An Unforgettable PGA Championship

It’s been a week since that memorable Sunday and I can still hear the roars.

Inside the Media Center at the PGA Championship, the CBS Sports feed of the final round is broadcast on two massive screens. A captivated media is watching the charge of Tiger Woods.

The media watch Woods stand over a putt but, before he strikes the ball , a distant roar can be heard, a sound similar to the thunder that occurred Friday afternoon when storms caused a suspension in play.

But on this sunny Sunday afternoon, this roar is not caused by Mother Nature. This roar is man-made. When Woods makes the putt, the fans react, and loudly. 

Seconds later, it is shown inside the media center, and a similar reaction is heard from the media.

The 100th PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis was the 15th PGA Championship I’ve had the privilege to serve as a volunteer for the Communications Department at the PGA of America. (Not to mention four Ryder Cups and the 2015 U.S. Open at Chambers Bay in my home state of Washington).

My first PGA Championship was 2001 when David Toms out-dueled Phil Mickelson at the Atlanta Athletic Club.

In-between, I’ve seen Mickelson come back to claim his PGA in 2005 followed by back-to-back victories by Tiger in 2006 and 2007. Tiger seemed well on his way to this third in four years until Y.E. Yang shocked the sports world in 2009 by overcoming a 2-shot deficit at the beginning of the final round to beat Tiger. It was the first time, and up until now the only time, Tiger relinquished a 54-hole lead in a major.

I also saw Rory McIlroy earn PGA victories in 2012 and 2014, the latter coming after a stirring battle with Mickelson, Rickie Fowler and Henrik Stenson at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, maybe the greatest PGA I was at.

That is, until 2018.

My role at the PGA can best be described as a player-media liaison. 

This involves transporting players to an interview session at the Media Center prior the Tuesday and Wednesday of PGA week. Usually this involves driving a cart to get a player from the clubhouse, driving range or putting green to the Media Center, but the setup at Bellerive Country Club allowed us to just walk players, including Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and eventual champion Brooks Koepka to the center for their session. 

During the competitive rounds, things get more hectic, and tricky. 

For this particular PGA, I was part of a team of six people responsible for getting players to post round interviews outside the scoring room. 

How it works is once players sign their scorecards and exit the scoring room they are subject to media interviews. Those leading, near the lead, or marquee names like Woods, McIlroy or Spieth are always in demand.

The rights holders, that is, the networks that pay money (and a lot of it) for the right to broadcast the PGA Championship are CBS Sports, TNT, Eleven Sports, and Sirius/XM Radio. They have priority for interviews. 

We are charged with getting the requested players to those entities, in that order, before taking players to what we affectionately call the quickie-quote (or flash quote) podium. We call this because we don’t want players to spend an inordinate amount of time there, although that doesn’t always happen.

This is where things can get tricky. On Thursday and Friday, the PGA has players tee off in threesomes on both the front nine and the back nine. With 156 players competing, this has to happen in order for everyone to finish before darkness falls.

What this means is six players can arrive to scoring at or near the same time. And that means they can also leave at once. This potentially means six players in contention and six players the media wants to talk with. At the same time.

This leads to organized chaos.

It can take some creative shuffling. Maybe one player goes to Eleven Sports while another is interviewing with TNT, and another goes to quickie quotes, and then switch.

It’s a fluid situation with decisions being made in a split-second.

This can lead to some disgruntled members of the media, as we don’t keep a player long at the quickie quote podium in order to get the next player up. But one way or another we make it work.

And when the interviews are taking place, we will hear a roar off in the distance. That can mean only one player. And when he comes into scoring, our plans revolve around Tiger.

It was a memorable week and an unforgettable Sunday final round at this PGA Championship. The amount of memories I’ve compiled during my 15 PGA Championships, four Ryder Cups and U.S. Open can fill the grandstands at the 18th hole of Bellerive Country Club. 

During that Sunday of the 2018 PGA Championship, countless memories were added, and what I remember first and foremost are those roars.