Pete Fisch found out in a hurry the difference between promoting minor-league baseball and professional golf.
"One thing in golf is, when it rains, it doesn't matter," Fisch said. "In baseball, when it rains, you cover the field, but I haven't been able to find a big enough tarp to cover a golf course."
Fisch, who spent nine years as the general manager of the Winston-Salem Warthogs, resigned two years ago to take a job with his old boss, Don Beaver, at Rock Barn Golf & Spa. Fisch had worked with Beaver for 15 years, all with the Warthogs, but when Beaver sold the Warthogs, Fisch later decided to leave.
This year's Greater Hickory Classic will be held from Aug. 20-22
Fisch spent last year getting his feet wet when it came to tournament operations for the Champions Tour tournament. He is more comfortable this time around because he has some experience in what it takes to put on a major tournament. As head of tournament operations, Fisch has his hands in a lot of aspects surrounding the tournament.
"The casual, laid-back atmosphere of golf is probably the biggest difference," Fisch said. "You are not dealing with the in-your-face excitement of promotion like you sometimes did with baseball. Instead, the fans want to see good golf and have all the amenities they can have on a golf course when they are watching a tournament."
Fisch, 37, who still lives in Winston-Salem with his family and commutes at least four times a week to Rock Barn, says that in baseball, you work all summer to make sure everything runs as smooth as possible. Now, he has to get everything planned and make sure everything goes well for just one week out of the year.
One of his main focuses is making sure fans are comfortable.
"We've been working with everything from the concessions to the bathrooms to trying to make sure there is enough shade," Fisch said. "You are dealing with a different kind of people compared to baseball. In baseball, there's a crosscut of everybody, and a golf tournament attracts a different type of fan."
Fisch says that getting a chance to work for Beaver again has been great.
"Ownership changed, and I had an opportunity to go back with Don, so I came back, and it had been planned that I would be working about 50 percent with his baseball clubs and 50 percent with the golf," Fisch said. "But now that we are getting closer to the tournament, it's more like 99 percent golf and one percent baseball."
Beaver, who still owns the Hickory Crawdads, says that Fisch has brought that same baseball mentality to golf, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
"Pete Fisch practically ran the club there in Winston-Salem for nine years and he still helps me with the baseball," Beaver said. "But he's really helped me on this tournament and he knows how to sell and how to operate and manage. So Pete's made that transition to golf really well and he's been super."
Fisch acknowledges he didn't know much about golf before taking the job but has learned on the fly. He still doesn't play much golf, but he has gone to the driving range a little more than he used to.
"I've learned so much about golf the last two years or so, and I'm not an avid golfer," he said. "I used to golf a few times a year; now I find myself out on the driving range after work. But everyone says it must be great to work on a golf course because you must get to play every day, but that's not really the case."
At last year's Greater Hickory Classic, the Champions Tour players raved about the crowds and how large they were for the three days. Fisch says that even though the Hickory area isn't that large, he says one of the reasons the fans turned out was because the tournament is the communities' own.
"I think in this area, it's new and it's something they can identify with," Fisch said. "They don't have to identity with something in Charlotte or Greensboro or Winston so I think that's why it was a popular tournament last year and we think it's going to be even better this year."
Source: Winston-Salem Journal (Winston Salem, NC)