PGA’s storm watcher sets up shop at course

Jeff Kendra’s office this week is located in a trailer on the grounds of the Royal Montreal Golf Club.

His workspace features two laptops that he monitors closely. Another key piece of equipment is set up outside on a tripod.

Kendra provides highly sought-after information at the RBC Canadian Open.

He’s one of five meteorologists who work on the PGA, Champions and Web.com tours. “If I leave and go to lunch everybody (asks), ‘Hey what’s the weather going to be like?’” Kendra said.

Players sometimes stop by the trailer with the same question or ask about the forecast if they bump into him.

Weather was a big topic of conversation Wednesday at Royal Montreal when thunderstorms delayed play in the pro-am event. It may be again Sunday during the final round with another storm system on the way.

“Right now it looks like Sunday afternoon,” Kendra said Thursday morning.

“So it’s something that we’re monitoring all week and just seeing what each model data has each run and then we’ll make plans accordingly on Saturday for what we’ll do Sunday,” he said, adding they can change tee times, for example.

Kendra, who lives near Providence, R.I., works for a weather-forecasting company that is contracted by the tour to do on-site work at tournaments. He works at 26 tournaments a year. Most run Thursday through Sunday, but Kendra’s work starts much earlier during a tournament week.

They travel on Monday and set up things during the afternoon, including lightning detection equipment. The size of a shoebox, the device is mounted on top of a tripod and “measures the charge specifically at this site, on this area,” Kendra said.

“We use that in conjunction with the radar. We have a map, lightning network, that plots lightning strikes on our computer screen. So we kind of use all three of those in conjunction to know where exactly it is and how fast it’s moving, how close it is.”