Grunt-work days aid Iddings as chairman by Rob Daniels

This excerpt was taken from "Grunt-work days aid Iddings as chairman"

4-30-01

By ROB DANIELS, Staff Writer News & Record

"I think it gives you a sense of the magnitude of the event and how much detail is involved," he said. "You see it from the players' perspective. You're looking at how things are laid out, where the corporate areas are, where the spectators are. You know how to make it user-friendly for the fan and how to make it a place where corporate sponsors want to bring their guests."
Only a few weeks after the '95 tournament, Iddings ascended to the 1996 executive committee as legal counsel. And the timing was right for him to see what else made this tournament run.
Kmart's contract with the event had run out and the GGO needed a new corporate sponsor. Iddings, not yet 30, was the Jaycees' point man in multi-million-dollar negotiations with Chrysler, which wanted to guarantee its prominence in the event's name.
Nobody called this thing the Kmart GGO. But they do call it the Greater Greensboro Chrysler Classic, and Iddings helped secure a seven-year deal in November of 1995 that made both sides happy. The deal runs through 2002.
"It did occur to me as I was doing it," he said. "It was a little humorous. Here I was, a volunteer, 30-year-old attorney doing this on my own and negotiating with the paid legal department of Chrysler Corporation."

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