Quail Hollow Club has hired a former PGA Tour executive to chart the club’s professional golf future, and he just happens to be one of the architects of last year’s smash success staging the Presidents Cup.
Adam Sperling this month became Quail Hollow’s director of professional golf, a newly created position, the Charlotte Business Journal reports. Sperling moved to Charlotte in March 2018 as the PGA Tour’s executive director of the Presidents Cup, working with club President Johnny Harris and other local organizers to sell hospitality packages, sponsorships and tickets for the biennial competition.
Originally scheduled for the fall of 2021, Charlotte’s first Presidents Cup was delayed a year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sperling had been scheduled to relocate with his family to Chicago this year to spearhead the PGA Tour’s advance sales and marketing for the 2026 Presidents Cup at Medinah Country Club.
Instead, he told CBJ, “They’ve given me the opportunity to be a part of all things golf at Quail.”
Sperling noted that the Wells Fargo Championship will be back at Quail Hollow this year, in less than 100 days (May 1-7). The tour, club and title sponsor Wells Fargo & Co. have an agreement to keep the tournament running through 2024.
In 2025, Quail Hollow will host the PGA Championship — one of men’s golf’s four major championships — for the second time. When the club staged the PGA Championship in 2017, it set ticket, hospitality and merchandise revenue records.
Sperling will help the PGA Tour and Wells Fargo Championship operator Pro Links Sports with the annual tournament as well as the PGA of America with the PGA Championship. As with the Presidents Cup, the PGA of America, a governing body separate from the PGA Tour, will station an executive in Charlotte soon as part of the run-up to the 2025 tournament here.
Sperling is likely to be part of the brain trust with Quail Hollow leaders as the club determines its strategy beyond 2025. They will have to decide whether they want to keep an annual PGA Tour event and, if so, determine with Wells Fargo whether the bank stays on as title sponsor.
Read more in the Charlotte Business Journal.
Copyright: Charlotte Business Journal
