SOUTHAMPTON, NY – Mike Whan was on the move, along the dusty roads on the perimeter of the fairy tale US Open course here. Whan was in a silent, roofless wagon, a sort of successor to the work wagons he drove as a teenager in Cincinnati, when he set up traps on a country club course on hot summer days in the name of minimum wage and free afternoon golf. Whan’s US Open credentials — he’s CEO of the USGA — were tucked into his left back pocket, and if he’d ever had a hat on this warm, sunny Friday afternoon, it was long gone.
This Mike Whan can sell an egg to a mother hen – he has the ability to connect with people like nobody’s business. At this moment, he was on his way to USGA merchandise tents, because merchandise is a profit center, and the more money the USGA makes at a US Open, at any US Open, the more money there will be for the Walker Cup, the Adaptive Open, the Senior Women’s Open and others. Whan is a business guy, but the USGA is a non-profit organization with 450 employees and thousands of volunteers. It’s a good combination.
“This is kind of a bougie, late-arriving crowd,” Whan said on his way to the temple of commerce at the USGA. From the French bourgeois. Quiet luxury, cool atmosphere, all of it. “In Oakmont last year, the gates opened at 6:45, there’s 15,000 people there and they’re packing lunches,” Whan said. That was then, this is now.
Not that Whan was dissing his customer base of 2026. Never! He would never be disrespectful to the people who are helping to fund the USA Senior Women’s Festival (etc.) with $165 Peter Millar zip-up sweaters embroidered with the proud Indian head logo of this week’s host club, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club. You want to sell, you need to know your customers. You want to lead, you need to know your employees.
Whan is 61, though you wouldn’t guess it. (Full cheekbones, engaged demeanor, childlike energy at rest.) He’s been in and around golf almost his entire life. He collects golfers like some golfers collect brand name courses. In the freight tent, he knew a dozen or more workers by name or nickname and sometimes both. (Merch Mary, for example, aka Mary Lopuszynski, who runs the whole show.) Peter Millar (not a real person) is owned by South African businessman Johann Rupert, who is a mentor and advisor to Ernie Els. Whan, not surprisingly, knows both Ernie and Rupert.
Whan signed Els to TaylorMade years ago, when Whan was a marketing executive there. “Rupert wanted Ernie to be the ‘lion of South Africa,'” Whan said. He is a good storyteller though not a smooth one. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’ Tiger you already had.
“We did some research, asked people to give us three words to describe Ernie. They came back with big, easily AND calm. We came up with ‘The Big Easy’. Gary McCord ran with it on CBS. He was a TaylorMade guy.” Knowing your customers turns the business world into business. Knowing people makes the world go round, period.
Driving around the edges of the course Whan knew something about almost every player he saw and sometimes the ones he couldn’t. A golfer he couldn’t see hit a drive right over Whan’s head, with a whistle that sounded almost like an airplane taking off. A minute or two later, the trio appeared: Ben Silverman, Adrien Dumont de Chassart and Emiliano Grillo. “It had to be Grillo,” Whan said of the whistle-blower, and it was.
Whan’s dark horse pick for the week, before the first shot was fired, was Max Greyserman. He likes Max’s game and he likes Max. What didn’t lead to the office pool. The USGA does not have a US Open office pool.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, the preamble days of this and all US Opens, were tough for Whan and his men. Whan was studying the wind forecast, preparing for a semi-dedicated press conference fascinating subject of ODS (general distance standard) test protocols, receiving Stimp speed notifications. Thursday morning was rougher still, with a fog delay extending by 15 minutes every 15 minutes.
But now it was Friday afternoon, the sun was out, the spectators were out, the weather worries were over and the broadcast had begun. Perhaps the most important piece of business Whan has done in the last year or two was extending the USGA’s deal with NBC Sports by six years, through 2032. Now Whan was driving his cart to the NBC Sports complex, an annual visit for him. It was about a mile of dusty trails to get there from the cargo tent. On the way there, Whan only got lost a few times.
He was greeted there by Dave Giancola, a USGA media executive; by Tommy Roy, longtime NBC Sports golf producer; by Tom Randolph, Roy’s longtime deputy; by half a dozen other people who knew by name and nickname. The energy and speed of a broadcast trailer, with its controlled chaos and convenient countdown and 30 or more screens vying for your attention, seemed like a natural home for Whan, with his peripatetic energy.
A major championship is many different things and one of those things is a television show. For Whan, US Open 2024 in Pinehurst it was the gift of all gifts: Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau dueling in the sun, enemies at best, different in every possible way. If you follow golf, you know how he played. “I rented a big house in the country, I had my family there, I had my golf cart,” Whan said. You can relate to this guy, right?
And now it was two years later and Whan was at Shinnecock Hills, and again he had his golf cart. The forecast was for good weekend weather. The forecast was for good weekend golf.
When he found his way to the back door of the media center, another stop along the way on his Friday afternoon tour. It happened when one of his marketing employees came out of a freezer with a candy in hand.
“Geller, look at you, you’re going for an ice cream sandwich — don’t hang in there,” Whan said.
The man’s name is not Geller. It’s Greg Ross. Only Whan calls him “Geller”, after the character Ross Geller from the TV series “Friends”, the tall, dark-haired character played by David Schmimmer. Everything tells: the single nickname; where the name of the show comes from; the stolen moment of a boy taking a treat from a refrigerator; the boss noticing and having fun with it. Yep, USGA CEO, cool at the US Open!
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com
