Johnny Harris of Quail Hollow Club

Adam Sperling, executive director for the Presidents Cup, moved his family to Charlotte and spent more than three years promoting and selling the biennial competition being played in the Queen City. He got to know as well as anyone just how important hosting a world-class event that would be shown around the world meant to the good people at Quail Hollow Golf Club. That starts with Johnny Harris, the club’s president, who sets the tone with his big personality. “There is a quote,” Sperling says, “Everything’s impossible until it’s done, and there is nothing that these two men (Johnny and son Johno Harris) and the members of Quail Hollow and this community sees as impossible.”

Harris and son Johno, general chairman of the 2022 Presidents Cup, took time out of a busy day at the Presidents Cup on Saturday to participate in a Rolex roundtable discussion with several writers, including Golfweek. Here are excerpts from the Q&A.

GWK: Johnny, can you share the strategies and the lengths that you went to attract superstars to the Quail Hollow Club when you first had this event without any history or prestige?

Team USA fans in the grandstands on the first tee during the foursomes match play of the 2022 Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo: Peter Casey-USA TODAY Sports)

Johnny Harris: When we first decided to go back to the PGA Tour in 2004 with the Wachovia Championship we knew we had a unique support mechanism in Wachovia, because they had just merged, Wachovia and First Union and they wanted an opportunity to put their brand in front of a certain type of person and that along with the fact that we sat down with Arnold Palmer, which was never lost on me that Arnold in his own way had a better understanding of what the people wanted out of the game that he loved so much.

We talked to him about how do we do something really special here in Charlotte. There was all kinds of advice and suggestions that we received including taking care of the caddies, valet parking for the caddies, we had valet parking for the wives, and we did all kinds of different things including events for the wives. During the first three or four years we had two years where we had 29 of the top 30 in the world here for the golf tournament and we did a lot of unusual things to attract them.

I personally worked on bringing the Final Four here in 1994 and was involved in bringing the NFL to Charlotte and one…