Joe Steranka has come a long way since his days as the public relations director of the Cleveland Cavaliers 20 years ago, when he tried to put a positive spin on a franchise forced to sell off players to meet payroll. Today, the 48-year-old is the CEO of the PGA of America, overseeing the world’s largest working sports organization. With one of the PGA’s crown jewels, the 2006 Ryder Cup, underway at The K Club in Straffan, Ireland, Steranka took time to chat about where he and his employer are headed.
Anthony Cotton: Let’s start with what this past week has been like for you.
Joe Steranka: Every time that you come to Europe with a U.S. Ryder Cup team, it’s a special feeling. You very much get the sense that national pride is at stake, especially abroad. We Americans tend to stick together; everybody kind of watches each other’s back and supports one another. Add to that the job Tom Lehman has done to build this team and his leadership, it just makes us all proud that we chose him.
AC: I’d like to get into that a little bit, but I’m curious – given the state of world affairs, is that reflected here? Have you picked up an anti-American sentiment?
JS: No, I’m really speaking more about little things. One of the great things about the Ryder Cup is that it’s an escape for so many people from what’s going on in the world. Golf is supposed to be a leisurely activity you play with your friends, or a time to be entertained when you’re watching at home, and the Ryder Cup is the pinnacle of that. It’s the biggest appointment date that we have, in terms of making sure you watch.
AC: What goes into the decision of choosing a captain?
JS: You start with someone you feel is in touch with the players who will be on that team and who has their respect. Tom is huge in both of those areas. Tom’s performance at the (World Match Play Championship) and at Castle Pines showed that he can relate. He knows how it feels to go out there and have to hit a shot. It’s very much something the players can relate to. And you don’t get respect only in the year leading up to it, it exists through what you’ve done in your career. And we want people who are jazzed about the captaincy; who want to represent America and represent the game.
AC: What would the PGA’s position have been if Tom had won The International (which would have moved him into a position to secure a berth as a player on his own team). That idea was hanging overhead all season long.
JS: We would have supported him being a playing captain if he would have qualified and felt he could have been a contributor. We were prepared to support that, to make more administrative help or assistant captain help available if it were necessary.
AC: Tiger Woods had strong feelings for Mark O’Meara being captain, with the event taking place in Ireland. There’s always been talk that you have to be in your 40s to be captain; is that a hard-and-fast rule or just a guideline?
JS: Going back to relating to players, usually it’s a player who’s been out there 15 to 25 years who has played well and been successful in some of golf’s biggest events, starting with the majors. Having experience with the Ryder Cup is also very important. If you had someone very popular with the players and had their respect, but hadn’t played in the Ryder Cup, something would be missing.
It seems like every few years there are these windows, whether it was Hale Irwin when Dave Stockton was captain, or Larry Nelson when Tom Kite was selected, or Tom Lehman and Mark O’Meara, where someone who meets all the criteria isn’t selected. You’ll always have four to five people who have those qualities for (only) three Ryder Cups.
AC: If Tom were to reverse this trend and the U.S. won the Cup this week, there could be a groundswell for him to return in 2008. But the pipeline of guys, as you say, is so thick right now, that would create something of a dilemma, wouldn’t it?
JS: There are a number of players who have those qualities we look for, so yes, we are headed into one of those periods where we have more people than Cups available over the next 10 years.
AC: The European Tour unabashedly says it has to make money from the Cup. Are you guys as direct?
JS: Similar to the United States Golf Association, the way we’re able to fund a lot of the things we do, growing interest and participation in the game, elevating the standards of being a golf professional, the playing, education and teaching standards, we spend $30 million to $40 million a year on those things. The PGA Championship is our biggest revenue generator because it’s every year, but that and the Ryder Cup is what generates about 50-60 percent of that $40 million. We take a very professional business approach to it, but we’re much more conservative than the European Tour when it comes to the commercial aspects of it.
AC: Is it a situation where the PGA and the Cup go hand-in-hand? That if you get one, you’re also going to get the other?
JS: Around the mid-’90s we were looking to take the PGA Championship to the next level, and we were able to do multiyear agreements for a couple of Championships and the Ryder Cup on some courses that hadn’t hosted them before, like Medinah (outside Chicago) and Hazeltine (in Minnesota). At the time, the PGA was still climbing in terms of its prestige among the majors. Now it stands on its own. Now we can do some PGA Championship things that don’t have the Ryder Cup connected to them.
AC: And what is your relationship with the USGA? It seems like there was a period where your organizations were competing pretty strongly for venues for your major championships.
JS: We both introduced some new venues that have been very successful, Valhalla (Kentucky) on our side and Bethpage (New York) on theirs. Them going to Torrey Pines (California) and us then getting Whistling Straits (Wisconsin). The field for venues has expanded.
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
