Imagine the logistics that go into building a small city on a world-class golf course. Brandon Haney of the PGA of America not only has to imagine it, he has to guide it, nurture it, sweat through it, and get it done for the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship now less than two weeks away at Harbor Shores.
Haney is Operations Manager for the Championship and he sees his job as “Kinda like building a city on the golf course.” He is the one ultimately responsible for virtually anything and everything to do with the multiple tents, canopies, concession stands, grandstands, fences, leaderboards and more currently being erected and placed across the broad acreage of the Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course at Harbor Shores.
When I asked him about how he goes about getting his job done, Brandon says, “We have about 50 different vendors that provide services for us, from flooring to tenting, power, HVAC, electrical distribution, leaderboards, and food service to printers to TVs to restrooms, every little thing even down to a company that comes in to put in irrigation just to water our flowers. So, everything you can think of that we bring in to set up the site.”
Stop and think about that. Here’s just a small list of things he arranges for, to show you how some might consider it to be a logistical nightmare:
- 100,000 square feet of flooring…
- 93,500 square feet of tenting…
- 10,000 linear feet of chain-link fence…
- 20,000 linear feet of wind screen applied to that chain link fence…
- 150 portable restrooms…
- 6 luxury restroom trailers…
- 35 office trailers…
- 75 big screen TVs…
- 300 tables…
- 725 chairs…
- 400 bar stools
- 200 golf carts…
- 350 two-way radios…
- More than 500 different pieces of graphic signage…
- 500 live plants…
- 25,000 zip ties
Trust me…there’s a bazillion more details to work with, too. As I talked to Brandon Wednesday morning a torrential downpour was hitting the course. He said, “We’re approaching advance week, so a lot of times you get about a week out and you’re like, ‘There’s no way we’re ready for a golf tournament.'” But, he quickly adds, “That’s why we call it advance week, everything just advances so much in the final week that we’re at the point where all the finishing touches are getting put on.”
By way of example, that day flags were starting to go up, the graphics were going onto the tents, the picket fence and the chain link fence with windscreens on top of that were being strategically placed…as Brandon calls it, “The stuff that really makes everything pop.”
It’s a tremendous responsibility,but Mr. Haney thrives on it, and is very, very good at his job. He says, “It’s an exciting time, it’s a busy time, we need the weather to cooperate a little bit for us, but we’ll get there.”
The logistics are enormous. It’s 50 different vendors and all of their staffs, so there are hundreds of people between the PGA of America vendors, the NBC TV compound and more. In fact, the Golf Channel Studio is being constructed right now, so Haney says, “There’s a lot of different areas to coordinate, but it all comes together at the end. These are all vendors that we work with at multiple tournaments, so they work really well together in the manner in which they operate and work well to coordinate with each other, which makes it a little easier on us, too.”
The dozens of workers who have been in town for several weeks now putting all of the pieces into place are affectionately called “Swampers,” and they are a remarkable team, especially when you consider they are largely from warm weather states in the southern United States and for the first several weeks on the job here had to put up with our extended winter weather including snow, ice, cold temperatures, rain, sleet and more.
Brandon himself began his PGA of America career as a “Swamper,” or operations assistant. That was in 2012. He says, “We have a good model with our operations department. When you start as a “swamper,” or operations assistant, and you do that for a couple of years in college and a year or so after college and then you start working your way up from there.” He looks at it as “a good opportunity to come in from the manual labor side of things, because you get to see the behind the scenes view of how a major championship is put together. You do that for a couple of years and then move into a bigger and better role after that.”
That’s exactly what Brandon has done, advancing through the years. He says, “I was absolutely in the trenches in the early years. When our swamping crew starts, I tell them I’m never going to ask you to do something that I haven’t done myself, or I wouldn’t do myself, so it’s a good perspective for them to know that they’re not doing anything that we’ve not done in the past ourselves.”
Having begun six years ago, Mr. Haney’s door-opener was at the Ryder Cup at Medinah Country Club outside of Chicago. That was his first event, but he’s worked every PGA Championship, every Senior PGA Championship, and every Ryder Cup event ever since.
I asked him about his own future, and he says, “I really enjoy this role, and the operation sides of things, but I’m always looking to grow and learn different things, I’ve been exposed a little bit to Volunteer Operations, and Sales & Marketing, so eventually I’d like to move into a bigger opportunity and learn and grow both personally and professionally.”
So…would he like to take the helm some day as a full-on Championship Director like Ryan Ogle and Jeff Hintz before him? “Absolutely!” he said, beaming brightly. Having watched him for several years now, I have no doubt that’s not only a dream for Mr. Haney, I personally think it’s his destiny one day. He’s just.that.good.
