There was a story going around Augusta National in April about a man in a green jacket, which was ironic because during the Masters, there are any number of people walking around in green jackets.
The story goes something like this:
A young boy and his dad were visiting the course on one of the practice days early in the week when the boy sustained a serious cut and needed immediate attention. A doctor was on hand, but he needed help. He needed first-aid supplies. He needed someone, anyone, in that huge gallery to go get help.
From out of the crowd walked the man in the green jacket, confident and cool, a striking man with a glint in his eye and an assured demeanor that everything would be all right.
“You just wait here,” he said to the group on the ground where the boy was bleeding and scared. “I’ll be right back.”
In a short time, the man returned carrying an armload of first-aid equipment. Right there on the golf course, the doctor mended his patient, wiped the tears from the boy’s eyes and sent them on their way. No one knew the doctor’s name. But the man in the green jacket was a familiar face.
He was from Greensboro.
His name was Bobby Long.
We were done
Few of us really know Bobby Long. We know he’s the chairman of the influential Piedmont Triad Charitable Foundation’s board of governors, a group that only sounds like a bunch of stuffed shirts and self-important men. And were it not for Long, the board might very well be just that.
But that’s not how he does business.
“Bobby Long is the most humble person I know,” says Mark Brazil, the tournament director of the Wyndham Championship being played this week at Sedgefield Country Club. “He’s real, and he saved this golf tournament.”
In the eyes of many, Long is the Wyndham Championship. He deflects such talk and credits people around him, but the truth is, were it not for Bobby Long of Greensboro, there would be no Wyndham Championship this week or any week.
It’s a familiar story by now. We’d lost the tournament in the eyes of the PGA Tour. The local Jaycees had done all they could to keep the tournament solvent, but when Chrysler pulled out as the sponsor in 2006, its run had ended.
PGA schedule plans leaked out for 2007, and they did not include Greensboro. After 68 years since Sam Snead won the first Greater Greensboro Open, we were done. Our run had ended, too.
This was about home
Long, 59, was a recently retired insurance executive at the time, a businessman with money, clout and time on his hands. He also had a plan to save the GGO. His plan wasn’t just about golf.
Like many in the Triad business community, he’d watched several big companies leave the area, watched as entire industries left, taking jobs and part of Greensboro’s soul with them. Losing the golf tournament, our signature event since 1938, seemed somehow fitting. And symbolic.
“We’d lost our swagger,” Long says.
It sounds simple, but that was the driving influence for Long. We needed to get our swagger back.
Long was just the man for that. A guy’s guy, he had friends who would follow him wherever he led. Whether it be a fishing trip to New Zealand or a fundraising drive to develop a law school at Elon University, he had that certain charm and assurance that he knew exactly what he was doing.
“He’s the kind of man who gets people’s attention,” says Steve Holmes, Wyndham Worldwide chairman and chief executive officer. “When he has an idea, people listen.”
Long had more in mind than fishing and golf. He was, and is, a businessman at heart. And this was about home.
“This was about much more than a golf tournament,” he says. “This was about bringing us together again as a city and a region.”
Better because of Long
When the tournament announced a 10-year extension with Wyndham and BB&T and the PGA Tour this year, tour commissioner Tim Finchem came to Greensboro. He came because this tournament has become a model for how tournaments should be run. He came because 10-year extensions in today’s economy are rare. And he came because he wanted to shake hands with Long.
“This is a signal event,” Finchem says. "This tournament gets better every year, and it's because of Bobby Long and his people. This city is so fortunate to have someone like Bobby. He’s the real deal.”
And not just for this tournament and this region but for tournaments across the state. When the tournament in Charlotte announced a few years ago that it would bring the 2017 PGA Championship to Quail Hollow, the club there needed help. They needed somewhere to move the Wells Fargo Championship for one year to keep its own sponsorship, to keep its own spot on the Tour schedule and to maintain its presence as one of the most respected tour stops in golf.
Again, it was Long who stepped forward.
Long arranged for the Charlotte folks to meet with club members at Eagle Point Golf Club in Wilmington, where he is president. A handshake sealed a deal.
It wasn’t about territory. It wasn’t about Greensboro vs. Charlotte. It was about doing the right thing.
“Bobby is a good friend to so many people for so many reasons,” Finchem says. “He’s so important to this region and is important to some things we’re doing on the PGA Tour. He’s a good friend to us in many ways.”
Bringing it back
In this day and age, a handshake is hardly a binding agreement. But for Long, it’s a bond. He’s an old-school guy, his friends say. But he’s very quiet and unassuming in his business dealings and his friendships.
Holmes, the Wyndham CEO, says from the moment he met Long they became friends, not just partners.
“We saw things the same way, and that’s rare," Holmes says. “I felt like this was something that was going to work, not just for us and for this tournament but for the Triad, for the business community of this region and for the people here. Bobby is a wonderful ambassador for Greensboro and for the people in the Piedmont Triad.
“You have a gem here, and his name is Bobby Long.”
Brazil, the tournament director, is careful not to say too much about his friend and his associate. Long is very protective of his private life, and he’s far too humble to take credit for all that’s happened here since he and his partners set out to save the golf tournament.
“He talks about partnerships and trusts, and that’s what drives everything he does," Brazil says. “When you’re dealing with people, whether it be business or just in building relationships, you don’t hold anything back. You put your cards on the table and look people in the eye. I feel like I have an MBA from Harvard just from hanging around Bobby. His deals usually end with a handshake. In this day and age, that’s almost unheard of.”
Long has more plans for the tournament and more plans for the area. He’ll keep those to himself for now, but his ideas tend to get noticed. He and his wife, Kathryn, are active philanthropists in areas we don’t always hear about – scholarships and trusts, civic affairs from our ballpark to the performing arts center.
Where we go from here is anyone’s guess, but Long says it won’t just be about golf.
“We’ll never rest on our laurels,” he says. “No matter how far we’ve come, we’re going to keep going at that pace. We aren’t going to level out. Working with these people, and the way we work, makes me feel good. It makes me feel good about the world.
“The reason I got into this to begin with is because our spirit was down. We’d lost a lot of companies, and growing up here I saw this an as an iconic event, and I didn’t want to lose this tournament too. Regionalism, from a business standpoint, was the only way to propel this thing, raise our spirits and do some economic development as well.”
The tournament has brought back this city’s can-do attitude. There was a time when we stopped doing big things. There was a time when we lost our way, and the dying days of the old GGO was a symbol of that.
Long became a symbol of how we used to get things done here and how we can do those things again. There’s an old-school charm about him that reminds us of the way we were. They weren’t days of smoke-filled back-room decisions, but handshakes among gentlemen.
“We wanted to bring that back,” he says. “We wanted it spread to other areas. We’re not going to stop, either. We’re working on a couple of things now that are monstrously transformational for this region, and it’s all come out of this tournament.”
Bobby Long will be wearing a blue blazer this week, comfortable among his own people, confident in his style and in his stature. In that sense, he’s more than just one of us. He is us.
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