Last weekend, the Horseshoe Casino Classic took place at Lost Marsh Golf Club in Hammond, IN.  It is a tournament on the Duramed Futures Tour, the developmental tour for the LPGA, with the women golfers competing in the hopes of making it to the big tour.

Two years ago, I took advantage of an interesting opportunity presented by District 30 – serving as a guest starter for that tournament in which I announced to the crowd who will be teeing off.  District 30 started working with the tournament’s organizer, the Chicago Festivals Association, the previous year with the 2006 State Street Thanksgiving Day parade, where many from District 30 served as street announcers.  We used that opportunity to give exposure to Toastmasters to those attending the parade, give our volunteers a chance to showcase their speaking as well as entertaining the crowds.

In April 2007, the District 30 Public Relations Officer sent out an e-mail about the opportunity to serve as a guest starter as well as other volunteer positions for the Futures Tour event.  At that time I was nearing the end of my involvement in District 30 and was looking to explore different interests, volunteering at golf tournaments was one of them.  So I jumped at this chance, thinking that I could be like Ivor Robson, the legendary British Open/Open Championship starter, for a weekend.  As it turned out I was the only District 30 member that was willing to volunteer for ANY role in the tournament – I noticed that very few avid Toastmaster members are golfers.  In fact, of the one thousand or so District 30 members I’ve known throughout the years, I could think of about two dozen members who I consider avid golfers.  I only heard two contest speeches, both humorous, where golf was the main subject and they happen to be about neophyte’s view of the game and about being a young caddie.

So on the second weekend of June 2007, I did serve as a starter for the first two days of the three-day tournament, making the hour-long trip from the northwest suburbs to Hammond, IN, showing up for both the morning and afternoon tee times.  The tournament had players starting from both 1st and 10th tees, which are next to each other, and there was one of the local pros that also served as a starter so one announced the groups teeing off from the 1st while the other announced those teeing off from the 10th (I announced the 1st tee groups on Friday and 10th tee groups on Saturday).  It was more than just announcing the names – I presented the players scorecards, explained some tournament rules that were adjusted for a particular day, even asked if they wore a particular shoes and spikes as the Futures Tour had official sponsors for such items.  With many foreign players and others with questionable pronunciations, I also asked the players to about their names to make sure I get that right when announcing.

It turned out that I was able to announce every player’s name correctly and had no major hiccups when making each announcement.  I did not feel nervous, though the crowds are much smaller than those of the PGA and LPGA events.  After my work was done, I was willing to stick around and help out with other tournament roles, including verifying scorecards of the players after their rounds were finished.  On Sunday when I did not serve as a starter as a local announcer was performing that role, I even served as a standard bearer (or “Sign Boy” for those who remember those FootJoy commercials with Matt Griesser) for one of the final pairings.

I thoroughly enjoyed this unique experience.  Not sure if we were given opportunities to work on last year’s and this year’s tournaments, I would have turned them down if I was given the offer to be a guest starter again as I’ve been estranged from District 30 since that time.  It was one of the stepping stones that got me further involved in volunteering for golf tournaments, working as a marshal on a few PGA Tour and its developmental Nationwide Tour events.  This year I’ll be working as a marshal at the Solheim Cup, the women’s version of the Ryder Cup, which will be held west of Chicago next month.

While most of the golfers I know and am friends with play much better and/or been to more golf courses, I don’t think anyone will ever get the experience of serving as a starter for a golf tournament.  And I have Toastmasters and District 30 to thank for this opportunity.