{"id":17827,"date":"2026-06-08T14:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T14:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/17827\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T14:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T14:18:09","slug":"eventprof-of-the-week-hailey-golding-the-ryder-cup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/17827\/","title":{"rendered":"#EventProf of the week: Hailey Golding, The Ryder Cup"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a> <\/p>\n

Each week, we spotlight a StandOut individual who has made an extraordinary impact within the events industry. This week, we\u2019re featuring Hailey Golding<\/a>, event operations manager at The Ryder Cup.<\/p>\n

When did you realise that events were \u201cyour thing\u201d and the career for you?<\/p>\n

When I was 15, the charity Oxfam was running the Oxjam\/Gigmaker programme, where they send you some resources to organise your own music event locally in aid of Oxfam. I took on that project over the summer, raised a good amount of money and had the best time running the event! I remember having a conversation with my mum about how much I loved it and how I wish I could just do this for a living instead of getting a \u201creal job\u201d. She said, \u201cYou can, it\u2019s called event management and it can be a whole career\u201d. From that moment on I was hooked. I finished up my GCSE\u2019s, A-Levels, went to university to do my degree in event management, and haven\u2019t looked back.<\/p>\n

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Looking back over your career, what\u2019s been the biggest lesson you have learned?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Every single person, team and project is different, and often what might be right for one situation doesn\u2019t always work for another. This might seem obvious, but it\u2019s also very applicable to team dynamics and how you approach individuals and their personalities. Events is an industry made for people, by people, so there is an extremely wide scope of characters you\u2019ll interact with. Not every person will have the same level of directness, tact, pace, conflict resolution, sensitivity, tolerance, humour, or contextual knowledge that you do. It may be higher or lower on varying scales. Just because you don\u2019t immediately click with one team, doesn\u2019t mean you or they are falling short or you don\u2019t belong in events \u2013 maybe that just isn\u2019t the most compatible environment for you. That doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t thrive! Learning to adapt your approach is an extremely valuable skill, taking the time to understand how different people work, what motivates them, and how they prefer to collaborate, is a trait that will serve you extremely well throughout your career.<\/p>\n

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What trends in the events world are you most excited by right now?<\/p>\n

Excited to see a real uptake in more integrated off-site fan engagement for major events. Particularly with satellite\/pop up fan zones becoming a much bigger part of how organisers engage audiences beyond ticket-holders. One or two of the biggest hallmark events in global sport have done this for a while, but historically it has felt like an afterthought, whereas at the moment it seems like organisers and agencies are paying attention to the potential benefits of these types of activations and fan-centred events. Utilising these adds to the main events\u2019 commercial viability in regions external to its immediate location; it pushes innovation in technology for guest\/customer benefit; it opens up possibilities for much more inclusive events \u2013 from mobility to financial barriers; and it cultivates an invaluable sense community and cohesion around the event.<\/p>\n

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When you\u2019re going on-site, what three things do you not leave home without?<\/p>\n

For greenfield sites: noise cancelling headphones, sweet treats, and wellies \u2013 can\u2019t ever rely on the great British weather!<\/p>\n

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Do you have any on-site bugbears?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Badly parked (abandoned) buggies!<\/p>\n

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Do you have any on-site rules that you live by?<\/p>\n

A buggy ride a day keeps the doctor away. Getting out on site regularly, checking in with people, spotting issues early, and staying involved.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What do you do on site to keep morale high and your team motivated?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I make a \u201cbrew list\u201d. I write down the members of my immediate team\u2019s go to tea\/coffee order, how they drink it and their favourite snack\/chocolate bar\/meal deal. Always comes in handy when you\u2019re doing a drinks run, or if someone is particularly busy or in need of a little pick me up. I find the little things like knowing someone\u2019s coffee order or favourite treat without them having to ask can bring a little bit of comfort to someone when they need a little boost. Depending on the project I\u2019ll print it out and put it up in the site office somewhere so that we\u2019ve all got access to it.<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s the next chapter in your events journey?<\/p>\n

For the next two years or so I\u2019ll be with the Ryder Cup Team, working on the 2027 Adare Manor event, with a few other smaller events potentially along the way. It\u2019s such a privilege to get to work on hallmark events like these, especially with such a great team around you. Extremely excited about this one!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Each week, we spotlight a StandOut individual who has made an extraordinary impact within the events industry. This…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[7425,552,7426,2789,7427,7428],"class_list":["post-17827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ryder-cup","tag-epotw","tag-ryder-cup","tag-event-profs","tag-events","tag-events-industry","tag-the-ryder-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}