Megan Morgan ’95, G’97 watches golf in a way few people do. Rather than focusing on the action on the course, she notices the little things beyond the fairways.
How young people respond to Rory McIlroy at the U.S. Open. How the gallery at the British Open appreciates good course management. The rock star treatment Phil Mickelson receives from baby boomers in Augusta.
As senior director at Wasserman Media Group, noticing demographics is Morgan’s job. She determines who cares about what. In turn, she’s able to help companies get the most out of their sports marketing dollars.
“For example, a company like Travelers is really amazing at insurance, but they’re not experts in sports marketing,” Morgan explains. “So they hire Wasserman to do it for them. That’s where I come in.”
Morgan has spent more than a decade working on and around the PGA Tour in marketing and product development. As a result, she has a unique understanding of the tour and the players involved.
She started her career as a product engineer at Titleist in 1998, identifying needs and developing new equipment. She holds several patents and was integral in the adoption of the now widely popular Titleist Pro V1 golf ball.
One of the biggest obstacles companies like Titleist faces is hiring engineers who can communicate effectively with athletes. Knowing science is essential, but if you can’t find out what athletes need, it doesn’t do much good.
Morgan, a biochemistry major and a member of the sports medicine team at Scranton, bridged the gap between science and sports by listening to athletes and actively searching for solutions. She spent long hours watching golfers like Mickelson and learned to appreciate the intricacies of their swing.
“The game those guys play is a completely different game than what the rest of us play,” Morgan says. “They know what their bodies are capable of. They know what their equipment is capable of.”
Morgan says she could make three percent changes to golf balls and the golfers would notice the difference within 15 swings. Once she realized how small their margin of error was, she was able to more fully understand what the athletes needed. And for this, she gained their respect.
After changes in PGA regulations limited new innovations in golf ball technology, Morgan transitioned into a marketing role as the director of tour communications for Titleist. She managed the day-to-day media and public relations requests for Titleist players and equipment, spending 30 weeks a year on the worldwide professional tour and accumulating more than 371,000 airline miles.
There aren’t many people who can transition from physics to marketing so seamlessly, but Morgan has always had an ability to adapt throughout her career. She says her willingness to learn on the job always kept her ahead of the curve.
While there isn’t a Scranton class that teaches you how to make a golf ball fly farther, Morgan, who served on the University’s Alumni Board of Governors, says the institution taught her to be an active learner, a skill that has been far more helpful in her career. “You can’t come out of Scranton without being curious and learning how to ask questions, solve problems and think critically,” Morgan explains.
Much like the athletic equipment she once studied, Morgan isn’t done evolving. She joined Wasserman this spring with the intent of spreading her reach to different sports. She currently focuses on golf, but hopes to add baseball to her portfolio in the coming year.
“Baseball is my real passion,” Morgan says. “I thoroughly enjoy golf, but I’m an infinitely bigger baseball fan than golf fan.”
