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 In the days following this year's Northern Trust Open, won by Phil Mickelson at Riviera Country Club just outside of Los Angeles, information surfaced that Northern Trust, a company that had received government capital as part of one of the various financial rescue plans, had wined and dined its clients the week of the tournament, putting them up in the Beverly Wilshire, hosting concerts by Sheryl Crow and Earth, Wind and Fire and supplying some of them with Tiffany and Co. souvenir bags.
Congress took exception, and sent the bank a letter condeming the actions, calling the behavior "irresponsible and arrogant."
Northern Trust quickly defending itself, noting the tournament-related
activites would have occurred with or without bailout money. A letter
by the bank to Congress also expressed regret that the negative
reaction caused by perceived "excess" had taken away from the event's
charitable contributions.
On Wednesday at the Verizon Heritage, the always classy Davis Love III,
who is in the field in Hilton Head this week looking for his sixth
Heritage title, gave his opinion about the situation, and it was good,
I mean really good. Would you expect anything else from a UNC graduate?
Here are Love's comments in their entirety:
"It took a way bigger hit than we needed to," Love said when asked
about the hit the Tour had taken in the days after the Northern Trust
Open. "There were two members of Congress that said negative things
about the Tour. One of them didn't realize how much money we give to
charity, and didn't realize what an impact a Tour event has on the
economy of that city that week and that state and that economy.
"What people need to realize is, yes, Verizon is spending a lot of
money this week, but that's how they're a successful company. Only
successful companies are sponsors on the Tour. If you're not
successful, you can't afford it. You're successful because you've
learned how to create value, create a brand, take care of your
customers, and it's not that the whole company shuts down for a week
and comes and has a party. It's the people who spend money with Verizon
that drives their business, which is good for the economy. And that's
what Tim (Finchem) and the staff are trying to spread the message
about.
"The more the Tour is successful and these companies that sponsor the
Tour are successful, it helps the economy, it doesn't hurt the economy.
And that's the problem I think with the consumer confidence, people are
scared to spend money. Well, if you spend money and people start buying
things, and the confidence comes back, the economy can come out the
recession. But if everybody sits back and says, I'm not going to spend
money at Harbour Town because the economy is bad, that hurts. It
trickles down. It's not just that company not spending, it goes all the
way down through this whole community. And that's where we're seeing
the hit is in the restaurants and the hotels and it spins down.
"So we've made a big push with Congress, certainly, and the media,
saying, hey, don't knock us back because that's hurting the communities
that we go to," he added. "It's hurting the charities. They don't take
150,000 out of our purse, they take 150,000 out of our charities. We're
working hard to make sure the charity dollars stay up as well as the
purses. But, yeah, we need to get that message out there that these
events do more than just pay players to play and corporate
entertainment."
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