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“We were on the call and all of a sudden there was the discussion about when we would make the announcement,” Wilmot said. “I said ‘What announcement are we making?’ ”
Of all the lessons he learned during the nearly two-year search for a Heritage title sponsor, tournament director Steve Wilmot, in the end, came away with one that stood above all the rest:
Never go there again.
The steward of Hilton Head’s most cherished and valued event for more than two decades, Wilmot has spent the past two years working to keep the Heritage from becoming history.
It’s an effort that began in late 2009, when longtime benefactor Verizon ended its sponsorship of an event that had come to define the island for more than four decades. And it’s one that took more left-hand turns, navigated more peaks and valleys and led to more personal discoveries than Wilmot ever could have imagined.
“I never really thought it would have gotten to the point that it did,” Wilmot said a week after the formal announcement of RBC’s sponsorship agreement, which secures the future of the golf tournament through 2016 and returns it to the traditional post-Masters spot on the schedule. “Maybe it was being complacent, but I really didn’t think things would go the way they did. I didn’t expect to go through what we went through.”
In fact, it wasn’t until three days before the official June 16 press conference in the Payne Stewart room at Harbour Town Golf Links that Wilmot and his team even knew they’d have something positive to announce. After years of work, worry and wonder, the good news ended up arriving via simple conference call. “We were on the call and all of a sudden there was the discussion about when we would make the announcement,” Wilmot said. “I said ‘What announcement are we making?’ ”
That announcement, of course, was that the tournament that had for 24 years carried the name Verizon (or a version thereof) would now be known as the RBC Heritage — and that Boeing, which recently opened a plant in Charleston, had signed on as a local presenting sponsor.
Mostly, though, it was a deep breath, a pause and a confirmation that the tournament would live on into its 44th year and beyond.
Just last month, of course, that 44th year was anything but secure — something that has leaders such as Wilmot thinking how things could have been different.
“I hope we never have to go through something like this again,” Wilmot said. “But if we do there are so many things we learned about ourselves that will help.”
An arduous process (to say the least), the effort, by all accounts, was enhanced by Gov. Nikki Haley, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and an army of local leaders that made it their mission to keep the Heritage at home.
“I have to admit to being a little naive as to what it would mean to have a governor and a U.S. Senator go to the mat for us,” Wilmot said. “I didn’t think it would be that important, but there is no question that it was. We wouldn’t be here without the help of Gov. Haley, Sen. Graham and so many others. Every time we needed them they were there.”
Graham, for his part, was quick to send the credit right back. “Simon Fraser, Steve Wilmot, the governor, and other local, state and federal officials made this happen,” he said in a recent interview. “We really worked as a team and I’m so proud of what was accomplished.
“If we had lost the Heritage, it would be like losing a military base. The tournament is a huge economic engine not only for Hilton Head, but also for South Carolina. As a state we would have lost three days of national advertising. After all, what better shot is there than the one of the iconic Harbour Town lighthouse?”
But though there’s plenty of praise to go around in this protracted honeymoon period, the fact remains that two people fought the good fight from the very start to the positive end. Wilmot and Heritage Foundation chairman Simon Fraser were on just about every call, involved in every meeting and lived and died every change in fortune as the sponsor search dragged on.
In a meeting some three weeks before the 2011 Heritage, Wilmot expressed fear that the event would cease to exist under his watch — a nightmare shared by Fraser. It became less about preserving a week in April, and more about protecting and ensuring the island’s identity.
“The thing that has most stood out to me since the announcement has been all the thank-yous that I have gotten from people across this region,” Wilmot said. “Based on the number of emails and thank-you cards I got (the following week), you would have thought it was my birthday. We lived this search every day and now I know so many other people did as well.”
And yet, with a new partner in place and its future ensured through 2016, Wilmot and the Heritage Foundation are hard at work preparing for their new day. There’s a new logo to create, a new date to prepare for and new agreements to broker — not the least of which is a new facility-use agreement with the Sea Pines Resort, essentially a formality given the role Harbour Town plays in the tournament’s identity.
And while there might have been doubt that the island’s signature event would remain, there was never one that location, course and importance would be key to carrying the day. Wilmot and Fraser never doubted it because they lived it. State and local leaders never faltered in support because they believed in it. Because of those two factors, Hilton Head still has the event that created it. No matter what lessons were learned, that is at the end of the day the most important thing that come from 18 months of hand-wringing and waiting.
“Everything just fell into place right when we needed it to,” Wilmot said, still smiling from the accomplishment. “It might not have seemed so at the time, but everyone was doing and saying the right things all along.”
Photo / Rob Kaufman
