It was a long time in the planning, but it finally arrived. I was going to marshal at the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, CT. My friends at the Dell/Deutsche Bank Championship had been inviting me for years to come down to marshal and since there would be no FedEx Cup event at TPC Boston this year, now was the time. I had enticed my son Brian to accompany me as well, after he'd gotten exposed to the inside-the-rope experience at last year's Dell. In addition, my wife Mary and Brian's wife Lauren would be accompanying us so there was an added dimension to the experience. It would almost be like having our own personal gallery walking along with us. Our Dell mobile marshal co-chair David had been in communication with me over the winter, stating the need for experienced mobile marshals at the Travelers, which implied our level of experience over so many FedEx Cup Championships was highly valued. Brian and I committed to the mobile marshal committee, but on a limited schedule, working the two weekend days only, not the entire 4 day + Pro-Am tournament.
I won't delve into the details, but the pre-tournament communication with the Travelers was a bit disorganized at best. The usual drill is to get periodic emails from the volunteer coordinator as well as the mobile marshals chair, informing you of important details such as the uniform pick-up procedure, volunteer credential, parking details, guest passes, shift schedule, etc. Suffice to say that each of these details changed repeatedly as the date got closer, requiring phone calls to the Travelers office to clarify specifics. It's partially due our being long-distance out-of-state volunteers, and partially due to Travelers policy of not sending anything by mail. It ultimately necessitated us to show up in street clothes, then change into the Travelers official shirt and hat in the parking lot. At this stage in my marshaling career, you'd like to have things run as tightly as you've come to expect at TPC Boston, but not so much here evidently. Oh well, it all worked out in the end, and the essensce of being a marshal is responding to the situation right then and there, and dealing with it in a way that supports the overall objective of contributing to a first class event for one and all.
We arrived at TPC River Highlands on a glorious sunny day, the second day of summer, perfect conditions especially since the course had been drenched in rain recently and was basically a quagmire. A nice feature was having parking immediately adjacent to the course, a short walk to the volunteer villa and mobile marshal morning assembly area. No shuttle bus required. I immediately met up with familiar faces, Karen, our Dell mobile marshals co-chair, and Diane, both of whom have been marshaling for over 30 years and have seen it all! They walked Brian and me through the registration process in the villa to get all of our stuff and then proceed to the MM meeting for our player assignment. Ran into Maureen, the chair of gallery control for Travelers for a quick hug. David was also there and we chatted a bit before our meeting got started, primarily about the changes we were all experiencing this year with the FedEx schedule reshuffling resulting in the Northern Trust taking over for our traditional spot in the FedEx playoffs, at Liberty National in Jersey City. We regretted not being able to get together on Labor Day at TPC Boston. Evidently, the pre-championship communication with Northern Trust has been even worse than what I've experienced leading up to the Travelers. Glad I didn't commit to volunteering for the Northern Trust tournament from the sounds of it. Some familiar faces from Boston were here at Travelers, including Chris and Jim "The Mayor", and I got a chance to chat with them, both great guys. Renewing old acquaintances and comparing war stories is always a special part of marshaling. Our 7am meeting got started at 7:40, with 30 marshals present. Greg, our chairman, commented that there were too many marshals for the number of high caliber players remaining after the cut. (Phil & Jordan hadn't made it, two fan favorites). That left Bubba Watson, Brooks Koepka, Jason Day as the most prominent players in need of "Roving Marshal" support, (at least that's what our credentials called us). Brian and I were assigned to Keegan Bradley and Ryan Moore in the second to last pairing of the day, teeing off at 1:45pm, with Kim as our lead marshal, a very nice lady who has marshaled at both Travelers and Boston for years. She also happens to be the Mayor's wife, God bless her!
After a nice breakfast at the volunteer villa, courtesy of Dunkin Donuts, we arranged for our guest passes for Mary and Lauren to be carted over to the willcall ticket barn, somewhere way over in guest parking. A big thank you to Taylor Whiting, volunteer services coordinator, for doing that for us. We then decided to walk about the course a bit since we had lots of hours to kill, heading over to the practice range first, which was huge, with great spectator viewing from the elevated grandstand. After awhile, we walked to the clubhouse, brand new this year and a duplicate of the layout at TPC Boston. We were not allowed to tour the inside but that was to be expected on tournament day. The adjacent Fan Zone was a mudpit from the previous week of rain and thousands of spectators churning the grass into a mess, but the grounds keepers had done well installing rubber mat walkways to minimize the chaos. Brian and I headed to the 18th hole, scene of many spectacular finishes to check it out. A vast bowl shaped hillside surrounding the green with grandstands and corporate pavilions on top created quite the stadium for golf. It was empty now but we'd get a taste of it later on.
