At the PGA, It Takes a Village

There are supposed to be 10,000 lakes in this state, but the operative number this week is 10 million. That’s roughly how many dollars the PGA of America expects to put in its pockets from the 35 corporate hospitality tents at Hazeltine National Golf Club.

Oh and they’re not tents, they’re “chalets.” And they’re situated in “villages.”

And if you think anything called a chalet and found in a village is going to be some plain vanilla deal, think again.

In fact, think soft sofas and cushy chairs, lounges and buffets, wide-screen color televisions and decor handled by a vendor specially provided by the PGA of America.

There are 19 chalets in the Jacklin Village (Tony Jacklin won the 1970 U.S. Open at Hazeltine) to the left of the seventh hole, and 16 more at the Stewart Village (Payne Stewart won the 1991 Open here) to the right of the 18th fairway. Each chalet costs between $135,000 and $150,000 and can accommodate 100 people who love good air conditioning as much as they love good golf.

A record 160 companies, about three-fourths of them from Minnesota, have reserved space in the chalets, each of which measures 1,600 square feet and has a 450-square-foot patio.

Welcome to the corporate village.

“Our aim is to continue to listen to what our clients enjoy and to act accordingly,” said Kerry Haigh, the PGA of America’s senior director of tournaments.

“The corporate sponsors, they’re bringing their best customers, and we want to give them the best experience,” said Jim Awtrey, chief executive officer of the PGA of America.

Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Sergio Garcia are all here to try to win the 84th PGA Championship, the fourth and final major of the year, which starts Thursday. But until they start piling up their birdies on the golf course, there is another compelling story being told off it.

There has been a tendency to damn the PGA Championship with faint praise, for its status as a seemingly lesser major played on inferior courses with poor fields. But that’s starting to look like a misguided notion.

Not only is Hazeltine a major league layout--as are Atlanta Athletic Club and Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, N.Y., the sites last year and next year--but barring a late withdrawal, the PGA Championship will be the first tournament in history to have all of the top 100 players in the world rankings.

Several steps have been taken to boost the standing of the PGA Championship. The first major to offer a $5 million purse was the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla in Louisville. To answer criticism that fields were diluted, the PGA of America cut the number of club pros from 40 to 25. The host courses, which included duds such as PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., and Oak Tree in Edmond, Okla., now routinely include prestigious venues such as Baltusrol in Springfield, N.J., in 2005, Medinah in Chicago in 2006, and Oakland Hills in Birmingham, Mich., in 2008.

Along the way, the PGA of America perfected the art of the corporate massage.

Inspired by the tented villages first seen in majors at the British Open, the PGA of America got on board in 1990 and has been beefing up its corporate stance since. The full-blown “chalet” experience began at the 1995 PGA Championship at Riviera.

“We wanted to make sure we had more control over our own assets,” Haigh said.

Previously, both the USGA at the U.S. Open and the PGA of America contracted with the host club, which ran the events.

Hazeltine’s 35 corporate chalets are not a record--there were 41 last year at Atlanta Athletic Club--but there is much money to be made in this golf business, even beyond the $10 million profit the chalets are expected to yield.

There are the 8,000 customers who have bought weeklong passes for $350 to the exclusive Wanamaker Club, which amounts to another $2.8 million in revenue--and that doesn’t include whatever is spent on food and beverages.

Last year at Atlanta Athletic Club, the concession workers sold 181,446 cups of beer, 16,800 pounds of turkey breast, 8,200 pounds of salmon, 37,500 pounds of hamburgers and 85,000 pounds of hot dogs.

It should be noted that there were also 500 portable toilets.

Ticket sales have topped out at 40,000 for the week, at $250 apiece, for another $10 million.

Television rights on CBS are worth about $12 million to the PGA of America.

At the Ryder Cup in 1999, the last time the PGA of America hosted the event, the organization reportedly netted $17 million, the biggest profit in the history of golf.

These are big league numbers, but the most significant step the PGA of America took in elevating its showcase tournament into a major major happened 44 years ago, in 1958, when the tournament abandoned match play for stroke play.

From 1916 through 1957, the PGA Championship followed a match-play format that was basically a 36-hole qualifying round followed by five rounds of match play. Even though the game’s greatest players--Walter Hagen, Gene Sarazen, Tommy Armour, Henry Picard, Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead--became PGA champions in the match-play format, television dictated a switch to stroke play to give the biggest stars better chances of making it to the weekend.

“They made the change for television,” said Nelson, who won in 1940 and 1945 and was runner-up in 1939, 1941 and 1944. “The way things were going, it was both the right decision and the only decision they could make.”

Lanny Wadkins, the 1977 PGA champion, said most players enjoy match play and would like to have more events in that format, but agrees that the switch made all the difference for the PGA Championship.

“As TV became bigger, more and more stroke play just works better,” he said. “Just the whole deal of match play, because it was such a grind, a grueling test. A lot of us played six or seven rounds of match play in tournaments when we were amateurs, but we were a hell of a lot younger then.”

Broadcaster Jim Nantz of CBS said the PGA Championship really entered the big time when John Daly got into the field as an alternate and won the 1991 event at Crooked Stick in Carmel, Ind.

“He caught lightning in a bottle,” Nantz said.

While the world’s best golfers try to do the same this week, the 16 Stewart Village chalets and 19 Jacklin Village chalets and the sparkling Wanamaker Club will cast their giant shadows over the proceedings, electronic cash registers beeping in the background.

Awtrey, who became chief executive officer in 1988, said the PGA Championship isn’t all about making money--although that’s a nice part--nor is it about saving par. The PGA of America doesn’t mind players shooting low scores, he said.

“We don’t set up a policy to protect par,” Awtrey said. “There is an organization that does that.

“We let players decide history. We don’t want the golf course set-up to decide. We don’t want to remove par fives or make some holes borderline unfair. We don’t do that.”

It’s an interesting approach. Along with Tiger’s swing and Phil’s quest for a major and Sergio’s waggles, it might even be another hot topic for discussion at the Wanamaker Club or in the chalets ... between bites of roast beef, shrimp cocktail and smoked turkey breast, of course. Bon appetit! And fore!

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Hazeltine National Golf Club Scorecard

*--* HOLE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Out Par 4 4 5 3 4 4 5 3 4 36 Yards 460 435 636 196 412 405 542 178 436 3,700

*--*

*--* HOLE 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 In Total Par 4 5 4 3 4 5 4 3 4 36 72 Yards 410 597 465 204 357 586 402 182 457 3,660 7,360

*--*

*

*--* Major Events at Hazeltine Major tournaments held at Hazeltine National Golf Club: Year Tournament 1966 U.S. Women’s Open 1970 U.S. Open 1977 U.S. Women’s Open 1983 U.S. Senior Open 1991 U.S. Open

*--*