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GREENSBORO -- The same people who helped save the region’s only professional golf event now want to ride that energy to create jobs for the Piedmont Triad.
 

An agreement has been struck to put some of the proceeds from the Wyndham Championship into an effort to grow jobs in three areas: aerospace, furniture, and science and medical technology. And that will be in addition to the tournament’s regular contributions to charity.
 

The deal is significant enough that a segment will air this weekend during the Wyndham Championship that shows PGA Commissioner Tim Finchem ,  Wyndham Worldwide Chairman Stephen Holmes  and BB&T CEO Kelly King  interviewed by CBS commentator Bill Macatee  on the topic of job growth.
 

This will be the first tournament to earmark a portion of its proceeds specifically for job development.
 

Details on how money would be spent on economic development have not yet been worked out.
 

“Let’s use this to get our leaders together,” said Bobby Long , chairman of the local foundation that runs the Wyndham tournament, “and let’s make this tournament great.”
 

With those three industries, the Wyndham Championship will be the fourth piece in the plan. The PGA event will promote the area each year nationally and internationally, he said.
 

“When you’re competing for jobs,” Long said, “you’ve got to have a brand out there.”
 

The budding partnerships locally among banks, corporations and industries, Long said, could form into something like what happened years ago when former First Union bank Chairman Ed Crutchfield  and former Bank of America CEO Hugh McColl  got together in Charlotte for development purposes.
 

“You look around our region and we’ve got some tremendously talented people,” Long said, “and out at the tournament we’re seeing people from all over the region, and we’re talking to them like we’re from the same town.”
 

The golf tournament has helped to bring the region together.
 

Since it became the Wyndham Championship, three of the most recent honorary chairmen have been from outside Greensboro.
 

That’s a far cry from years of the Chrysler Classic of Greensboro. That tournament nearly died at the end of those years.
 

Only by getting the Triad together was the tournament saved, said Jim Melvin , chairman of the Joseph M. Bryan Foundation.
 

“The tournament all of a sudden has a real sound economic basis,” he said, “It’s not just Greensboro anymore. We’ve been able to show the benefit to some key executives. We have a much better basis to sell ourselves in the world.”
 

One figure from Long helps illustrate the change. When the tournament was identified just with Greensboro, about 90 percent of the proceeds came from the city. Now, about half of the proceeds originate from Greensboro. The rest come from outside the Triad.
 

And the tournament is one of just two PGA events to sell all its corporate partnerships in this tough economy.
 

So how is it that golf, of all things, is bringing the locals together?
 

“I think everyone likes to work on a sporting event,” Melvin said. “And one of the things, if you go back to the history of the golf tournament, it used to be the social event of the year for the community.
 

“And that’s what we’re trying to build again.”

News researcher Diane Lamb contributed to this report.

Contact Gerald Witt at 373-7008 or gerald.witt@news-record.com