Rory McIlroy: Transforming the Tours. Rebranding Golf.



Rory McIlroy
 (From CanadianGolfer.com)

"It's nice that people say that he could be this or he could be that or he could win 20 major championships, but at the end of the day I've won one." - 2011 US Open winner Rory McIlroy

That quote, modest as it was, spoke volumes as to not only how much Rory McIlroy has already changed the dynamic in men's professional golf -- both on his home European Tour and here in North America on the PGA Tour -- but how much capacity he and his fellow "New Kids on the Block" hold to re-brand the sport itself.

When a 22-year-old wins the US Open the way McIlroy did last weekend, the sports world takes notice. When a 22-year-old does it with the grace, eloquence and class shown by the Irishman, the sports world has every reason to celebrate.

McIlroy is a big story because of his record-breaking US Open win, an eight-shot rout that saw him go 16-under par at the Congressional. He's a bigger story because he did so to shake off the choker label that has followed him since he detonated and folded at the Masters in April. In my books, he's an even bigger story, however, on the strength of his approach to the media, his fellow players and, ultimately, the fans of the game of golf.

Dealing with the media is part of the territory that comes with being a professional athlete, coach or executive. Dealing with it well is unfortunately still the terrain of far too few personalities in professional sport. Even at the age of 22, McIlroy already appears to understand the axiom of excellence when it comes to media and public relations: That the way you speak to the media is ultimately the way you come across to the fans.

The best in the business realize that the sports media is the conduit of players, coaches, executives, franchises and leagues to their fans. That's true even in this Internet era of expanded controlled communications.

Rory McIlroy gets that. He is an exciting prospect for golf not only because of his obvious talent and dedication to his craft, he is a golden asset to the game of golf because of his poise at the microphone.

If he and the other New Kids -- names such as Rickie Fowler, Adam Scott, Jason Day, Martn Kaymar, Graeme McDowell, Charl Schwartzel and Luke Donald -- are as good with their publics as they are on the course, golf will do just fine thank you in the years after the era dominated by Tiger Woods.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket 

Contrasting family storylines pump up Masters television ratings in U.S. and Canada

A final round 67 gave Phil Mickelson his third Masters title and fourth major championship Sunday at the Masters at Augusta National. It also gave the iconic tournament one of the more interesting photo finishes in the world of sport in 2010.

Images of Mickelson embracing his wife Amy in a joyous yet tearful hug Sunday went worldwide on television, internet and print at the conclusion of the Masters, which was Mickelson's first major in four years. The photograph was worth at least the proverbial thousand words given the battle Amy is fighting against breast cancer and how the illness has shaped much of what her golfer husband has done or not done on the PGA Tour over the past year.

It was an emotional moment for Lefty and his family.

It also couldn't have painted a starker contrast between Mickelson as a poster boy husband and his rival Tiger Woods, who used the Masters to return to the PGA Tour after a five-month absence triggered by his bizarre car accident November 27th, 2009 and the sex scandal that followed.

The juxtaposition of Mickelson against Woods was not lost in all of the buzz surrounding Tiger's much-anticipated comeback.

The two diametrically-opposed storylines were one of the reasons why the 2010 Masters became the third most-watched golf event in U.S. television ratings history. At a rating of 12 and a share of 25, this year's tournament ranked behind only Woods' first Masters win in 1997 (15.8 and 32) and his second title at Augusta in 2001 (12.9 and 27). Not only did the television numbers grow by 36% over 2009 on CBS in the United States, they were up 74% on Global Television in Canada, with 1.8 million Canadians watching Sunday's final round.

Numbers like that and a 43% increase on ESPN in the U.S. and audience numbers on TSN in Canada that were 76% north of the previous Masters record do not happen on the strength of hard core golf fans alone. They are fueled by so-called "soft users", ranging from sports fans who only watch headline-making golf to non-sports fans drawn by other factors (in this case the comeback of Woods and the compelling family story surrounding Mickelson).

