Day 2     DTC     Saturday    September 2, 2017

Assigned to Phil Mickelson, Lucas Glover, & Ian Poulter for 8:27am tee-off, so had less than an hour for a quick breakfast, not a lot by FedEx standards.  My crew included Diane, and husband & wife team of Joe and Diane, who I had trained a couple years ago.  Grabbed a DD muffin and hot coffee as it was probably the coldest day I can remember for the tournament, glad I had the Nike jacket.  At the first tee, chatted with the Captain, who I greeted as Mr. Ambassador, who had been recently chosen as one of two volunteer ambassadors in recognition of their many years of service to the tournament.   I also greeted Lucas Glover as he walked up to the 1st tee, thanking him for taking the time to visit us volunteers at the pavilion, he said he was happy to do it and again thanked us volunteers for all our efforts. Warmed up in the sun, then strolled to the first green with the Norton police officer assigned to keep everyone in the gallery under control.  Great guy, said the FedEx cup duty was relatively easy, having to deal with the occasional ''genteel'' drunk, in contrast to the fans often encountered at  Xfinity Center concerts or Gillette tailgate parties.


Our round went pretty well, Phil garnering the most attention from the gallery, acknowledging continuous shout-outs from the crowd every step of the way.  Poulter, not a Boston favorite, had his moments, stopping to answer the call of nature mere steps off the 12th tee, while hundreds of fans in the gallery raised their cellphones to document the event.  I asked them to "please don't put this on the Internet, folks!", which was greeted with laughs.  He was mildly heckled throughout his round with comments generally aimed at his performance at last year's Ryder Cup.  Phil played really well, shooting a 67 and ending only 3 back from the leader Jon Rahm at -9 for the day.  Our crew had an out-of-body moment on the 16th tee when Glover had a hole-in-one, the roar from the crowd like something I hadn't experienced since the TW days.

Lucas Glover strutting off 16 tee after hitting a hole-in-one

 Challenging gallery management all day as we had to control the fan's tendency to move once Phil had competed his shot, despite having 2 other players to go.  The gallery was very understanding of this all day, which made our job easier.  My crew really did an outstanding job in this regard, keeping the gallery from trying to move ahead on the cart paths to get into position for the next hole.  Only one instance of needing to keep the gallery in position at the 5th green when Poulter's approach landed beyond the ropes, but thankfully there were enough hole marshals already in place to handle the situation.  Our gallery had been pretty thin at the start, but grew to over 1,000 by the time we made the turn onto the back 9, continuing to grow as we progressed toward the stadium like atmosphere of 16-18.  A full house affair along the 18th fairway with the "Phil Effect'' in full force.  After he finished, we escorted him over to the adjacent interview and scoring areas, in a newly configured arrangement, which I think worked well for gallery crowd control.  I didn't linger in the autograph area once I saw that Melinda, our "Queen of Autographs" was present and in charge of the situation.