Navistar LPGA Classic Enhances Prattville’s Profile Worldwide
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It is entirely possible that several people in Ireland, Greece and China now know about Prattville – thanks to golf.
The Golf Channel cable television network beamed the prestigious 2008 Navistar LPGA Classic held here to a worldwide audience in late September 2008. And now, Prattville will host the tournament in 2009, with the Golf Channel again providing live coverage.
“Being live on the Golf Channel worldwide – that is truly valuable to us here in Prattville as well as all of Alabama,” says Jonathan Romeo, tournament director for the Navistar LPGA Classic. “It will undoubtedly bring more people into the state, especially golf enthusiasts who have now seen the beautiful golf course where these women compete.”
That particular course is called The Senator, located at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail at Capitol Hill. The Capitol Hill complex actually has three 18-hole championship courses named The Senator, The Legislator and The Judge, with The Senator featuring a European links-style layout complete with 150 pothole bunkers.
Capitol Hill is one of 11 specific golf venues throughout Alabama that are part of the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, which has made the state a golfing destination.
“The Senator course is so nice and so unusual with its links setup that we attracted 28 of the world’s top 30 women golfers to Prattville for the 2008 tourney,” says Mike Beverly, director of golf at Capitol Hill. “Big names such as Lorena Ochoa, Paula Creamer, Karrie Webb, Natalie Gulbis and Suzann Pettersen were here, and we accommodated about 40,000 spectators for the week’s festivities. By the way, the tournament provides an estimated $8 million in economic impact to the local economy.”
Romeo says that staging such a professional event involves a 12-month preparation process.
“The tournament starts with 144 golfers, so volunteers must be lined up to transport all of these players to and from the airport, and to and from their hotels,” he says. “Then there are volunteers who marshal the golf course to keep crowds inside the roped boundaries, and volunteers to help in dozens of other areas.”
One of those areas is language translation.
“The LPGA presents an interesting challenge these days because many of the players are Korean, so Korean translators are needed to help these women golfers during their time in Prattville,” Romeo says. “In all, about 650 overall volunteers help to make the Navistar LPGA Classic such a successful endeavor.”
Romeo adds that engineers are also hired six weeks prior to the tournament. Their task is to turn The Senator course into a safe and secure environment for the entire September golf week.
“Structural engineers construct temporary bleachers and must make sure that crowds won’t damage parts of the course, specifically where underground pipes and wires exist,” he says. “Crowd weight can really destroy parts of a golf course, so that is one of many, many factors we address prior to the first tee shot of the tournament ever being hit.”
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Story by Kevin Litwin
Photo by J. Kyle Keener
