Peak giving once again

Volunteer turnout for the 10th annual Toshiba Senior Classic is once again at a high heading into tournament week, which begins Monday with the pro-am.

Tournament co-chair Jake Rohrer said the number of volunteers hover around 1,000 for the week. As of March 3, Rohrer said about 900 had shown an interest in duties ranging from course marshaling and scorekeeping to registration/check-in and laser operators, those who measure drives, approach shots and putts with the PGA Tour’s new computerized scoring system.

“The response has been positive,” said Rohrer, charged with overseeing the volunteer program. “It depends on how many people work, but 1,000 is a good working number with all the assignments we have.” He expects to reach, if not surpass 1,000 again this year.

Volunteers received their uniforms last weekend and will attend a training session in the next two days.

“That is when we pick up a few stragglers who haven’t made up their mind of what they want to do,” Rohrer said about the weekend when uniforms are distributed. “My job is to keep the volunteers going in the right direction and checking with committee chairs to see if any issues have come up that we need to deal with. The training sessions are busy.”

Many volunteers take vacation time to assist with security, parking, transportation, ecology and hospitality.

Last week Rohrer said more volunteers were needed for marshaling, on-course leaderboards, registration and credential verification.