On Aug 16th - 22nd, THE NORTHERN TRUST golf tournament will be back at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, NJ. We attended back in 2019 and in anticipation of the upcoming event, we wanted to find out more about this tournament, its importance in the golf season and how it benefits its communities. Julie Tyson is the Executive Director of the PGA TOUR of THE NORTHERN TRUST. She shared her career journey, how she came to working in the golf industry, her approach to putting on one of golf's biggest tournaments as well as how she balances a myriad of schedules.
ATHLEISURE MAG: Back in 2019, we had the opportunity to go to THE NORTHERN TRUST and had an amazing time there so it’s so great to find out more about this tournament and your role in it. I’m also excited to chat with you as we are fellow alumnae at Indiana University so it’s always nice to connect with people from there!
JULIE TYSON: You are! You’re a Hoosier?
AM: I am and I was impressed that you were a founding member of the IU Dance Marathon on campus as I enjoyed going to that and raising awareness!
JT: That’s amazing and so cool! I’m on this sports board that they have now at IU and we had a board call last week and it’s like a who’s who of sports. I was listening on the call and I thought, “gosh Indiana turns out some really talented people!”
AM: Without a doubt!
JT: Well you included!
AM: Well thank you!
JT: You have quite a business!
AM: Thank you for saying that! It’s been an incredible journey and even in this time of the pandemic, we were really able to take stock to optimize what we’re doing while working on some really amazing things that will be launching soon! You know, in doing this magazine, we talk to so many people across a number of verticals and a number of them have come from IU and it always makes me think of just how phenomenal of a school it is and how far their arms reach! I’m from Indiana originally so I always wanted to go there, but looking at it from where I am now, seeing all the people that come through there it truly is incredible.
JT: I have 2 older brothers and I’m from Chicago originally and they went to school there during the Bobby Knight era.
AM: Same!
JT: And just like you, but for a different reason, we really wanted to go to Indiana University badly. I remember my first foot steps onto the campus, I had a couple of those pinch me moments like, “I can’t even believe that I’m here!” It’s such a cool experience.
AM: I loved it so much that after my freshman year, I became an Orientation Leader there every summer for the incoming students that were coming in! I’m still friends with a number of the people from those teams as well as students that I oriented. Bobby’s last year was my senior year, but my memories there were truly incredible and anytime I get to talk to others that went there, I know that it’s good people.
JT: Awww me too. I agree completely.
AM: Exactly. You have worked in this industry for a number of years. What is your background and what led you to working in sports and specifically to the golf industry?
JT: I was in media sales for a long time out of Chicago and I remember very distinctly boarding a plane and it was one of those really small 19 seat planes and I was in Michigan and it was in Feb. and I thought that it was freezing cold and dark and I need to do something different. I started to think about what would be next for me and I thought that being an agent would be interesting and fun. So my easiest path in I thought would be women’s sports to become an agent. I thought that I didn’t want to travel all over the globe at that stage in my life so that eliminated tennis because they were playing a lot of their events globally and I thought that golf would be an interesting thing because it was very well established and sort of fit with the lifestyle of not being in freezing cold Michigan weather.
So I reached out to the Vice President of Business Affairs at that time and said, “If you ever need help with your television, I’d love to help.” We got through a bunch of conversations and lo and behold he became the Commissioner of the LPGA, a guy named Ty Votaw. So I went to go work with the LPGA initially and worked there for a long time. It’s a very entrepreneurial setting where if you can dream it, you can do it. I loved my first foray into golf through the LPGA and then my career progressed and I ended up working at the PGA TOUR first in Account Management and then in Global Sales. Then, in 2017, my path led me to a counterpart and a friend that had become the head of our Championship managed event that we own and operate a portfolio of events and he asked if I ever wanted to come and run a tournament within this group of events? That began my event management experience was in 2017. THE NORTHERN TRUST happened to be moving from LA to NY so it was a perfect time for me because I got a new title, we were playing new venues and so everything was new. I didn’t walk into a big legacy really even though this event has been played in and around this area for over 50 years!
