New Executive Director of THE PLAYERS Lee Smith was welcomed to town and to his new position by the St. Johns County Chamber of Commerce Ponte Vedra Beach Division and the Jax Chamber as the guest speaker during a Chamber lunch event on July 19 at Marsh Landing Country Club.
According to Smith, golf has been a major part of his life for as long as he can remember at this point, and he is thrilled to get to work for a tournament like THE PLAYERS.
“I was born and raised in east central Illinois and after playing golf in college, I got right into the golf business as a PGA professional at Urbana Country Club, which has Jacksonville ties, because Mr. (Shad) Khan (Jacksonville Jaguars owner) and his son Tony Khan were members there, and Mr. Khan now owns that club and I’m looking forward to reconnecting with him,” Smith said.
Looking back, those early years as a golf professional were vital in Smith’s path to where he is now as executive director of THE PLAYERS.
“I actually taught Tony (Khan) some lessons for a few years and probably owe him a refund for how bad I was,” Smith chuckled.
Smith eventually started working with the PGA Tour in 2003 at TPC Scottsdale as an assistant golf professional and then moved on to three-year stops at TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas and TPC Sugarloaf in Atlanta, before heading back to TPC Summerlin as general manager, where they hosted the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open.
Shortly after the President’s Cup in 2017, Smith went to work at Liberty National Golf Club.
“The 18th green there was about 700 yards from the Statue of Liberty in New York City, so that was a pretty cool office to go to every day,” Smith said.
With all those stops, Smith accumulated roughly 20 years working for the PGA Tour on the club operations side of things prior to the opportunity to be the executive director of THE PLAYERS presenting itself.
“I think utilizing some of those previous experiences, especially when it comes to hosting different tournaments will allow this to be a great opportunity,” Smith said. “Having only been here a month, I’m really looking forward to getting engrained in the community and meeting everyone.”
Smith enters the position at a unique time and fully aware of the history and prestige of the tournament, he is ready to embrace it with open arms.
“We’re certainly focused on 2024 and have already had some meetings for 2025, so we’re always looking down the road at what the future looks like,” Smith said. “As a vision and an objective, my first role is not to mess it up and secondly continue to expand the profile of THE PLAYERS Championship community wise and globally.”
One of the ways he sees doing that locally is by tapping into markets throughout the First Coast and beyond the Ponte Vedra Beach area with possible fanfest opportunities in the weekends leading up to the tournament.
