Wyndham golf boosters club to vote on change
Thursday, March 31, 2011
By Gerald Witt
"An exclusive club serving the city's PGA Tour golf tournament may soon change to match the evolution of the Wyndham Championship.
Directors of the Green Coat Club, the hospitality arm of the tournament, will vote Monday on whether to widen its membership.
The name would also change to The Founders Club and would be open to movers and shakers, including major sponsors, across the Triad and beyond. Members of the Green Coat Club in the past have chauffeured golfers from the airport, led events for golfers' wives, received inside-the-ropes access and offered local know-how. Founders Club members would do the same.
When the Greensboro Jaycees ran the tournament, the Green Coat Club was an honor reserved for a few. Members were culled from Greensboro's business and social elite to serve as city ambassadors for the tournament.
The old arrangement would change under a proposal to grow membership.
"We're trying to make the club relevant to the tournament we have today," said Jim Melvin, chairman of the club.
Fewer than 30 Green Coat Club members now help with the Wyndham, according to Mark Brazil, tournament director and an honorary Green Coat Club member.
Many former members have stopped helping, moved away or died, according to Melvin.
"We have corporate sponsors worldwide. Obviously, those folks need to be members of The Founders Club," Melvin said, "because they've made a significant contribution."
Entry to The Founders Club would work the same way.
Melvin, a retired banker who directs the $100 million Joseph M. Bryan Foundation, expects some nostalgic resistance.
"There is nobody that's got more sentimental attachment to, or needs to have attachment to the Green Coat Club, than me," Melvin said. "I have the privilege of being the only living member with three jackets."
Entry to the Green Coat Club came through being a president of the Jaycees, a tournament director or an honorary chairman.
Changes would allow more non-Jaycees and those on the Piedmont Triad Charitable Foundation to join with current members.
"This group put up a $23 million letter of credit," Melvin said of the charitable foundation.
One day the club could have 200 or more members, Melvin said.
At least one Green Coat Club member doesn't like the proposed idea.
"I'm not happy with the present management of the tournament that wants to de-emphasize the roots of the tournament and where it came from," said Hal Greeson, a Greensboro attorney and member of the club since 1972, when he was Jaycees president.
The club began in 1938, with the tournament's start. The Jaycees ran the golf event through 2005, when the Jaycees Charitable Foundation formed to run the event. In 2007 the Piedmont Triad Charitable Foundation took over.
Since then, the banner of local participation for the Wyndham has been regionalism, while Jaycee ties to the Green Coat Club dwindled.
"In previous years when the Jaycees were very much in charge and ran the tournament," Melvin said, "we would work and we would sell tickets, we would man the gates, we would even pick up trash. We've slipped away from that."
Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt @news-record.com
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