AM: That is quite a journey. Before we get into THE NORTHERN TRUST, can you tell me about your role at the PGA and what your day-to-day is like?
JT: So, I’m the Executive Director which means that literally if you think about it like a CEO of a small business, every aspect of the event rolls up through me whether it's client relations, whether it's operations, local relationships with the city or the state – putting on an event like this you have to let everybody know you’re coming to town and make the appropriate accommodations, marketing, HR, everything under the sun. Now the great part about this is that if you think about it like a franchisee, I have the PGA TOUR in the backdrop that we’re owned and operated and I have those resources that I can tap into on a daily basis. But we’re pretty much in NY running our own show up here.
AM: As you mentioned, THE NORTHERN TRUST is over 50 years old, can you tell us about this tournament which is the first of 3 Fed Ex Cup Playoffs events? What makes this such an important event?
JT: This is probably one of the most competitive events in all of golf where players compete throughout the regular season to earn enough points to make it to the Playoffs. We are the first Playoff event as you said. So we only accept the top 125 players in the world. If somebody gets sick or decides that they don’t want to play this particular week, we will play with fewer people. We won’t bring anybody else in. Not only do they compete to get into this event, after this event, we will cut as the Playoffs progress as they go from this event to the second event it will go to 70 players. So for some number of players like 55 players, their season will end at the conclusion of our tournament at THE NORTHERN TRUST because they didn’t earn enough points to make it into the top 70. So that’s 1 and 2, we tend to be one of the largest global platforms first being in and around NYC which is a huge enough platform to begin with. This event is also televised in over 220 countries worldwide so it’s a really big stage that we're putting these guys on. Lastly, over the course of those 3 weeks, these players will pay for over the 3 week run between the bonus pool at the end and the 3 weeks of purses, almost a $100 million in prize money. So that in and of itself, the scale of the stage, the number of hours of television, the platform, the fact that their season could end – there is a lot at stake here that these guys are playing for. So, really competitive environments tend to produce memorable moments on the golf course.
AM: Wow that is very critical in the fact that you could be ending your season after that particular tournament. How far in advance do you begin working on a tournament like this and as we’re a few weeks away, what does your schedule look like leading up to it?
JT: This event typically rotates in and around NY and NJ and in 2020, we played in Boston. We start planning 18 months in advance for where we are going to be in the upcoming year while simultaneously completing the steps towards the current year’s event. We have to be building 2 events simultaneously.
AM: When people think of golf, they think about The Masters, The Players or The Open as opposed to thinking of a tournament that’s minutes away from NYC, what are the intricacies of having a PGA TOUR event in NYC?
JT: Yeah. Interestingly here a local NYer or someone from NJ that is from the area will tell you that convenience is key! You have to have an easy way to get to something no matter how compelling. Unlike some of these other places where you’re in Augusta, GA and it’s convenient and easy to get to once you’re on the grounds of Augusta – you’re pretty local there. Here we battle traffic and all of these other kinds of modes of transportation. I think in 2021 what you will see as fans is that we have made it more convenient to get to the tournament. This being our first time back since 2019, we learned a lot from our fans so parking will be easier, we’ll have our rideshare much closer, our Ferry will drop off at the Liberty National Port instead of at Port Liberté. It will be super easy to get the opening and closing holes. So we have made it more convenient – that’s 1.
2, I think that if you live in the area, you have access to pretty much anything that you could ever dream of from world-class food options to entertainment so we really have to try harder to make this a singular experience that is super memorable. So we have really held ourselves accountable to building something that we think will get people to come back time and time again and hopefully your experience proved that we’re working hard on that front.
AM: I thought it was awesome. We went to the Media Day the day before and took the ferry over that day. I thought it was really cool. Who would have thought that steps away from the city, we have a golf course that we can go to without having to go to other regions in the country. It was really well produced and I’m excited to see what this year will be like. When I think about the music festivals and fashion weeks that we have attended it’s always challenging to do them when you’re talking about doing them here!
