The irony is not lost on Nick Raffaele, a Callaway Golf marketing exec who was hired in June to become the new executive director of the CareerBuilder Challenge, a long-running PGA Tour pro-am currently contested on three desert courses in the Coachella Valley.
In a way, the job is a career builder for him as well.
“It’s a career change, basically, in the golf business,” Raffaele said during a recent interview from his new office in La Quinta.
Raffaele, 53, is a self-described “golf junkie” who has progressed through the ranks on and off the course – from high school and college player to PGA club professional to sales rep to brand manager and then to Vice President of Global Sports Marketing for Callaway – before being lured away to run a historic tour event best known in its early years as the Bob Hope Desert Classic.
Though he has no tournament management experience, Raffaele feels uniquely qualified for his new overlapping roles as tournament director and CEO of Desert Classic Charities, the Rancho Mirage-based non-profit organization that hired him and presides over the tour event.
“I’ve been to over 500 golf tournaments globally over the last 15 years – PGA Tour events, European Tour events, Web.com Tour events, LPGA Tour events,” he said, emphasizing that he has a feel for what tour players and fans like about the way an event is run. “The golf business and tournament business has evolved over the last 25 to 30 years.”
Raffaele also has close working relationships with tour players, their agents and potential sponsors, gleaned during his tenure as director of PGA Tour development at Spalding Sports (2000-2004) and marketing honcho at Callaway Golf (2005-2016). Most prominent of those players is Phil Mickelson, a 42-time PGA Tour winner (including 2002 and 2004 Bob Hope events) and a World Golf Hall-of-Famer, who earlier this year agreed to serve as ambassador for the CareerBuilder Challenge.
“I’ve worked very closely with Phil, and now we have the No. 1 face in golf as ambassador and host,” said Raffaele, who twice negotiated Callaway endorsement contract renewals with Mickelson’s representatives at Lagardere Sports and Entertainment in Scottsdale, Ariz. (Interestingly, it was Lagardere, in its role as an official consulting firm for Desert Classic Charities, that recommended Raffaele for his new job.)
It’s safe to say Mickelson and Raffaele should be a formidable 1-2 punch as CareerBuilder recruiters in attempting to upgrade the tournament field, and Raffaele believes his background will help him the sell the event to players, the public and sponsors.
“I have an intimate relationship with players and their agents. I understand what makes the players move, and I understand what helps the agents with their players,” he said. “I’m also used to having sponsorships. I’m not used to going out and selling one; I’m used to buying one, like a player, and integrating it in marketing and getting value out of it.
“I’ve helped companies (with sponsorships) and I’ve helped players with their other sponsors. I’m used to spending a dime and trying to make a quarter. I’m a revenue guy. I’ve got a golf background, I’ve got a branding background and I’ve got an ROI (return on investment) background. . . I believe this job aligns with all of my expertise and skills. And that’s what I’m most excited about.”
Suffice to say, Raffaele has hit the ground running. He and Lacy, his wife of 31 years, have moved to La Quinta from Fort Worth, Texas, where their sons Andrew and Jacob still live.
“We’re here full time,” he said in late June. “That was one of the first things I thought was important to this role, to immerse myself in the community.”
Nick and Lacy already consider Southern California their second home because they lived 10 years in Carlsbad, site of Callaway’s corporate headquarters, and frequently spent two to three weeks in the desert during the winter, visiting with friends from Texas and attending a certain PGA Tour event once named after a famous comedian.
Even so, it’s as clear as the Texas twang in his voice that his roots are in the Lone Star state. Nick grew up in Mineral Wells, a small town about an hour west of Fort Worth, where his brother, Tony, a girls basketball coaching legend in the area with more than 500 career victories, was hired in June as Mineral Wells High’s new girls coach. A few days later, Nick got his new job. That put both brothers on the same page of the local sports section back home.
Mineral Wells High is also where Nick got hooked on golf.
“Growing up, I was a basketball player and kind of a tennis prodigy in fifth and sixth grade,” he said. “But we had a great golf program at Mineral Wells and a couple of my basketball buddies who played golf said I should try it, too. I went out for the golf team my junior year and made it. Even made all-district my first year. That’s when I was bitten with the (golf) bug.”
His senior year, he played well enough to earn a “books-and-tuition” scholarship at nearby Weatherford College, a junior college where his game improved so rapidly that he won five tournaments in two years and qualified for the 1982 US Amateur Championship at Brookline Country Club. “I shot 68-73 and tied (future tour pro) Mark Brooks for second,” he said proudly.
From there, he went to Hardin-Simmons University, a Division I school in in Abilene, to play on the golf team and work on getting his apprenticeship as a PGA club professional. In the next few years, he worked at local golf courses in the Metroplex – at Sherrill Park Municipal in Richardson, at Dallas Country Club and then Mira Vista Country Club in Fort Worth.
“I was a club pro, Class AA, just like everybody else,” he said. “Then I worked in outside sales for Ben Hogan Company, which led to a brand management-type position and brand development position, and that led to a tour position with Spalding Sports.”
After Callaway Golf bought Spalding’s Top Flite, Strata and Ben Hogan brands in a 2003 bankruptcy deal, Raffaele’s role expanded at Callaway.
And now you know the rest of the story.
It’s time for Raffaele to adapt to his newest job: operating the Coachella Valley’s longest-running charity event, which was launched in 1960 as the Palm Springs Classic and has adapted to its own changes over the years. There have been several different title sponsors, numerous course changes and in recent years a change in format from a five-round, four-course celebrity pro-am with four amateurs and one pro in each group to a 72-hole, three-course pro-am with three pros and one amateur in each group.
The 2017 tournament, the second with CareerBuilder as the title sponsor following four years as the Humana Challenge, will be contested January 19-22 on the Stadium Course at PGA West, the Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West and La Quinta Country Club.
Raffaele is planning a few new activities and off-the-course changes designed to invigorate the event, though he’s not ready to announce them yet.
“When you think of the Coachella Valley and La Quinta, you think fun, you think sun, you think cocktails, you think music, you think food, and you think golf,” he said. “That’s what this event is. We are going to enhance the things that work and add new elements that fit. We are going to create an identity for the event.”
He did reveal that one of the enhancements will revolve around the 17th hole on the Stadium Course, the famed, island-green par-3 nicknamed “Alcatraz.” A savvy marketing exec such as Raffaele certainly knows what the Coliseum-type party atmosphere surrounding the par-3 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale has done for the Waste Management Phoenix Open in recent years.
“I think people are going to be really, really astonished about what we’re going to accomplish,” he said.
Six months before the opening tee shots, the marketing has already begun.
