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Peter Jacobsen Productions
Founder & CEO Peter Jacbosen |
PETER JACOBSEN is a 29-year veteran of the PGA Tour and one of golf’s more colorful personalities. He has done television commentary and reporting for ABC and NBC, written two books (“Buried Lies” and “Embedded Balls”) and hosts two shows on The Golf Channel. He is also the Founder & CEO of Peter Jacobsen Productions Inc., a sports marketing, sponsorship and event management company. In his first year of eligibility on the Champions Tour, Jacobsen won the ’04 U.S. Senior Open. He spoke recently with SportsBusiness Journal
New York bureau chief
Jerry Kavanagh.
| Favorite piece of music: Jethro Tull’s “Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day.” It’s got some great lyrics in there. It says, “Sometimes you feel like everybody else is on the stage and you’re the only one sitting in the audience.” |
| Favorite authors: DEEPAK CHOPRA and STEPHEN KING. |
| Favorite golf movie: I would have to say “Caddyshack.” My first job was on a maintenance crew in Portland, so I greatly identified with the movie. |
| Athletes you most enjoy watching: MICHAEL JORDAN and LANCE ARMSTRONG. |
| Best professional advice: BRUCE CUDD, a friend of mine and a former professional golfer, told me, “Don’t look back on your round and don’t dwell on the negatives. Don’t ever let golf be a series of should-haves, could-haves and would-haves. Focus on the positives and keep moving forward.” |
| Best career decision: I got a call in 1978 from JACK LEMMON. He said he heard I was a young player on tour with a personality and a sense of humor, and would I want to drag him around the AT&T Pro-Am as his partner? I remember thinking to myself, “Do I want to play with Jack Lemmon, which could be a distraction, or would I want to play and just have fun?” I figured even if it was a distraction, it was going to be a hell of a lot of fun for a week at Pebble Beach. So I did that. We were partners for 19 years. One of the best decisions I ever made. |
Q: RAY FLOYD said, “They call it golf because all the other four-letter words were taken,” and WILLIAM WORDSWORTH called golf “strenuous idleness.” How would you define golf?
Jacobsen: I’ve always defined golf as a day in the life. You wake up and move through your daily activities. You’ve got surprises and successes, failures and defeats. At the end of the day, you assess everything that happened. That’s like a round of golf. You get to the first tee, and your entire day is in front of you. If you have a lot of birdies and bogeys, that’s success and failure in the same time frame. You putt out on 18. You have a chance to assess what happened during the day. You put your head on the pillow at night and then get up and do it all over again.
Q: You said your father told you the most important part of golf is a sense of humor, and that he also “appreciated how important the game was in shaping personality.”
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Jacobsen Believes Sense Of Humor
Most Important Aspect Of Any Sport |
Jacobsen: That’s the most important aspect of any game we play, and it’s why I get so upset when I watch an NBA game. It looks like the players, when they’re coming in and out of time-outs, are on tranquilizers. They’ve got very little emotion. To me, a game -- whatever game it is -- is meant for us to take a chuckle at each other and at ourselves. When I hit a five iron two feet from the hole and I tap it in for a birdie, well, that was a very good shot. But if I hit that same five iron on the next hole and the ball goes into the water, that’s not a good shot. But that’s the elusive part of the game. They say you can rent it from time to time but you can never own it. So, a sense of humor is essential, not only for the game of golf but for all sports and in our lives as well.
Q: In any discussion with you or about you, the word “fun” crops up repeatedly. In “Buried Lies” you devote an entire chapter to your longtime pro-am partner, Jack Lemmon, of whom it was said, “He’s been in more bunkers than EVA BRAUN.”
Jacobsen: I started playing as a young man because it was fun. And it’s a challenge. Baseball, basketball and football are team sports. I also call them “eraser” sports. DONOVAN MCNABB can throw a terrible pass, but a receiver can make a great catch of that pass. A player can “erase” a mistake by a teammate. In golf, it’s all up to you. And I think if you take it too seriously and yourself too seriously, you’re not going to be in the game that long. I always wanted to try to keep it in perspective.
Q: Regarding the PGA Tour, you said, “We’ve got to quit stiff-arming the public. ... The PGA Tour is the playground for the passion that exists in all these golf fans. And we need to treat it as such, or we’re in trouble.” What is the biggest challenge for the Tour?
Jacobsen: To continue to bring the public inside the ropes with the players. That’s why pro-ams are so popular. They give [the fan] an opportunity to be able to tee it up in the same foursome with TIGER WOODS and live out a dream. That’s the type of interaction we get that other pro sports do not. Do you realize that on a regular basis, PGA Tour players get an opportunity to spend five, six hours with the corporate CEOs that are the movers and shakers not only in business but also in professional sports in this country? That is a huge advantage for the PGA Tour and great opportunities for PGA Tour players.
Q: Golf provides more inside access for everybody.
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Jacobsen Sees Player Accessibility
As Huge Advantage For PGA Tour |
Jacobsen: That’s where we have a leg up on the other sports. When fans come to watch the Masters or the U.S. Open or any PGA Tour event, the only thing that keeps them out is a nylon rope. When you think about it, in this society today people don’t really want to respect or recognize boundaries. If you look at a parade route, people always want to walk over the barricades and go wherever they want to go. But golf crowds respect that yellow rope. And I don’t think it’s such a difficult thing for us to give a five-, or ten- or 12-year-old kid a high five when we’re going over to get a drink of water or saying “Hi, how ya doin’?” That’s basically grabbing the golf fan and pulling him inside the rope.
Q: That’s also creating a fan for life.
Jacobsen: It is. But it’s so easy to lose a fan. All you have to do is treat the fan with no respect. One of the things that drives me nuts today is the players are having their caddies yell at the top of their lungs, “Quiet, please! Stop moving!” And if a fan does move or takes a picture or crinkles a bag of chips while the player is hitting a shot, the caddy or the player will turn and glare and maybe yell at the fan. I’d rather have that fan here making noise than not here.
Q: Of ARNOLD PALMER, you wrote, “I can have no bigger honor as a golfer than to be partners with the man who’s done so much for golf.” You said he is “probably most responsible of all for the great showcase known as the PGA Tour.”
Jacobsen: I truly believe that. Going back to the balance between entertainment and business, I don’t think anybody’s done it better than Arnold. He could focus on golf, but then he would get out of the focus and be a human being again. I think that’s what television loves so much about Arnold, and I think that’s what got people to focus so much on the PGA Tour. We need more [players] to understand that there is a perspective. Yes, we need [them] to win and play hard, but don’t forget that there are a lot of paying customers behind the ropes who simply want to see you smile. That’s the one thing Arnold did better than anyone in the history of the game.
