When the entire world arrives on the doorstep of Michigan’s Great Southwest thanks to more than a dozen hours of live television broadcast on the Golf Channel and NBC next week, lots of folks will be beaming broadly, but the biggest smiles will likely emanate from KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship Director Brandon Haney. Hundreds (or likely thousands) of hours of hard work by Haney and his team are putting the finishing touches on the Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course at Harbor Shores in Benton Harbor ahead of the 82nd Championship which officially starts next Thursday morning…a week from today.
Mr. Haney has a strong history in Southwest Michigan, having served previously as either Assistant Ops Manager, or Operations Manager for previous championships here in 2014 and 2016, as well as the last time the event was hosted here in 2018. The 2020 event, as we all know, was canceled by the pandemic.
Brandon’s unique perspective of the prestigious championship stems from not only that operations role wherein he was directly responsible for building a veritable city in the middle of the world-class golf course, but also his role prior to being elevated to full-on Championship Director here, when he served for two years as Operations Manager for the 2020 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits, which was rescheduled to 2021 as a result of the pandemic.
While he now has responsibility for the entire Championship, he’ll be the first to admit that watching the virtual city be constructed on the course over the past month, and all of the logistics that go into it, still provides a great deal of satisfaction as his team guides the process, nurtures it, sweats through it and gets it done ahead of the big event next week.
Virtually anything and everything to do with the multiple tents, canopies, concession stands, grandstands, fences, leaderboards, golf carts and more being assembled for the KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship is well-planned, strategized, tweaked, and put into place by Haney’s crew from the PGA of America. The dozens of workers who have been in town for several weeks now putting all of the pieces into place are affectionately called “Swampers,” and they are a remarkable team, well-versed in their roles.
Roughly 50 different vendors provide services for the team from flooring to tenting, power, HVAC, electrical distribution, leaderboards, and food service to printers and TVs as well as restrooms help secure everything for the Championship.
Included in the long list of items going in at Harbor Shores you will find:
- Three public grandstands. One behind the 1st tee, one behind the 17th green and one alongside the 18th green…
- Just under 100,000 square feet of flooring, and more than 90,000 square feet of tenting.
- 231 golf carts on site.,,
- 390 two-way radios will be employed to keep communications flowing…
- 5,650 linear feet of chain link fencing…
- More than 12,000 linear feet of logo’d red windscreen on that fending, because it’s double sided, and is also used on the TV towers as well…
- 11 leaderboards including the monster board at the first tee area…
- TV towers on each hole from 7 through 18…
- Two broadcast booths…with the NBC studio on hole number seven, which is a new location from previous years. (It used to be over on hole 16.) Then the Golf Channel Live From Studio is back behind the 15 green alongside the hospitality suites…
- The Championship will be broadcast worldwide through 12 and a half hours of live coverage on Golf Channel and NBC…
Also making a return this year, Haney says, “The Makers Trail 19th hole has been moved down from 17-tee to 17-green,” adding, “It’s a fantastic view. You’re practically on the 17th green, which is an awesome spot, but we’re very excited with what we’re doing with the beer garden area there and adding different elements to that structure for ticket-holders including a dedicated food truck. We’re going to have a cool activation with a map where all the six makers’ businesses are actually located with cool links to all their videos and that’s going to be a really fun spot.”
On the opposite side of the 17th green is another grandstand. The Miller Lite Public Pavilion sponsored by Alliance Beverage, which Haney says, “Gives us the opportunity to have a covered bleacher for the general public to really enjoy the 17th green as the leaders are finishing over the weekend.”
Behind the 18th green you will find the KitchenAid Hospitality tent, as well as another public bleacher grandstand, and behind the 16th green is the Champions Club and another leaderboard as well.
The Media Center is located in Whirlpool’s M-Tec Center this year, and Brandon reports, “We have moved our Volunteer Headquarters over to the main entrance, which we think is going to be a great experience for all of our volunteers, with hospitality check-in all in one facility right there, close to the shuttle back and forth to the parking lot. That also allows all of our volunteers to enjoy the Pure Michigan Community Showcase, the KitchenAid Fairway Club, the video board and everything that’s going to be activated there throughout the week.”
At the entry courtyard, the Championship will provide live music on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights. As people are leaving Friday night, they’ll have Eric Fisher and his band…Saturday features Work in Progress, live and on Sunday, it will be Libido Funk Circus.
The Championship is also featuring a Young Professionals Social, opening things up to the young professional groups, and will have the Makers Trail 19th Hole open for them, as Haney chuckles, “There’s a lot of things going on throughout the week and it’s crazy!”
