join us at the tournament level or in other ways to assist in what’s happening with PGA TOUR charity. Secondly is the players. Obviously players week in and week out support the charitable involvement of our tournaments, but a lot of players, many players, have charitable activities that they support on their own. Some of them have foundations. Some of them have fundraisers for various causes that they run themselves. Some of them serve on charity boards. Some of them serve on the boards of various tournaments that are dedicated to charity. And by partnering with the players, we think we’re better able to interact with the activity of what’s happening with the players individually, what’s happening, first of all, with our tournaments and also with our communication platform as it relates to those activities. So we see a partnership that will provide television and advertising support, a repositioned pgatour.com that will catalog the activity of players and their charities, players that are seeking to broaden the breadth and impact of their charities and communities that they serve. COMMISSIONER TIM FINCHEM: Thank you, David. Obviously a couple things that David touched on are things that we would focus on in this initiative, the ability to help David’s foundation earlier on from a communications standpoint, working with younger players to help them form foundations when they’ve found an interest in charity and things of that nature. I’d also like to recognize Amy Wilson, who is the president of the PGA TOUR Wives’ Association, and of course the Wives’ Association has helped needy children and families through a variety of fundraisers over the years, and thank you for being here, as well.
The third area is that of tournaments, and let me start by recognizing Steve Tims, who is here on behalf of the President of the PGA TOUR Tournaments Association. Tournaments obviously are the bedrock of what’s happened from a charity standpoint over the decades going back to the ’30s and ’40s. 12 years ago we made the decision as an organization from a policy standpoint that we wouldn’t accept any new tournaments on the PGA TOUR or the Champions Tour or the Nationwide Tour unless they were organized for a charitable purpose. That started a redirection at that time where we added to our mission statement, the charitable efforts.