Professional golf tours can be a lot like the traveling circus. Players and officials whisk into town, the tents go up, the tournament goes live for about a week, and the tents, gallery ropes and leaderboards then get packed away, bound for the next stop somewhere up the road.
Sometimes, nothing gets left behind outside of worn fairways. And other times, as is the case at the Hilton Grand Vacations Tournament of Champions at Orlando’s beautiful Lake Nona Golf & Country Club, something very significant remains, promoting a trail of positivity across the community.
Hilton Grand Vacations’ HGV Serves program is a generous give-back initiative that will bolster Orlando-area charities in robust ways. HGV Serves is focused on helping communities in four key areas: disaster relief, veterans, homelessness and youth development. This year’s tournament focuses on youth, benefitting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida and the ANNIKA Foundation, two groups that are making a major difference in the lives of young people.
“This year, we’re excited to work with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida during tournament week to give local youth an opportunity to experience the game of golf,” said Mark Wang, president and CEO of Hilton Grand Vacations.
There are 40 area clubs affiliated with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida, reaching about 8,000 youths annually. Nic Freeman, associate director of volunteer engagement and corporate citizenship for Central Florida, said the goal is to take young people from disadvantaged circumstances and help them realize their full potential as productive, responsible and caring citizens.
“We really try to have an approach for not letting our kids settle for being average,” Freeman said.
In addition to watching top golfers and world-class athletes compete at Lake Nona, youth from the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida will learn about many of the behind-the-scenes operations that make a tournament go, giving them exposure to something they previously have not seen.
“We are really grateful to HGV for the opportunity, as a partner of the HGV Serves program, to really give our kids exposure,” Freeman said. “The research backs this up. It’s not always about talent and ability, it’s about exposure. ... Our kids will get a chance to learn from the best of the best, to see what they do. Not just the players, but they’ll meet people behind the scenes.”
On Saturday of tournament week, the youth will spend time and meet people who work for the LPGA, Hilton Grand Vacations and Lake Nona Golf & Country Club (they’ll even get to meet the head chef), as well as tour the media center and spend time with the professionals putting together the broadcast for Golf Channel.
“It’s the ripple effect,” Freeman said of the opportunity, “and you just don’t even know where it is going to end.” In the past, Freeman said he has watched students learn about careers as engineers and lawyers, and then successfully set out to work in those fields.
Annika Sörenstam is generally regarded as the best golfer in the history of the women’s game, having won 72 LPGA titles and 10 major championships. She will compete at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club (where she, her husband and two children reside and play) in the tournament’s celebrity division, having lost in a playoff to Derek Lowe last year. But playing is now a hobby; her biggest mission is in helping young female golfers chase their dreams.
Her ANNIKA Foundation has been an effective vehicle in promoting golf and good health to young girls not only here in the United States, but around the world. The ANNIKA Foundation has seven global tournaments (the winner of her Orlando junior invitational gets a spot into the HGV TOC field) and she also takes part in a “Share My Passion” platform that helps introduce younger players to the game.
She is seeing the fruits of her efforts, as several players that her foundation has nurtured are now playing and winning on the LPGA Tour. HGV Serves will donate $100,000 to the ANNIKA Foundation, which goes a long way.
“This is a newer partnership,” Sörenstam said, “and for HGV to do this, and to see the value in it, it’s one more reason that I’m playing.”
It’s one more way for Sörenstam, who has received so much from the game of golf, and for Hilton Grand Vacations to give something back, leaving things better than they found them.
Adds Wang, “The ANNIKA Foundation really fits well with the youth development pillar of HGV Serves since it focuses on giving back and helping young people. We’re really excited to continue our partnership this year.”
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