For the younger set, The Senior PGA Kids Zone will be open from 10:00am to 2:00pm on Saturday, and again, 10:00am to 4:00pm on Sunday. Saturday will be Kids Day at the Championship, as Haney tells us, “We’ll activate that starting at 9:00am at the KitchenAid Fairway Club with the ever so popular Smoothie Race again, so you can watch the kids do that in the Fairway Club, then we’re partnering with our friends over at the Renaissance Athletic Club. We’re going to take the kids over there, where the trainers from the RAC are going to be putting them through some different activities and exercises out on the turf field, which is great, and then take them out to the Kids Zone where we’ll have John Dudley, a local magician on site, along with Michigan PGA Professionals doing some golf lessons with hitting-bays, and GolfZilla. And then the Curious Kids Museum Stem Zone will have a really new activation where we’ll have some fun things inside the zone for them to try, all right in the middle of Jean Klock Park where holes 7, 8, and 9 all come together.” There will also be food trucks and a KitchenAid Café in that zone.
It’s not news that it takes a veritable army to pull off this major sporting event. In fact, they currently have volunteers representing 31 states across the country as well as from Canada and the UK on the roster of 1,200 volunteers.
At the Pure Michigan Community Showcase the Digital Mosaic, sponsored by Dow Chemical, is a cool new feature. Haney explains, “On the golf course we will have 12 different spots where you can take a photo and submit it through the QR code and then watch it get uploaded live into the Digital Mosaic in the Showcase. We’re also going to showcase local agriculture, and all the great fruits and vegetables that are grown in Michigan. It’s amazing when you look through the list of how Michigan ranks. Plus, we will have tastings for the Makers Trail 19th hole at the Showcase, and then a lot of just cool artwork and more activities that people can find on the internet, as well as a huge sand sculpture being created right on site.”
The main concession stand will be at the Pure Michigan Community Showcase Courtyard, and they’ll have beverage stations on the golf course. New this year, according to Haney, is a mobile food cart, “Which affords us the flexibility to move it around the property with the crowds. Harbor Shores is so unique and so spread out that once you get through the front nine, especially on Saturday and Sunday, there’s nobody left for galleries. The new mobile offering will be able to leapfrog and gravitate to where the crowds are.”
Golf fans can expect what Championship Director Haney describes as “the strongest field we’ve ever had at Harbor Shores,” adding, “Ryder Cup Captains Steve Stricker and Padraig Harrington will be here, along with guys like Ernie Els, KJ Choi, David Duval and a lot of other new, first-time-eligible, guys, and then our past champions like Colin Montgomery, Bernhard Langer, Rocco Mediate, Paul Broadhurst, Roger Chapman — those guys are all coming back and John Daly. So the list is fantastic.”
Looking back on the past few weeks, Haney admits, “It’s nice to have had some decent weather for a while. I was starting to wonder if we ever going to be able to dry things out and do this, but the recent heat did wonders for the golf course. It really kind of popped last week, and then this week has been fantastic so far, so we will certainly take some more days like that.” He repped the event in last weekend’s Blossomtime Grand Floral Parade with the Alfred S. Bourne Championship Trophy.
KitchenAid and Whirlpool Corp. have been proud to bring Major Championship golf to Southwest Michigan since 2012, showing the world that Benton Harbor is an incredible place to live, work and play. The Championship makes a positive impact on the local economy each year, and is deeply embedded in the fabric of the community.
2020 marked the 10th Anniversary of the Harbor Shores Resort. The Resort, which includes the Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course and The Inn at Harbor Shores, is the realization of a vision made possible by $900 million in strategic investments and a collective array of relationships and community partners, including Whirlpool Corp.
Tickets are still available at www.SRPGA.com, as well as tickets for the Makers Trail 19th Hole. You can go to the website for answers to most anything about the Championship. They also will have an app available — an on-site app — where people can find the course map and pairings all live on their phone.
When I first told Brandon Haney’s story here back in 2018, I asked him if he would he like to take the helm some day as a full-on Championship Director like Ryan Ogle and Jeff Hintz before him? “Absolutely!” he said, beaming brightly. At that time I wrote, “Having watched him for several years now, I have no doubt that’s not only a dream for Mr. Haney, I personally think it’s his destiny one day, because he’s just that good.” Well…here we are. He’s at the helm, and ready to roll for a stellar year at Harbor Shores. Congrats, my friend! Well done!
