Each year at the PGA TOUR’s season-ending TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, you can find Arthur Blank at the 18^th green during at least one of the competition rounds welcoming players as they play their final hole of the day.

Blank, 82, is an Atlanta resident and perhaps best known as the owner of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and the Atlanta United FC of Major League Soccer, as well as being the co-founder of Home Depot and one of the nation’s leading philanthropists.

But many people might not realize just how deeply Blank is connected to the world of golf – how big golf is within the Blank family portfolio of businesses, and how passionate he is about the game.

Blank contributes to the enjoyment and improvement of millions of recreational golfers as the owner of PGA TOUR Superstore, the nation’s leading specialty retailer, and is also intimately involved with the pro game as a member of the PGA TOUR’s Board of Directors. He’s a trustee for First Tee, donating millions of dollars over the years, and has hosted the organization’s First Tee Leadership Academy at one of the four ranches he owns in Montana. One of them, Mountain Sky, has a Johnny Miller-designed golf course called Rising Sun, making it one of the only courses in the country that’s part of a working dude ranch. More recently, Blank became an owner of the Atlanta Drive team in the new TGL indoor simulator league co-founded by Tiger Woods.

And Blank, like millions of other Americans, is an avid golfer.

“I get out on the course whenever I can,” said Blank. “I love the social aspect of it. I love the outdoor aspect of it and getting in the elements. I’ve got a million things going on in my life, and I have since I can remember, but when I play, I focus just on golf. I focus on swing, my game, who I’m with, and just enjoying the sport. It’s not exactly meditation, but in some ways, it is because it takes you to a different place.”

It wasn’t always that way.

New York Native

Blank grew up far from the world of manicured fairways in Queens, New York, where he spent his childhood days as a “street kid” playing football, baseball, and running track. The game of golf first crossed his radar when he attended Babson College outside Boston and a friend mentioned he was going to a practice for the golf team.

It wasn’t until after college that Blank first picked up a club, encouraged by his closest college friend who was an avid golfer. Those post-college range sessions and a few lessons were the beginning of what would become a lifelong passion.

“I just kind of fell in love with the game over the years,” Blank recalls. “And I played as much as I could, which was a fair amount when I was single.”

More responsibilities eventually led to less golf. Blank got married, had children and founded Home Depot with Bernie Marcus in the late 1970s, leading golf to take a backseat for nearly two decades as he built what would become the nation’s largest home improvement retailer and became a billionaire. “I just couldn’t put the time into golf,” he said. “I took about 15 to 17 years off.”

When Blank did return to the game, he embraced it with renewed enthusiasm.

Superstore Acquisition

Blank bought PGA TOUR Superstore in 2010, eight years after he purchased the NFL’s Falcons. In many ways, PGA TOUR Superstore has done for golfers what Home Depot has done for home improvement, with Blank positioning the company at the forefront of golf’s retail evolution.

And perhaps one of Blank’s most unique golf associations can be found at one of his Montana ranches, where he worked with Miller to design the stunningly scenic Rising Sun golf course that’s open to guests seeking an authentic Western ranch experience.

“The setting, the driving range, the setting on the holes, is just spectacular,” Blank says. “I tell people, take your camera with you, your phone with you, and take pictures on all 18 holes, because the settings are magnificent.”

An everyman golfer, Blank has never gotten his handicap below 12 and shot under 80 just once in his life. That came in Hilton Head, South Carolina, on the course that hosts the PGA TOUR’s RBC Heritage, where he got up and down from a bunker on the final hole. It’s a spot that holds other special golf memories.

Blank was at Harbour Town in 1969 for the inaugural Heritage Golf Classic and recalls following then 40-year-old Arnold Palmer, who went on to win the tournament for his first victory in over a year.

Back then, following “the King,” Blank couldn’t have envisioned the technological frontier into which golf now ventures.

TGL and Golf’s Future

His Atlanta TGL team of PGA TOUR players represents golf’s push to attract new audiences with a dynamic new indoor, simulator-driven format that airs in primetime and takes less than two hours. Blank, who has a golf simulator at his home, is optimistic about the future of TGL (suggesting there may eventually be more than a dozen or more teams) as well as the growth of golf overall.

“The industry itself is moving the right direction. And golf simulations are going to be a bigger factor,” he says.

Blank has witnessed the sport’s pandemic-driven surge in participation and engagement, particularly among families, women, and a more diverse population. However, he acknowledges that the industry still faces a retention challenge. “The problem with golf industry has not been people coming in the game,” says Blank. “It’s that the bottom part of the funnel is almost as wide as the top part.”

This understanding drives Blank’s multi-faceted approach to growing the game – from retail innovation at PGA TOUR Superstore to his support of youth programs through First Tee, and now his investment in TGL‘s modern approach to the sport. For all his success in business and various professional sports, golf represents something special: a continual challenge, a means of connection, and an opportunity to help shape the future of a sport he’s grown to love over the years.

“It’s really about the people you’re with and the experience that takes you away from other areas that may be concerning in your life, or other distractions,” Blank says. “The nature of the game of golf is that you never perfect it. Even the all-time greats, they’re always striving for improvement and to get better. It’s the nature of life too.”