by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
The new director of The Players Championship is only two weeks into his job but he’s sure he’s in the right place.
“I’m impressed,” said Jay Monahan, who relocated from Boston to take over the annual PGA Tour event at the TPC Stadium Course. “I’ve had a chance to meet with the volunteer leaders and of course more meetings are coming up.
“This event is extremely well organized. It has the tradition and it certainly has the volunteer force that makes a difference.
“I ran the Deutsche Bank Championship back home and, let me emphasize this, I know what volunteers mean to any tournament.”
Even though he’s a good player — he carries a 6 handicap — Monahan hasn’t ventured the 300 yards or so from his door to the first tee of the Stadium Course.
“We have two very active little girls and they’re having a ball,” said Monahan. “Even having to sit through all that rain from (Tropical Storm) Fay didn’t bother them.”
Monahan arrived earlier this month, moving into the top role at The Players after Ron Cross left for a position with Augusta National Country Club, home course of The Masters.
Monahan’s family — wife Susan and daughters Sophie and Phoebe, 5 and 2 — came a week later and they’re renting one of the condos in the villas adjacent to the Stadium Course’s 10th hole.
Monahan has a sports history and, coming from Boston, says he’s a “proud member of the Red Sox Nation,” the army of followers of the Boston baseball team. Indeed, one of his final acts before relocating was to take his wife to Fenway Park and sign the “Green Monster,” the famed left field wall.
Monahan comes to The Players from the Massachusetts-based Fenway Sports Group, where he served as executive vice president. In his role at FSG, Monahan led the sales and business development for the company’s property ownership and representation divisions, a varied field that includes the Red Sox and NASCAR.
He joined Fenway from a position similar to the one he now has — he was the first director of the Deutsche Bank Championship, one of the four events in the PGA Tour Playoffs for the FedEx Cup.
Prior to FSG, Monahan was executive director of sports management services company IMG Worldwide Inc.
A native of Massachusetts, Monahan’s professional experience includes roles as director of global sponsorships and branding programs at EMC Corporation, account supervisor at a major Boston advertising agency and director of athlete marketing and event marketing at Bob Woolf Associates.
Monahan earned a bachelor of arts in history from Trinity College in Hartford, Mass., in 1993, where he was a four-year member of the golf team and a Division II Academic All-American his senior year. Trinity is a small school — indeed, its nickname is “Bantams” — with a strong sports program that resulted in a Division III baseball championship this year.
Monahan then earned a masters of science in sports management from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1995.