JT: I totally agree and we’ve lived through every challenge. COVID being what it is, to have THE NORTHERN TRUST last year in Boston during COVID which I can’t think of anything that is more complicated and we successfully pulled that off so we learned a ton about running events in a COVID environment just like everybody did in running their businesses.
AM: Speaking to that, running any type of event during COVID is problematic. What was your approach last year to tackling it and being in a different locale and keeping in mind all of these other factors that were literally outside of your control?
JT: Well, first we had to determine what was going to be our North Star. Our North Star was always going to be safety. Safety of the players, safety of the fans, safety of the volunteers, of the staff and in every step. We decided that we were going to operate without fans because we didn’t know if we could effectively do it as there were a lot of unknowns about COVID, there were no vaccinations - we just didn't think that we could aggregate people in a safe way. We knew that with the areas with the population of people and volunteer staff and players, that we could control how they could engage, we could control social distancing safety measures. So safety was always going to be our North Star. The second part of this and I think with anything that you’re going through with a crisis, is communication. We over communicated to everybody, the league, we communicated to the state and health officials. We over communicated with people and brought everybody into the process so that they could transparently see what we were planning to do and to advise us if we were going down a bad path. It helped us to be able to play in a time where most sports were unable to. We were really excited to be able to do that and to deliver to fans so that they could at least watch it on TV.
AM: In 2019, we had the best time watching Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka play and walking the course as they played. So for this year’s event, what kind of hospitality features and experiences that fans can enjoy while watching their favorite players.
JT: I think one thing to note is that if you’re a golf fanatic, we’ve got an option for you which is golf with a side of fun, but if you’re not super into golf and you just want to watch a little bit of golf, we’ve got fun with a side of golf. I think that more and more our fans are starting to see that you don’t have to watch 8 hours of golf if you don’t want to. We’ve got hospitality options that range from anywhere from over a little over $100 a ticket to all the way to $7,500 a ticket. It just depends on the level of convenience that you're looking for. So at the high end of that, the $7,500 ticket gives you valet right up to the door of the club. At the lower end of that, you’ve got access that will keep you out of concession and food lines and it gives you a reserved seat which generally is hard to find in golf. We’ve got hospitality options with everything in between and it just becomes things like climate control, shade or location on the golf course if you’re on a finishing hole. Those things come at a premium. We’ve got people and opportunities that can help coach you through any kind of opportunity that you want to experience. I think that the most interesting thing is for our Grounds Patron. We have 6 miles of front row seats for our Grounds Patrons which is unheard of in sports. Also, our amenities bring in local flavor with our food partners that you saw in 2019. So Shake Shack, Luke’s Lobster and Pizza Vita are there. We also brought in Playa Bowls which is a healthy option that was one of the bits of feedback that we got back from our food partners. We’ll have a wine garden that we fashioned after a North Fork vineyard experience with Adirondacks and food for purchase that pairs up nicely with wine as well as other kinds of experiences that people can enjoy. Again, if you’re interested in fun with a side of golf, we’ve got all kinds of space on a 6 mile golf course that is out in fresh air for you to enjoy with your friends.
AM: In addition to watching amazing athletes and having fun on site, there is also a charitable component as I know you’re focused on food scarcity. Can you tell me about where the proceeds will go to this year?
