Men and women of the Navy: on 25 October 1999 you lost an important friend when professional golfer Payne Stewart was killed in a plane crash. The event received worldwide coverage around the clock for two days, testimony to how popular and respected Payne Stewart had been. Payne's death was a tragedy for the Navy both because of what he had done in support of the Navy (specifically naval aviation) and because of what he was willing to do in support of the Navy. Payne Stewart—1999's U.S. Open champion, 11 -time Tour winner, multi-year (including 1999) United States Ryder Cup team member, certain Golf Hall of Fame inductee, and one of the most high-profile members of the Professional Golf Association Tour—offered the sort of help that the Navy needed (and still needs) to assist in targeting its manpower problems. But his offer was refused by key members of the Navy Recruiting Command and associated civilians, those responsible for the way the Navy spends its $50 million advertising budget. The way Payne's willingness to help was squandered by those responsible for the Navy's marketing strategies is indicative of a larger problem with our recruiting and retention efforts—a problem cogently described by Lieutenant Christian Bonat in "Is the Navy Sending the Right Message?" (Proceedings, November 1999, p. 96).
Payne's initial firsthand exposure to life at sea came in June 1997. While the USS George Washington (CVN-73) was working her way through joint task force exercise, a production crew flew aboard to shoot an episode of ESPN's Inside the PGA Tour. Payne, having cleared his busy calendar—at significant opportunity cost—for this chance to see an aircraft carrier in action, was the guest host for the show. My primary duty was that of air wing operations officer, but in my capacity as the director of the Carrier Air Wing One Golf Association (better known by the acronym CAWOGA), I assumed the duty of hosting Mr. Stewart and the rest of the production crew.
I walked Payne through the standard VIP itinerary: observing flight operations between the catapults, standing on the landing signal officer's platform, chatting with the captain on the bridge. and schmoozing with the aircrew in ready rooms. When we had finished, Payne's only question was, "Where does the crew eat?"
One slider, a busted timeline, and several hours later, we finally managed to persuade Payne to break himself away from the crowd of enlisted men who had gathered around him on the mess deck. Reluctantly, the men let their new shipmate go and went back to their duties with the assurance that Payne Stewart was genuinely impressed by the work they did,
Months later, the George Washington was on station in the northern part of the Arabian Gulf, in response to Saddam Hussein's treatment of the U.N. inspection teams. We were working long days, planning strikes against targets in Iraq. Thanks to the political situation and the joint command in Saudi Arabia, the plan changed daily and frustration levels were high. In some ways. waiting for a war can be more stressful than conducting one.
Late one night, as I sat exhausted after another day of managing the wing's flight schedule, I noticed an email in my computer's in-box from Payne Stewart Enterprises. The message was short:
Dear Ward,
Drop 19 bombs on Saddam and CAWOGA will have a new course. Fly safe. We'll see you guys when you get home, - Payne
Words can't describe what that simple sentiment did—not just for me, but for the entire air wing—as the e-mail was circulated from squadron to squadron. Payne Stewart cared; therefore, we assumed America cared. We zipped up our G-suits and went back to work.
In October 1999, Payne flew his Learjet into Naval Air Station Oceana, Virginia, for a two-day look into the life of a Navy fighter pilot. We put him through aviation physiology and survival training, which included a run in the attitude chamber and an introduction to the phenomenon of hypoxia. That afternoon, Payne said thanks to the Navy community by hosting a free clinic and playing a nine-hole exhibition, shooting an oh-by-the-way 33 between good-natured jibes at the gallery and his playing partners. The 200-plus people in the crowd all walked away with the feeling that Payne now was a friend—and he was. That night, he was the keynote speaker at a banquet attended by 100 members of the greater NAS Oceana community. His message during his speech was simple and direct: He thanked the Navy for opening its doors to him and for the freedoms its sailors helped to provide—freedoms, he conceded, that most Americans took for granted.
The following day, Payne launched in an F- 14 Tomcat, broke the sound barrier, felt six-and-a-half times the normal pull of gravity, flew inverted, and enjoyed the hell out of his taste of naval aviation. As his aircraft taxied back into the line, he proudly displayed an empty airsickness bag—a badge of honor in the world of familiarization flights. I helped him unstrap, and once back on the ground, he immediately sought out the enlisted plane captain, the one who took care of the jet between flights. With a high-five and a thanks, Payne again demonstrated his respect for the common man. The young sailor's smile in return showed a new-found baseline of dignity; he would come to expect more of himself in the future. After all, he was friends with Payne Stewart.
As Payne walked back to the hangar, he was surrounded by television reporters and cameramen and asked for his impressions of the flight. Without prompting, he responded, "Most Americans don't realize what these guys do each day to keep the rest of us safe." He gestured toward the flight line and the ongoing maintenance effort. "Just took at them working out there. It's incredible. It makes me proud to be a taxpayer."
The public affairs officer standing next to me said, "This guy is a public relations gold mine." He was articulate, sincere, recognizable, and famous. I had seen him woo a crowd and had felt the firmness of his handshake. The wheels started turning in my head. The opportunity to get Payne to endorse the Navy in an official capacity seemed too good not to explore.