For all the anxiety felt inside the golf industry over the past few months as its cash cow struggled through a messy media firestorm and messier public relations, could it be that the Woods scandal will only prove to be a boost for the PGA Tour?

Is it possible that the bubble bursting on the public image of Tiger Woods will have many of us finding both him and his major rivals on the tour more interesting than we did a year ago, rather than less compelling?

The early returns on the television ratings for the 2010 Masters, along with the record internet page views and online traffic around the tournament, appear to suggest exactly that.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket

If Tiger Woods can bottle some of that humility, his public relations drive will go further

He wasn't even in the game of effective crisis management in December and January...he was out of bounds on proper media relations with his unilateral video statement February 12th...in the rough with his two controlled, five-minute interviews with Tom Rinaldi of ESPN and Kelly Tilghman of the Golf Channel on March 21st.

Finally, in his third shot at it in the first three months of 2010, Tiger Woods finally made it onto the fairway of professional public relations today with his 35-minute media conference at Augusta -- his first truly interactive PR event since the bizarre car accident of November 27th, 2009 and the resulting flood of allegations and eventual admissions of infidelity throughout December.

Off the tee, Woods did the right thing by apologizing to his fellow PGA Tour players for causing them to have to deal with the fallout from his sex scandal -- while he was either silent or disrespectfully fueling even more questions by scheduling his media statements in the middle of Tour events. He was sorry for being such a distraction and for inconveniencing them as he has over the past five months.

While he is still having difficulty getting his head around some of the areas of questioning -- which will not go away anytime soon -- he still gave enough new information to make the media conference more than just a necessary evil for him; five stitches and a sore neck, a torn achilles and blood platelet therapy from Toronto's own Dr. Anthony Galea to help him heal faster.

Yet more than anything, what Tiger did right today was finally show some humility.

If Tiger Woods the athlete can find a way to bottle that humility and humanity, his public relations drive will go a lot further. It might never fully repatriate the impossibly clean image he had before the car crash and sex scandal, but it would do enough to largely restore Tiger Woods, Inc. as a billion-dollar empire and an athlete corporation valued at more than $600 million US.

To get there, he needs to strike a balance between the two very different Tigers on display today at Augusta, four days before he strikes his first ball back on Tour in the opening round of the Masters on Thursday.

The first was the Tiger who was tight, stern and sometimes short in the face of questions on the scandal. The second was a Tiger who smiled and comfortably handled the golf questions, even gushing at the prospect of playing again and winning on the PGA Tour.

The second Tiger is someone the golf media and the world haven't seen a lot of since his early years on the tour. It's a Tiger who would bring a lot of people -- fans, media and sponsors -- back into his tent over time. It might even earn him some new fans among those of us who have found it difficult to connect with the robotic Tiger, largely because he rarely worked to engage us at any level other than as a golf superstar.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket   

The Public Relations strokes of Tiger Woods: On course, but still in the rough

The thinking here that, ultimately, the most important part of the business of sport is the business of winning will be put to the test in the case of golf icon Tiger Woods.

His twinned agenda -- the first being his pursuit of the Golden Bear and 18 majors and the second his attempts to repatriate a public image badly-tarnished since the night of November 27th, 2009 -- will be dominant storylines in the golf industry throughout 2010 and into 2011.

It's clear to me that he'll do much better on the field of play -- especially on Tiger-friendly golf courses such as Augusta, Pebble Beach and St. Andrews -- than he has fared off of it in recent months.

We'll never see Tiger in exactly the same way given the events and lurid revelations which were unleashed by the bizarre automobile accident at his home last fall. But winning will go a long way, as it has with other similarly-disgraced professional athletes and sports icons in the past.

