The sponsor for the Phoenix Open is the Waste Management company. Most of us know them because we see the logo on the garbage truck that picks up our trash. They are taking their logo and making it part of a unique donation to the The First Tee — a non-profit organization that uses golf to educate youth and promote life-values like integrity and respect.
Waste Management has taken its logo (the WM) and made a 120 foot high, eight-ton logo floating in the lake on the 18th hole. It is made up of 140,000 recycled golf balls collected from water hazards on golf courses. If that is not unique enough for you, the golf balls will be donated to The First Tee of Arizona to be used in their golf programs.
This is just one of many recycling initiatives implemented by Waste Management at the Phoenix Open. Below is a video highlighting the Zero Waste Challenge. Watch the video and at the one minute mark you will see the floating logo.
One thing that the golf world does well is charity work via sponsors donating to charities, players supporting charities, and players creating charities. Birdies for the Brave supports a number of “military outreach programs” providing help to soldiers and their families.
In 2003 Phil Mickelson, and his wife Amy, started Birdies for the Brave. The basic premise was that for every birdie or eagle Phil made during a tournament money would be donated to two charities. Phil was on top of his game in 2003 therefore $100 for every birdie and $500 for every eagle was a great way to raise money for the designated charities (Special Operations Warrior Foundation and Homes For Our Troops.)
In 2006, Birdies for the Brave became an official PGA tour charity. Today, a number of players participate supporting a variety of military charities; and new fund-raising events have been developed to encourage local golf clubs to support the charity. According to the PGA, Birdies for the Brave has “raised more than $6.5 million for military-homefront charities.”
On February 2nd, The White House announced the 20 finalists for the Joining Forces Community Challenge. This is the initiative led by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden to encourage support of our troops. Birdies for the Brave was one of 20 finalists! There were hundreds of nominations so I was pleased to see them listed.
The great thing is that you can go and vote for your favorite charity. The “winners” will be announced in March. The website is easy to navigate. You do have to sign-up to vote (but it takes just a few minutes). And, you can vote daily for your favorite cause.
I voted for Birdies for the Brave but there are a number of other great charities to vote for at the Joining Forces website.
Most people think of golf as an “old boys” sport and there is some truth to that view if you only look at the demographics which indicate a lot of middle-aged and older men play golf. However, if you do follow golf you know times are changing. There is a new breed of golf professional who sometimes wield social media as well as they do a golf club.
Watching various interviews, you can tell the younger golf professionals (or “young guns”) are very respectful of the traditions of golf, are in awe of golf legends, and want to be part of golf history. But they are also part of the online generation and some of their off-course antics are anything but traditional. The best way to show you that these golfer’s are not your father’s professionals is with the video of the Golf Boys starring Ben Crane along with Bubba Watson, Hunter Mahan, and Rickie Fowler. The video is “Oh, oh, oh” by the Golf Boys.
The video came out last year and was sponsored by Farmer’s Insurance (during the Farmers Insurance Open). Not only did Farmer’s Insurance promote the video but they also tied it to charity by stating that they would donate $1,000 for every 100,000 views. Now, I’m not sure if there was a time frame for the viewing/donation but the number of views to date (January 25, 2012) on YouTube is well over 2.8 million.
So why write about the Golf Boys video today? Well, this week is the 2012 Farmer’s Insurance Open and a new video was released. This time it is just Ben Crane in a video titled “The Lost Love.” What is also interesting is that the YouTube caption states “For every 100,000 views, Farmers will donate $1000 to charity on behalf of Ben Crane up to $5000.” Interesting to see a limit set. My guess is either Farmers got caught off guard last year with the success of Golf Boys or a corporate attorney reviewed the YouTube caption this year. To be honest, not sure they have much to worry about because the new video is not as good as the Golf Boys.
Golf Expectations 