Black Desert Resort's visionary on PGA/LPGA player experience disparity: 'It pissed me off'

Sit with Patrick Manning for a few minutes and it's clear he's surveying each room he sits in, looking to see what pieces can be improved and reworked. The managing partner of Black Desert Resort, which this week is hosting the inaugural Black Desert Championship, Manning is a real estate development veteran, with more than three decades of experience and somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 billion in real estate sales under his belt.

This week's event has proven a big success, as the Tom Weiskopf-designed course, which sits against a stunning backdrop in Southern Utah, has proved perfect for TV, with the red rocks and jagged cliffs offering a dramatic disparity from the green grasses and foliage of the high desert.

Golfweek got a chance to sit down with Manning, who is looking to push the envelope when it comes to player experience at the fledgling resort, and is interested in developing the region around St. George.

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Golfweek: The course has proven very popular so far. Is this what you envisioned, that it might take people by storm when they finally got to see it?

Patrick Manning: We knew that visually it was going to be stunning on national television and when Steve Wenzloff (PGA Tour's VP Of Design Services) came out and toured the property for seven hours, he told me ‘nothing's gonna pop on national television like this will.’ So that's not surprising. I knew we were gonna take really good care of the players. I've had a couple of them. I'm not gonna name drop who it was, but I've had a couple of them tell me this is the best Tour, like as far as five-star accommodations, five-star service, five-star player dining, five-star caddie lounge. You know and just this setting.

GW: Was that a priority?

PM: Huge priority. I wanted to give them an experience they don't have anywhere else in the world and partially what that is when they're outside the ropes, they can go to their accommodations. So they can get from their condo to the elevator, down to the locker rooms, and then into player-only dining, which is a 14,000-square-foot restaurant, they can get from there to fitness and all of that without any public interface. So they can have a very private experience. Of course, some of them just come out and hang out in the lobby to talk to everybody. But for those that want to just get that mental focus, they can have privacy.

GW: It’s been like 20 years since you came here, right? Take us back to that moment. Could you have seen all this?

PM: To be honest, I envisioned all the pieces. I did not envision the PGA Tour. I envisioned all the pieces, I just didn't realize when you put all the pieces together then it would be this big. But we actually designed this golf course, well Tom Weiskoff designed the golf course, but we had this golf course designed the grass was barely growing in and we were like let's try to go get a PGA Tour event. And so it was really more of an afterthought than it was a plan.

GW: This has been a great start as a FedEx Cup Fall event, but look ahead. What do you see here? Do you see a spot in the spring schedule?

PM: I'm always gonna be thinking one step bigger every time. It's always about what is impossible this morning. And then let's go do it. So, of course, I see this in the spring. There are no promises, but there are conversations. It's not a sure thing. It's going to take some work, but I think we're gonna have the support of the players, and we're gonna have the support of the community and the fans. And that is an intentional thing is to get us into the spring.

GW: What’s one thing that is better than you thought would be? And one thing that you're you want to tweak before you have the next PGA Tour event.

PM: Probably the best, almost surprise is how well received it was by the players quickly. I thought it was going to take a little bit of them being here for a few days. But literally on day one of the tournament I had players telling me, ‘this is the best.’ It's unreal. I'm also shocked at how well-dialed we are. It is very well organized, except for a couple small things I'll say we need to do better. But the mayor called me and he said they were on high alert for their inboxes to get flooded with complaints from residents. And he said they got zero, they had zero complaints. This thing is running very smoothly. As for things that need to get better. There's a spot on No. 1 and 10 that’s a traffic jam and so we know how to fix it for next year. We didn't anticipate it being a traffic jam. I mean, it's a golf tournament. You tend to have to stand around sometimes, but we can fix that. So we want to fix that.

GW: Had you traveled to a number of other PGA Tour sites before this event? And if so what did you notice?

PM: What stood out to me the most about other tournaments is how invasive the spectators can be to the players when they are trying to get dialed in. And so at another event, I don't want to say the name at another event, there's the putting green that has concrete all the way around it and the spectators are all the way around. And so for us, we have an amazing practice facility with a two-acre putting green, the driving range is immaculate, and an open-air restaurant. It's a beautiful spot. We made that no spectators. So the players can putt, drive and practice without people saying, hey, can I get a selfie with you? The other thing for player experience and fan experience, instead of having the gallery, the spectators all walking with the fans, we created an amazing fan village where there's merchandise and concessions and it's an elevated platform where you can watch all three finishing holes from one spot to kind of congregate people into more of a social space. It’s easier for us to take care of the spectators because we know where they are. Of course, there are people walking this course with players, but I think we have an inordinate amount of planning that went into lessening the size of the spectators following the golfers, which just gives them a little bit more room to play the game.

GW: OK, let’s talk about the LPGA. There’s been talk that you’re looking to truly elevate that experience. What can you tell us?

PM: When I learned how much the difference is between the player experience for the men and the player experience for the women, I don't know how else to put it other than it pissed me off. I just said we are not gonna do that. We are going to elevate the women's experience, not just to an elevated level, but we're going to do things that have never been done before for the women. And we're doing that. It's not to get attention, it's to show them the love that they deserve — they've earned it. They're working their tails off and they deserve to get the same quality of food, the same quality of accommodations. So they're going to stay here at the resort and, I don't want to get into too much because it's the men's weekend, but we are gonna take extra special care and there's going to be some joint news coming out between us and the LPGA in November really highlighting the things that we're doing that have never been done before.

GW: OK, as someone who's got a big vision and you want to think outside the box, there had been talk about an arena for the property, perhaps one that could house a minor-league hockey team. Where does that stand?

PM: It's nothing more than when we got a PGA and LPGA event, I thought we need to step up our entertainment game, right? And so we are exploring the idea of an arena. Can we have a concert venue and a place to play sports that can swing into convention space? Is there a way to do that? Some stories came out and that was unfortunate because it was exploratory. We literally haven't hired a consultant. We haven't asked anybody to draw plans. Someone asked me about it and I just said ‘hey it's something we might do, and we might not do.’ It's not that we're stepping forward or stepping back. It's just it's just one of those things. Like I might buy a car, but I might not.

GW: That being said this area of Southern Utah is clearly booming. Are you just trying to get ahead of the potential growth here?

PM: The old saying is if you build it, they'll come. But that's not what we're doing. They’re here. There are twice as many visitors coming here than there are to Park City. And look how many resorts Park City has. And so we just did one large one that can take care of the people who are already coming here. So we want to provide the best experience. We're finding out, testing this, seeing how people respond to certain things. We want it to evolve and then if a concert venue makes sense, then we'll go out and test and see if the community and the state want it. And if they do and it makes sense, then we'll build it. But we're just keeping our ear to the ground, listening to people. We don't want to get in a room and say this is what Black Desert wants to be. We want to be out there listening to people who tell us what they’re looking for.