Whether it's enough in itself -- for either Tiger or his various publics -- only time will tell. What's clear is that any of us expecting a complete reinvention of Tiger Woods as a media-centered, fan-friendly professional golfer are, as veteran columnist Cam Cole wrote in today's edition of The Vancouver Sun, "dreaming in technicolour".

http://www.vancouversun.com/sports/Cagey+Tiger+Woods+plays+questions/2713561/story.html

In my books, the handling of the media and PR firestorm surrounding the car accident itself and the resulting stories around his private life ranks among the worst-ever in professional sport, at least for an athlete of Woods's profile, especially given the massive resources and infrastructure he has at his disposal.

Doing nothing but a few short written statements on http://www.tigerwoods.com/ in the first three months was a mistake, especially as many of his corporate sponsors squirmed in the unwelcome attention his actions had caused.

Then doing nothing more than a highly-controlled, overly-staged media conference February 12th was another mistake, at least in that it was done in isolation from any other public communications and in that it contained now ridiculous-sounding vagueries like "not ruling out a return to golf this year" less than a month before the plan to return to Augusta was put in motion.

What we do is one thing. How we handle what we do -- especially our mistakes -- is another. The latter is often as important as the former in rebuilding public trust and connectivity. That's why the questionable approach taken by Tiger Woods, Inc. on all of this has been unfathomable to me in terms of public relations and personal brand management.

Yet by beginning to make himself available for interviews such as those delivered by Tom Rinaldi of ESPN and Kelly Tilghman of the Golf Channel Sunday evening, Tiger Woods is now at least back on the course of proper public relations. How and when he's doing it remains suspect -- in my view, he's still in the rough in terms of "getting it" -- but at least he's taking the basic steps that are part of the territory of being a professional in general and a professional athlete in particular.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT (special edition this Friday 6-9 p.m. PT)
Facebook.com/TheSportMarket and Twitter.com/TheSportMarket

Three recommendations for Tiger Woods

He did it. The face of golf -- Tiger Woods -- actually faced the public today in what amounted to a televised statement; his first formal appearance since the bizarre November 27th, 2009 car accident and subsequent admissions of infidelity that rocked his world and created a media and public relations firestorm before Christmas.

Finally appearing live in public is a step forward for Woods in beginning the process of repatriating his personal and professional brands. He deserves kudos for doing that. Thumbs up to some of the scripted points of contrition in speech – particularly the admission that “I thought I was entitled” -- and the presence of his mom (although her folded arms were the body language of someone who found today’s session as tough if not tougher than Woods himself).

This all would have meant more if Woods had done what he did today a couple of months back. It would have shown more professional accountability and responsiveness to his key stakeholders – including the PGA Tour itself -- his corporate sponsors and the fans who make him such a marketable commodity. Think Magic Johnson on how he handled a very personal issue which had leaked into the public arena almost 20 years ago.

Thumbs down to the lag time of almost three months of silence that elapsed before he finally took the time today to address his public live. Also, thumbs down to his choice of such an overly-staged, highly-controlled format. It was nothing more than a televised scripted statement and, in my view, he’d be further on his way to repatriating his brand if he complemented a proper media conference with a personal television interview or some more human and interactive format. Think Alex Rodriguez and ESPN.

And too bad he wasn’t able to convince his wife Elin Nordegren to attend. It would have made for a much stronger televised statement and added credence to the prospects of his marriage surviving. Think Kobe Bryant.

Recommendation #1 for Tiger Woods going forward: take and heed more advice from the management team around him and his family and friends.

Recommendation #2: do what it takes to better understand the sizeable communications responsibilities of a business valued at $650 M US plus.

Recommendation #3: stop blaming tabloid media and protect the privacy of his personal and family life by being more accessible in his professional life.

Expect a follow-up relatively soon on the precise timing of when he returns to the PGA Tour. The business imperatives of playing the tour and resuming his pursuit of 18 and more majors will drive that sooner rather than later for Tiger Woods.

www.TheSportMarket.biz
The Sport Market on TEAM 1040 and teamradio.ca
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 12 noon PT