Aces High

Burris has put together an attractive program for local golf enthusiasts. For $90, a fan can get a weekly badge to the tournament, plus 20 rounds of golf (excluding cart fee) at Bonita Bay golf course properties. The golf is only good in the summer months, but that's still quite a deal.

"In essence, for $90, you've bought a couple of thousand dollars of golf, and also get to come to the tournament," Burris says. "It's helped us a lot."

And it helps expose the Bonita Bay properties. That's why the Bonita Bay Group is part of the tournament. The event helps sell its golf-course community to the public. "There are the intangibles that it brings," Rodgers says. "I think the pride that the membership feels in the club when 80,000 people rave about it, the press writes great things about it, the players say great things. ... And then they see it on TV. There is a tremendous pride factor. Is it inconvenient for the membership? Sure, but for the most part, that is offset by the fact that it's their club and they are very proud of it. They love the idea of the best players in the world enjoying it."

That is another big part of Burris' job-securing the location. The tournament has jumped from home to home over the years, and it's not easy finding a suitable course that can handle the crowds, and accommodate sponsors, yet be a championship-caliber course.

Fortunately, Burris is no stranger to sports marketing. He got his start as a 16-year-old sweeping the aisles of Mile High Stadium in Denver. At night, he ran the scoreboard for pro baseball games. He worked his way through college at Colorado State University by selling tickets and managing the box office for the Denver Broncos. At age 24, he was named the first ticket manager of the Seattle Kingdome.

Later, after 10 years as business manager of the Denver Bears, a minor-league baseball team, Burris became vice president of marketing and corporate sponsorships for the Denver Nuggets basketball team. In his first year with the Nuggets, Burris' department sold $2.3 million of corporate sponsorships, a 42-percent increase over the previous year and the highest in the franchise's history.

That got the attention of the International, a PGA Tour event. And that's how Burris got into the golf business. In 1989, he became director of sales and marketing for the LPGA Tour, selling the women's game to corporate America. Later he started the American Express International golf tournament in Sarasota for Advantage International, a sports marketing company. In 1998, Advantage acquired the Naples tournament and made Burris its executive director.

"I think my minor-league baseball background, where you have no stars to sell, has been a tremendous advantage," Burris says. "You have to be creative, sell the sizzle instead of the steak. I was doing 70 promotions a year, almost one every night. Building the world's largest banana split to bringing out the famous chicken to having a musical double header with the Beach Boys. Many of those can be applied to golf."

In fact, Burris needs to get working on one of those deals right now. The tournament will be here soon.

Bob Harig covers golf for the St. Petersburg Times and ESPN.com.