JT: Thank you so much for raising that as it is super important to us. Right now, we’re trying to frame up our relationships with our charitable partners and part of the reason why we’re still working on that is that it is the tournament’s proceeds that go out to that charity. So we have to hit the numbers in order to take the proceeds and provide them out. What we have tried to do is to pick some themes under the umbrella of Community Champions and Community Heroes. We know everyday that there are people going to work to make somebody else’s life better. Wherever we and THE NORTHERN TRUST as our title partner can go to work and help make those folks lives easier, we want to be able to do that. Things we've focused on include food scarcity that is coming out of COVID in NJ. They're focusing on real issues and summer is always tough with kids not going to school and having a guaranteed meal so that was one that we knew we wanted to be able to help. We’re looking at Boys and Girls Club, The First Tee which is our national charity partner with local chapters. We work with Tackle Kids Cancer, so we have a whole host of charities that we’re talking to right now and we want to help them in 2 ways. 1, with proceeds and financial underpinning and 2 is to take the PGA TOUR’s broad spotlight and shine it on those charities so that not only are we giving to them, but others that can afford to give are also supporting them. So you will see a lot of that going into the weeks leading up to and during tournament week.
AM: Going back to the point you were making with safety being a North Star, what can fans expect when it comes to their experience on-site at the tournament this year in terms of protocols and adherences that are taking place?
JT: Happily, NY eclipsed it’s 70% mile marker with vaccinations so that has been a mile marker that we have been waiting on for a long time! That being said, we also know that as people take their first steps back out into society, they’re going to do this in a cautious way and we want to meet them where they are. First, our food service, even when you’re in a shared structure for hospitality, where we used to have a buffet, we’re going to modify those experiences in terms of the way that we serve and produce the food so that we can make sure that everything is done safely, prepared safely and served safely. Second is, we’ve got fresh air that people can enjoy so we will keep things largely open air this year, more than we have in years past. That's due in large part because of COVID, but also because we have all been cooped up and we think that people want to be outside a lot more. Thirdly, we want to remove the judgement from mask wearing so we will be an environment where if you feel that you want to wear a mask, there will be no judgement and we will encourage it, but it will not be required. Generally speaking, we have an army of volunteers that will be wiping down surfaces and making sure that we keep people a reasonable distance apart – all those things that we have come to expect and want at a golf tournament will continue. I think that our 2020 experience made us much more knowledgeable to know how to operate in this environment.
AM: Wow, it seems like you have so much on your plate with so many different types of schedules running, outside of your job at the PGA TOUR, how do you take time for yourself?
JT: You know, I think that work and life sort of blend together and I’m fortunate because I work in golf and golf is a passion point for me. Being outside is a passion point, so I get to do a lot of what I like to do anyway. I have a family and I have a dog and things like that and when they want your attention, you sort of just give into it at those moments. So everything has its place and I’m grateful that I have all of those things because they are welcome distractions.
AM: How do you give back to the community whether it’s golf or philanthropic endeavors that you’re involved in?
JT: I sit on a couple of boards, but I think that really the thing for me is that my job marries to my passion point. Every day I get up and I get to think about the tournament that my team and I, THE NORTHERN TRUST, that operates with us will be able to benefit the communities where we play. I’m really lucky in that regard because I get to do that every day for a lot of hours a day. We all work a lot of hours and part of my mission is to make sure that we’re serving those communities and building deep roots and I’m grateful that we get to do that so that work and life get to blend together in that way.
AM: It’s always great when we get the opportunity to talk to changemakers and I think especially when we talk with women in sports that are dominating their fields and doing such an amazing job. I know our readers will enjoy it and personally, just prepping for this interview and seeing the dynamics of your career, I was really impressed and excited to talk with you and to see this event from another vantage point!
JT: I’m impressed with you! You’ve got this business that you created from the ground up are you kidding me? This is amazing. We love your support in covering this tournament.
AM: We’re always about storytelling and I love bringing awareness to a number of our topics especially when it comes to areas where people may not think of women being involved in. It’s exciting to see what the landscape can be especially for younger women that are coming up that they will have a better footing than what we had when we started on our journey.
JT: Hopefully that is true or we’re not doing our jobs. Someone once told me, “when you get to the top, send the elevator back down for women.” I’m grateful that you’re helping to do that and any way that I can do it, I want to do it!
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PHOTOGRPAHY COURTESY | PGA TOUR/THE NOTHERN TRUST
Read the JUN ISSUE #66 of Athleisure Mag and see Course Bound with Julie Tyson in mag.
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