1,400 volunteers on course to help run the Open

OAKVILLE — It’s hot enough to poach an egg on his forehead, but Ron Carr will stand in the sun all weekend and cherish every second of it.

“I love it,” the Kilbride resident says at the edge of the green on Glen Abbey’s sixth hole, which will be his home until the final pairing comes through on Sunday afternoon.

And then he’s free to watch the rest of the RBC Canadian Open at any of the final dozen holes he chooses.

Carr, who’s retired from his consulting business, is one of about 1,400 volunteers at the Canadian Open — more than half of whom, like he, are course marshals. They’re dressed in distinctive yellow shirts and are responsible for creating the quiet ambience required by the most sound-sensitive athletes in professional sport.

“Our job is basically crowd control,” he says. “We keep people quiet, keep people still, make sure no one has cameras and that people’s cellphones are turned off. We have 17 marshals just on the sixth hole today.”

Those marshals are staggered from tee to green, with some located in the most common landing areas to spot golfer’s balls when they land, and others operating rope gates at crossings where spectators cross the fairways. They rotate positions every second or third group of golfers. At the tee box, one marshal has a fluorescent flag to alert spotters in which direction the ball has been driven.

Carr, a golfer who also marshals at Dragon’s Fire in Carlisle, is in his second year with the Open and volunteered last year at Glen Abbey because he loves the game but also because, “my wife works for RBC and said, ‘You should be a marshal!’ It had been in the back of my mind already.

“I think it’s fabulous, even if the weather is lousy,” he says, “which it looks like it won’t be.”

Jim Clark, the Open’s chair of volunteers, says that roughly 20 per cent of volunteers are new every year but that many volunteers have been donating their time for years, even when the national championship moves out of their home region.

“We had people from Hamilton who volunteered when the tournament was there go to Angus Glen the next year because they’d had so much fun,” he said.

Clark says that the volunteers perform an invaluable service, although he has tried to put a value on it.

“We’re asking each of them to work at least four shifts, four to six hours a shift, so at least 20 hours,” he says, doing the math in his head. “At even $10 an hour, 20 hours for 1,400 people, that’s a lot of money.”

About 300 of this year’s volunteers are from the Hamilton catchment area, with more than 200 from Burlington.

Jill Jukes, a 30-year resident of Burlington, has been volunteering since 2013 and is the vice-chair of registration for volunteers. She urged two friends from Port Nelson United Church, Sharon Ife and Leslie Mercer, to volunteer last year and they’re back, eagerly. And, they say, they’d like to be still working in the volunteer tent when the Open comes back to Hamilton, possibly in 2019 and perhaps the year before, too.

“I had a friend who was marshaling when it was held in Hamilton and she said ‘Oh you really want to volunteer next year, we’re going to be at Glen Abbey,” recalls Jukes, who is taking vacation from her business consultant agency to work the Open. “And I’ve been here ever since. A lot of this is organization. I like to be involved in organization and it’s fantastic to meet people from all over the place.”

Ife says she and Mercer are thankful Jukes talked them into spending their week at the Abbey.

“It’s really fun,” says Ife, whose favourite golfers are the Canadians in the field.

“I really enjoy seeing all the people and being involved. It gives you a different perspective on golf and on the Canadian Open.”

Mercer adds: “It’s so much fun to see the people who give their time. They’re usually really cheerful, they’re set for the day, and they’re happy to go out there and watch the players come and go.

“It’s behind the scenes but without the volunteers they couldn’t have a tournament.”