MADEIRA, Ohio − As director of grounds at Kenwood Country Club, Nate Herman’s alarm clock went off at 2:30 a.m. Friday. It was going to be a long day.
And it was going to take a lot of people creating an ad hoc city, working inside it, outside it, on it and in it to make this world-class event look like a day at the beach.
But this is a golf course, one of the city’s most magnificent, at the Kenwood Country Club, and this is the Kroger Queen City Championship. Friday and throughout the weekend, in addition to all the golfers, there are more than 1,000 others — staff, cooks, groundskeepers, TV people and volunteers — working from sunup to sundown to make this first-of-its-kind event in more than 30 years in Cincinnati a reality.
It seems choreographed down to the minute. It seems effortless. Everything and everyone arrived on time. The coffee was ready. Volunteers were in place. And scorekeepers had their cards, their walkie-talkies and their backup card keepers poised.
Then the magic started to happen. We looked a bit behind the curtain.