Jeff Kleiber talks about the SAS Championship to WRAL-TV (2009).

2010 is here and the countdown to the 10th SAS Championship is officially underway.  It is hard to believe that this September’s event will be the tenth time that the Legends of Golf will compete at Prestonwood Country Club for the annual title.  It will be my eighth SAS Championship since joining Octagon and moving to North Carolina, which really seems like yesterday, but I get a daily reminder that it has been longer than that with my first grade son, who was a newborn when we moved here, and third grade daughter, who had just turned two back in the spring of 2003.  Time has flown, thankfully I have had a lot of fun working with all that have made the SAS Championship a great event.

The Champions Tour got a dream start to the season this past weekend with the veteran Tom Watson out “birdying” rookie Fred Couples in the first event of the year.  The 2010 Champions Tour Rookie Class is probably the strongest in ten years, when Watson was a rookie with Kite, Crenshaw and Lanny Wadkins.  This year’s class features Couples, Paul Azinger, and Corey Pavin who all played in Hawaii, plus Mark Calcavecchia who turns 50 in June and Kenny Perry who turns 50 in August, plus others.  It is really amazing to be involved with the Champions Tour, where your rookies each year typically have more than a dozen PGA TOUR wins, some with Major Championships.

It is refreshing after the headlines of the last few months to finally see headlines related to what happens inside the ropes, instead of what happened far outside the ropes.  The Champions Tour has put together a great schedule and I am sure Loren Roberts’ defense of his second Charles Schwab Cup won’t be decided until November in San Francisco.

I wanted to make sure everyone was aware of a couple of honors that were awarded over the last few months:

First, title sponsor SAS, was named by Fortune Magazine the “Best Place to Work in America.”  This is a tremendous honor for SAS, who had been ranked as high as second in 2001, and has been ranked all 13 years that the magazine has published the list.   Congratulations to Dr. Jim Goodnight for his incredible leadership and vision.

Second, the SAS Championship was named by the Champions Tour as the “Most Improved Event” for 2009.  The pessimist in the group, might ask were we bad in 2008?  However, in awarding the honor, Tom Alter, the Champions Tour’s Vice President of Business Affairs, lauded all of the new things that were successfully introduced in 2009 including the Prestonwood Member Kick-Off Evening, Octagon Insight Series Event – Golf is Not a Four Letter Word, Link To Green – Networking Event, golf cart parking areas for members, 18th Green Patio, charity book drive, AT&T’s expansion of Family Day activities, and the artwork from our charity at the main tournament entrance.

The economic challenges that everyone faced in 2009 motivated our team to look at absolutely everything we do and question the whys, hows and whats.  Why do we do it that way?  How could we do it better?  What could make the greatest impact for our volunteers, corporate partners, patrons, players, etc.?  I, being the optimist, believe that is why we received this great honor from the Champions Tour. 

I, again being the optimist, believe we could win this honor annually.  We have a great venue - I am not sure there are better facilities on TOUR.  We have great partners – using their SAS Championship assets to grow and promote their businesses.  We have an active community with great support from the Town of Cary, Cary Chamber of Commerce, Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce, Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau, and The Raleigh Sports Council.  We have a great team – SAS Management, Prestonwood Staff, Volunteer Chairs, and Octagon Staff.  Most importantly, we have great people who are engaged with the SAS Championship – hundreds of volunteers, thousands of patrons, all of our corporate partners, and of course the Champions Tour players.

I am looking forward to making the 10th SAS Championship the best yet.  We will be sharing with you over the next few months our plans for this year, but as always if you have a good suggestion, question, or concern, please let me know.