Never good at "staying in the box," I spent the following weeks working offline with Payne's agency, Leader Enterprises, informally brokering a deal. Payne would wear the Navy logo on the left sleeve of his shirt at all PGA Tour events where he appeared as Stewart, the professional golfer. In addition, Payne would put on clinics at bases in four Navy towns: San Diego, Jacksonville, Norfolk, and Washington, D.C., during tour stops in those areas. The fee for this service was insultingly low for a celebrity of Payne Stewart's stature, even before his career-defining 1999 season. I won't identify the number, except to say it was around one-third of one percent of the Navy's advertising budget. Why so cheap? Payne wanted to do it. No, he wasn't a veteran, but his interest in the Navy was even more sincere because of that. As he ambled about the American landscape, he happened upon us and he was duly impressed. to a degree that he was willing to cash in some of his celebrity capital to help where he could.
When presented with the proposal, the Recruiting Command and the Navy's ad agency fumbled about for a few weeks, and ultimately balked. They explained that golf wasn't a sport that appealed to the demographic they were interested in having show up at our front door. Did we have a lot of celebrities expressing interest in endorsing the Navy from other sports? No, certainly not at the price offered by Leader Enterprises, Could we look out of the box and see one small prong of our total marketing strategy as the image of Payne Stewart melded with the image of the U.S. Navy? Such a union would serve to shape not only the attitudes of 17- and 18-year-olds interested in golf, but also—and almost more important—the attitudes of their fathers, who could give the ultimate thumbs-up or -down to their dependents' career choices. One way to shrink the civilian-military culture gap seems to point to this sort of tack. But. instead, the experts have figured that our future naval leaders will come from the ranks of those who watch arena football—no kidding—and enlist to play electric guitar on the fantail of a small boy at pier side.
I haven't seen the market analysis the advertising agency used to come up with the answer that golf didn't hold any benefit to the Navy, but I do pay attention to what's around me. The Navy talks about the need for character. Colloquially, character is defined as "what you do when nobody's looking." That also defines the spirit of golf. There are no referees. Each player polices himself. Is this somehow out-of-- sync with the Navy's message" Is there not a natural synergy here? And you don't have to be an avid golfer to see that golf's impact continues to grow exponentially, and not just with rich old white guys. Look at the amount of television coverage dedicated to golf. Recall how hard it is to get a tee time at your local base course, and look at the range of ages and ranks on the course at any given time. It seems naive to contend that the sport doesn't reach our target audience (or at least part of our target audience).
We had an American sports icon—a figure who embodied the Navy's core values—willing to endorse us. For a contemporary American example of courage, replay Payne's performance on the last three holes of last year's U.S. Open. Notice his body language. Observe the look in his eye. As he reached into the final hole to fish the ball out after his winning putt, and the camera framed his left sleeve, the message could have read "Navy—Let the Journey Begin," But we blew it. We missed even, magazine cover and feature article that followed. And this is just one example. What other opportunities have we missed? But I'm not in advertising. I'm just a career line officer. Come to think of it. I didn't talk to a single line officer at the Recruiting Command during the discussions about this project.
In spite of this rejection, Payne had enough character to retain a positive view of the Navy, based on what he'd seen in the fleet. He wanted to do more. He was going to fly with the Blue Angels this year while they were in El Centro, and the flight was going to be featured on Inside the PGA Tour—a half-hour show on the ESPN network that would have been dedicated to the Blue Angels, and thus to the U.S. Navy.
A few days after Payne's dramatic U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst, I received a voice-mail message from Bob Wilkenson, the tournament director for the Dubai Desert Classic. Bob had become a good friend during the course of the George Washington's handful of port visits to the United Arab Emirates. He knew our ties to Payne and wanted to explore Payne's interest in joining the field for the 2000 Dubai Desert Classic. Bob reminded me about the recent track record of prominent Americans in the Desert Classic's field: a last-minute no-show in 1998 and an almost-missed-the-cut in 1999. The Emir doesn't meet that many Americans each year and it's not too much of a leap in logic to say that his attitudes about strategic issues like U.S. Navy access to his ports are shaped to a degree by the American golfer in the field of the Desert Classic each year. I called Bob back and confidently told him that he'd inquired about the right man, and that I'd do whatever I could to convince Payne to join the field.
Payne's agent Van Ardan, killed in the crash with Payne, thought the query had some potential, but he warned that Payne had given standing orders to avoid committing him to the excessive travel schedule that can follow a major win. Payne, in fact, had counseled me more than once: "There's a word in the English language that you have to use sometimes: 'No'." But Payne Stewart was a patriot who appreciated the realities involved in the preservation of freedom. If duty called, he would answer. He might not travel as a golfer, but he would always travel as an American. I called Payne at home, and he agreed that if the deal worked for Van, he would play in Dubai. When told of his potential participation in the event, certain high-ranking members of the Navy staff in the Pentagon responded by stating that if Payne were playing in the Dubai Desert Classic, they'd attempt to put an aircraft carrier in port at the same time so he would have a huge group of American sailors—his kind of people—in his gallery during the tournament.
Payne Stewart bad that kind of impact; he could move ships. Why? The saying goes: "Leadership is not about power and privilege-, it's about responsibility and example." Payne wasn't just a golfer; Payne was a leader.
As I sat in my service dress blues in First Baptist Church of Orlando during his memorial service and listened to the heartwarming testimonials offered by those who loved him most. I thought about the positive impact Payne Stewart had on the sailors with whom he'd come in contact. With all be had to offer—and with all the Navy claims to represent—it still strikes me as remarkable that we could not see our way clear to get him on our team.
What do we represent? I believe I know. But I'm not sure the advertising division of the Navy Recruiting Command does.
An F-14 radar intercept officer, Commander Carroll now serves at the U.S. Naval Academy.