The BMW Championship: running on volunteers

2,000 Volunteers – marshalls, sign bearers and more – make the BMW Championship happen

By Jim Bebbington

Do you like to stand in the hot sun for hours, hold skinny nylon ropes, answer questions from thousands of strangers, and have a front-row seat for one of the greatest sports events of the year?

Then volunteering at a PGA Tour stop might be for you.

That is the feedback from some of the 2,000 volunteers who are at Castle Pines Golf Club this week making the BMW Championship happen.

“It’s a great way to get out and meet people and see waht the game of golf is about,” said Kaitlin Boileau for Colorado Springs.

Boileau and her husband Thomas took vacation days to work the BMW Championship this week. Boileau applied six months ago and wanted any job ‘inside the ropes.’ Thursday she was the standard bearer for the pairing of Justin Thomas and Aaron Rai – walking 18 holes with a large sign displaying their names and scores to the fans nearby.

“I grew up golfing and have kept golfing (my whole life) so I really life golf,” she said. “We started five years ago attending the Ryder Cup and so this was a great opportunity just to see if I could watch one and work one at the same time.”

Earl Myers, the hole captain on the No. 1 hole, managed a group of 17 marshalls who had to keep the first hole organized and a good experience for both the players and the patrons.

Myers and his wife Sally live in Maryland and will work three tournaments this year – the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the BMW Championship and the Solheim Cup next month in Washington, D.C.

“(People should) give it a try,” he said. “There’s plenty of different jobs at a tournament. This is the one where you stand in the sun for eight hours a day, but if you have a preference for something else there are many different jobs.”

Myers, 76, on Thursday stood 10 feet from the No. 1 tee markers, a headset on, and got to watch the best players in the world take their first swings of the day.

Kelli Carlisle traveled from Michigan with a group of friends and one foot in a walking boot in order to serve as the hole captain for No. 9. She and a group of friends work the BMW Championship every year, traveling with the tournament as it moves around. She worked at Cherry Hills Country Club when the championship was there in 2014.

“We love it,” she said. “I think given my situation (her foot) I’m not really loving the hills, but it’s a beautiful course and we’ve got such a fantastic view from this hole.”

She said after a full day in the sun she and her friends are usually asleep by 8:30 p.m. each night, then back at the course the next morning to help set up by 5:30 a.m.