In April, the league announced a revised schedule that moved the RMC to July - and barred fans from attendance. “Having had experience with the Buick Open and Oldsmobile Scramble, along with knowledge of how Rocket Mortgage operates as a brand and company, I raised my hand.”Īll went well until this March, when the COVID-19 crisis forced the PGA to halt tournament play.
“It dawned on me that Rocket Mortgage and the PGA Tour were going to need a team to run the event,” says Langwell, who contacted the Detroit Golf Club about hosting the tournament.
By then, Langwell had joined Intersport, which represents Quicken Loans and had taken over sponsorship of a PGA event held in Washington, D.C., with the intention of rechristening it as the Rocket Mortgage Classic and bringing it to Detroit. Like many of the region’s golf fans, Langwell mourned the absence of any PGA Tour events in Michigan after the Buick Open ended and relished the idea of bringing the PGA back when the prospect presented itself in 2017. GM later hired Langwell to run R*Works, its sponsorship agency, where he oversaw the final four Buick Opens, including Tiger Woods’ 2009 win in its final year. Eventually, Langwell oversaw the Oldsmobile Scramble, which was then the world’s largest amateur golf event. He went to work for the advertising firm Interpublic Group, which handled GM’s relationship with the PGA of America, assisting with such events as the Buick Open in Grand Blanc. Once he accepted that he wasn’t a PGA-caliber player, though, he turned his attention to event and media planning. He aspired to play professionally and was a two-time NCAA Division 3 All-American at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009. And in January, Langwell announced the event had raised $1.2 million for seven local nonprofits.įor Langwell, it was a pinnacle moment in a career in golf inspired by watching at age 12 as Jack Nicklaus rallied to win the 1986 Masters. What’s more, the national sports media devoured the uplifting story of 37-year-old veteran Nate Lashley winning his first PGA Tour title. The final two rounds sold out some 10,000 fans visited for a practice-round day and the PGA Tour later honored the tournament with awards for ticket sales and for its diversity and inclusion efforts. The first RMC, played last June, was a triumph for Langwell. “From working with the PGA Tour to determine a new date to working through the logistics of our new environment, he’s been nothing less than first rate.” “It’s hard for the average person to imagine the difficulty of hosting this event in a normal year, let alone a year like this, but Jason has been tremendous,” Detroit Golf Club board member Andy Glassberg says.
That Langwell doesn’t grouse about being deprived the encore he envisioned to 2019’s smash success is one reason he’s become a go-to event coordinator for the likes of General Motors Co., Verizon, Heineken, Dos Equis, and Quicken Loans in his role as executive vice president of Intersport, a Chicago-based marketing and media agency with an office in Detroit.
#2020 rocket mortgage classic pro#
Even the lineup of pro golfers is in flux Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson, and Rickie Fowler committed in January, but as of early June, it remained unclear if those stars would recommit to the new date. Gone is everything Langwell spent a year planning, except the tournament itself. “We had to reinvent ourselves and rethink every element of the tournament.” “Honestly, it has been like starting over from scratch, because we were pretty far along with planning and execution,” says Langwell, a Michigan native and former Coldwater High golf standout.
0 kommentar(er)
