Highlights of Tracy Connor’s Impact on Myrtle Beach Golf Tourism
In this special episode of Our Thrivin’ at the Beach Podcast, host Peggy Masterson recaps key insights from past conversations, specifically focusing on Tracy Conner, the executive director of the Myrtle Beach Golf Course Owners Association and Golf Tourism Solutions. Tracy discusses his role in promoting golf tourism, including bringing the World Amateur event and the One Flight Golf Classic to Myrtle Beach, which significantly boost the local economy. He also shares his interim leadership at the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce, where he unified community efforts and maintained vital programs. Tune in to celebrate another local leader making a difference.
Links:
Listen to full episode: https://audioboom.com/posts/8569332-a-chat-with-tracy-conner-episode-3-thrivin-at-the-beach
Myrtle Beach Golf Course Owners Association: Visit Website
Golf Tourism Solutions: Learn More
Transcript:
So welcome to another episode of Our Thriving at the Beach Podcast. I'm Peggy Masterson, the Director of Partnership Grand Strand, and I have been so privileged to be your host for this podcast. If you've been a listener, you probably already know that we have been putting this podcast out in the world since the fall of 24.
I can't believe it's been almost a year. And during this time we have interviewed over 30 local leaders or business owners. And have learned so much along the way. We've learned a ton about our local community. It's been a journey, so today's episode is gonna be a little different than the others.
It's just me today, and I will be recapping some of the highlights from our past episodes. We're doing this to refresh your mind on what these local leaders had to share about the work they're doing when they were on the podcast, and that's if you've already been a listener. We hope that these mini sessions, or these mini highlights will provide any new listener with some real examples of the meaningful content that is contained in each Thrivin’ episode.
So we're so glad you've join us today, and let's go ahead and get started. Today's highlight podcast is about Tracy Conner. And Tracy Conner is the executive director of the Myrtle Beach Golf Course Owners Association, and he's also the executive director of Golf Tourism Solutions. Obviously the Golf Course owners association speaks for itself, but Golf Tourism Solutions is a cooperative marketing organization that has been formed to really promote golf in our Myrtle Beach and surrounding communities.
So Tracy's been busy. He's been highly involved in the golf world for a long time. One of the things he shared with me that I thought was really interesting is this Golf Tourism Solutions marketing organization is really responsible for bringing the World Amateur event here to the Myrtle Beach area.
It is the world's largest amateur golf tournament and attracts over 3,200 amateur golfers to Myrtle Beach every year in August. After all Myrtle Beach is the golf capital of the world, as Tracy says, and he reminds us that golf is a whole lot more than just something fun to do. It is a huge economic driver, especially for our area.
The golf courses across the Myrtle Beach area are not only great for tourism, but also for the residents. The revenue that is generated is big business, and they play a crucial role in what makes up what's different, better, and special about Myrtle Beach. Tracy is a very modest individual. He's one of those kinds of leaders that never needs to get credit for his success, but rather recognizes the team and their efforts.
He has been in Myrtle Beach for quite some time and has stepped up to play an active role in supporting Myrtle Beach. Whenever asked, some of his most notable projects that have impacted the area are his role in bringing the One Flight Golf Classic to Myrtle Beach. This is an event that brings over $15 million in revenue to our area now, and you can easily see how the PGA would find it valuable to secure the support of local golf courses and golf professionals as they're determining whether to bring a tournament like that to our town.
Another recent example was Tracy stepped up to serve as the interim CEO of the Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce from August through mid-June 25. While he was in that interim role, he kept programs running, retained our voice in Columbia, and worked to unify our 14 grand communities to rally around that whole notion of being a single voice.
Another example of a tireless leader. Doing great things in the background to drive prosperity for us, and I hope you'll listen to the full episode to get a little more information about what Tracy had to say. Thrivin’ is now releasing a brand new episode every week. We are also evolving to make our episodes a little shorter, so you'll still get great content without a huge time commitment.
We want you to know that we created this podcast for you, the local resident, you the local business, and you the students across the Grand Strand. Thrivin’ is available wherever you'll get your podcasts, and it's also on our website. Keep listening, keep thrivin’, and perhaps share our podcast with a friend.
Thanks so much for listening.