The crowd at the 18th at TPC River Highlands
By then, Mary and Lauren had arrived so we met at the 1st tee area which was a sea of humanity by this time. Justin Thomas walked by us on his way to the tee and I walked up to check things out. I ended up standing a few feet away from the standard bearer and scorer for his pairing, when Justin came over and introduced himself to them, and to me, shaking my hand and saying, "Hi, I'm Justin, thanks for helping out today." I then realized there were no roving marshals in sight and that he had been omitted from having any assigned to him. I considered contacting Greg to offer to switch our assignment but this would have created a domino effect, leaving Kim by herself or having to hustle to get other marshals to help her out. Brian and I couldn't cover his pairing for however many holes and then also walk 18 with Bradley and Moore. If this had been happening at TPC Boston I would have had a headset and made the decision to coordinate the situation somehow with David, but I was a rookie here. We later heard at our am meeting on Sunday that this had been a regrettable scheduling oversight.
Mary and Lauren wanted to see some more players so we headed back to the range and saw more players, including many lesser known chaps who needed some identifying info from me or Brian, ("Who is Scott Brown? Where is he from? Has he won anything?") That type of thing. Mary knows a bit about golf or she wouldn't be here, but us marshals pretty much know everyone after awhile. Always amazing watching these guys warm-up, hitting shots I could only dream of. It was time for lunch so we scored something at the concession stand, very nice set-up they had here, virtually no line. We then found a shady picnic table where we found our buddy Chris. He'd already finished his round as lead marshal for the Brooks Koepka pairing, sharing his experience learning the golf course as it was his first time seeing also. Very hilly and a tough layout, especially the finishing holes 15 through 18. Koepka drew a fairly sizable gallery so it was a good assignment. He said he would have liked to have had us along as there were no familiar faces on his crew. The discussion then digressed to other subjects including his having his son and daughter both in college and how silly the tuition sticker prices had gotten. Brian and Lauren graduated in 2012 and they're already amazed how much tuition costs continue to rise since then. We eventually said goodbye to Chris who was now off to work the 13th hole as a marshal just to help out. At the first tee we met up with our lead marshal Kim who knew we were experienced but new to the TPC River Highlands lay out, so her instruction mainly consisted of identifying the best places for us to marshal from as we walked along with Keegan and Ryan. Kim initially didn't make the connection that we were father and son until she got to chatting with the two ladies constantly walking along with us, who explained the whole relationship. We then got to know her better as well as you can while we were taking care of marshaling business. Keegan Bradley was having a very good day, eventually finishing second. Being a New Englander, from Vermont originally, he got a huge amount of crowd support. It was interesting marshaling for him as his lengthy pre-shot routine is pretty unique, with starts, stops, resets, club spins, lining up putts with his distinct left eye dominant head tilt. As a marshal, you don't want to be too early in signaling the gallery for quiet, standing with your arms raised for 5 minutes.
We found the hilly terrain challenging at times, on what proved to be a rather difficult walking course, especially for spectators. The hills provide frequent stadium-like viewpoints, as well as grandstands and pavilions, which promote a much more stationary gallery. Lots of people sitting on hillsides forced us to take a knee while marshaling so we wouldn't be blocking anyone's view.
The sizable crowd and perfect summer weather reminded me of a U.S. Open rather than a FedEx cup look. However, this crowd was pretty tame and quite respectful, no heckling or idiotic shout-outs. I heard ''Bababoie'' only once all weekend. There were times when our 3-person roving marshal crew wasn't really needed as the set-up at Travelers has a great disparity of marshals hole-to-hole. Sometimes we'd count up to 10 marshals surrounding a green, other places 1 or 2 or even none at one spot. By late afternoon, a few of the holes with lots of marshals weren't doing too much marshaling, mostly spectating or standing in bunches talking. Brian commented later that this drove him nuts! He's become pretty serious about this, living up to the high standard of marshals we've cultivated at Boston. One of our specialties is handling the gallery when balls land outside the ropes. Today, we'd often arrive at the scene where the hole marshal on site had only begun the process of getting the crowd into position to allow Bradley or Moore to make the shot back into play, but needed a whole lot more help: little things like placing a tee to mark the rope post-hole so that it could be replaced quickly or making sure the crowd isn't standing so close as to cast moving shadows on the ball.
When we got to the closing holes 15 through 18 we saw the real teeth of this golf course, an incredibly challenging layout, compounded by a change in the weather with wind, a bit of rain, but thankfully dodging a lightning cell to the south. We could feel the electricity from the gallery as both players took extra time over their shots to negotiate the water hazard adjacent to 15, 16, &17. You could feel them taking a breather once we got to the 18th hole, hitting up to the huge stadium green. It was a great day, different than the FedEx cup we've gotten to know so well at TPC Boston, but worth the trip to Connecticut. Looking forward to Sunday.
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