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The first Humana Challenge will be remembered for champion Mark Wilson (above), a windy Saturday and the multiple appearances by former President Bill Clinton.
President Bill Clinton signs autographs at the Humana Challenge.
A scoreboard fell into a lake on a windy Saturday at the Humana Challenge.
The field of pros for the Humana Challenge was well received, with players such as Phil Mickelson returning to the event. / Omar Ornelas, The Desert Sun
Officials hope to attract more celebrities, such as Morgan Freeman, for next year’s event. / Wade Byars, The Desert Sun
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Mike McCallister believes that for a year of big changes and big additions, things went pretty smoothly at the Humana Challenge in partnership with the William J. Clinton Foundation.
But things can and will get better, McCallister promised.
“There have been a lot of good golf tournaments. This one was very iconic,” said McCallister, the CEO of Humana, whose eight-year sponsorship of the event is credited in part with reviving the local PGA Tour event. “But the idea of trying to drive the (health) agenda, that's new. So we are going to get better and better.”
In assessing the success of the first year of the tournament's association with both Humana and the Clinton Foundation, the general belief is it was good but will get better.
“We have to embrace that our future is going to be unbelievable, not only in the eyes and minds of the players, but the Clinton Foundation's presence here is going to grow and grow and grow,” said Larry Thiel, tournament chairman of the event.
Thiel said he is sending out questionnaires to pros and amateurs alike to get their feelings on the changes at the event this year. But already Thiel and McCallister know one roaring success for the pros was the altered format.
Instead of five days of golf on four courses and playing with three amateur partners each day, pros played just four days on three courses, with two pros and two amateurs in each foursome.
“The format modification was definitely a very, very positive thing,” Thiel said. “There are a lot of pros that I know very well, older pros, who I took aside and talked to, and they didn't have to say anything. Universally, they said, ‘Larry this was huge.'”
The tournament's winner agreed that the changes helped the event.
“This format change was a huge improvement for the tournament,” Mark Wilson said. “And I think pace of play's been a little bit better and us pros certainly like it, and I hope the amateurs like it, too. They get to play with two different pros each day and six total for the week. I think it's all positive.”
Another aspect of the tournament, one that Humana is specifically focused on, is the theme of health and wellness.
McCallister said he was happy to see so many fans line up for pedometers that were handed out free at the event and at the Humana Well-Being Tour trailer. But the theme also includes the “Health Matters” conference on Tuesday. McCallister said this year's event was a good call to action, and more concrete results will be seen in coming years.
“We were all kind of uncertain about how it was going to go. Clearly the tour has never had a themed tournament, so that was the kickoff,” McCallister said. “We had a good conference. I think that part will be stronger next year. We've already had some conversations about what we might do different, maybe how to integrate a few more players into it.”
While golf fans might not have had much to do with the conference this year, they did seem to respond to an improved professional field for the tournament that included four of the top 25 players in the world, including the return of Phil Mickelson to the event. While tour officials said the field could measure up to other tour events, both Thiel and McCallister said they hope the field continues to improve.
“The sentiment was that there were a lot of positive vibes from the players,” Thiel said. “The idea is that the players who were here are going to want to be here next year.”
“It will probably be a little heavier lifting to get some of the international guys that are in that top 25,” McCallister said. “But I think you have to be pretty positive about how things have developed this year and that's going to be one of the questions I'm going to ask when this is all over. What would interest people? How do you get those people? Some of them may be scheduling issues that are not reconcilable, I don't know.”
A better field seemed to translate into more people on the golf courses. While the tournament isn't prepared to release ticket sales just yet, waiting for totals from outlets and at the gate, Thiel believes the community came out and supported the event.
“It's fair to say we had a significant increase in attendance,” he said. “If it hadn't been for the wind Saturday, we would have had a significant increase in activities on site.”
Many of those activities were in the enlarged Hope Square, with food and interactive features. For all the things that worked well, there were other areas where the tournament didn't enjoy as much success.
One area was in television ratings, where the Sunday ratings on Golf Channel were down 29 percent from 2011 even though more households were watching than last year. That was in part because the Humana broadcast was against the Fox broadcast of the NFC championship game between the New York Giants and the San Francisco 49ers, which drew 57.6 million viewers, the most in 30 years for that game.
The desert tournament has been saddled with a date against the championship football games for much of the last decade, though dates for 2013 and beyond are undecided for now.
The weather didn't cooperate in the third round, with winds causing damage and forcing the round to be suspended and completed Sunday before the fourth round.
“The folks here have run a lot of tournaments. It's not the first time they have done this,” McCallister said. “The weather, well, that was unfortunate. But the tournament itself has been well run.”
The other issue of concern for some fans was a celebrity field that, while featuring top-name celebrities, wasn't as large as fans have come to expect in past years. Originally, organizers talked of as many as 21 celebrities, but the field eventually had just 11.
“We wanted to have a balance of entertainment, movie stars, athletes,” Thiel said. “It just didn't work out that way. We underestimated how late in the game you can be in soliciting celebrities. We need to revisit it and seek that balance.”
In the end, Thiel said the Humana, the Clinton Foundation and the PGA Tour were pleased with the first year of an eight-year commitment to the desert event.
“We reached expectations far beyond what they had in the first year,” Thiel said.
