Wheaton's Hamilton Helps Keep PGA Tour Events On Course

WHEATON, IL — To say that John Hamilton has built an up close and personal relationship with the PGA Tour for the better the past 45 years would be as big of a gross understatement as to say that Rory McElroy is just another golfer.

For Hamilton, an 82-year-old Wheaton resident, golf has always been part of life. A golfer since age childhood, Hamilton has spent the past 15 years working in various roles at Arrowhead Golf Club, where he has done everything from working as a starter to a clubhouse attendant and everything in between.

But for every year since 1975, Hamilton has played a vital role in helping to keep PGA Tour events running smoothly around the greater Chicago area and around the country. He has been part of an army of volunteers who are relied upon to maintain a sense of order for the world’s greatest golfers at tournaments and major golf championships attended by thousands each week.

Later this month, Hamilton will work his 12th BMW Championship, which is being played Aug. 17-20 at Olympia Fields Country Club. The event benefits the Western Golf Association’s Evans Scholars program, which provides local caddies with college scholarships and that has contributed more than $4 million to the program since 2007.

Hamilton has worked at every major Western Golf Association event in the Chicago area for 45 years – a stretch that has allowed him to get a front-row seat to PGA Tour stars from Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods to Jordan Spieth, McElroy, and Patrick Cantlay, who will be looking to defend his 2022 championship for the upcoming event at Olympia Fields.

While Hamilton’s job title of Gallery Management Chair for the BMW Championships provides him access to tour players most golf fans get to enjoy, the job also comes with its share of responsibility. While his inside-the-ropes job duties at PGA Tour events put him in close proximity with golf’s biggest names, Hamilton is also committed to not doing anything that would ever interfere with the player’s work life.

The concept is one that Hamilton says many don't grasp. But in his role with major golf tournaments, understanding the rules just goes with the territory.

“This is their job, this is their business,” Hamilton told Patch on Thursday. “I had a pro golfer tell me once that people don’t realize, ‘We’re working’ and when you’re at your office and someone just comes in and sits down and puts their feet up on your desk and says they want to talk to you in the middle of the day, that disturbs you.

“Well, that disturbs us because we’re working, and a lot of people don’t understand that.”

That’s where volunteers like Hamilton enter the picture. Hamilton will oversee a team of 2,000 volunteers who will work at the BMW Championships, which will be the final event to determine which 30 players advance to the Players Championships. Volunteers are charged with everything from greeting fans at the turnstiles to working in merchandise tents and working along the golf course and often working as the middle person between PGA Tour players and fans.

Although Hamilton realizes that fans pay good money to attend PGA Tour events, he and other volunteers like him walk a fine line between helping to maintain golf’s version of law and order and allowing patrons to enjoy themselves. Given the size of the event and what's at stake, a game that many consider to be sometimes unexciting can tend to be just the opposite.

“It can get out of hand,” Hamilton said. “We just stress with the people on my (volunteer) committee to be polite but to be firm.

“I think that for the most part, golf fans know and understand golf enough to know what they’re supposed to do. But unfortunately, it’s like anything else — you go to football or baseball games and people can get a bit overly rambunctious and decide to make a fool of themselves and that can be bad.”

Hamilton says that the number of bad actors falls into only a very small minority of fans at events like the BMW. But experience has taught Hamilton that even when he thinks things are under control, things can quickly change.

At the 2007 BMW Championship at Cog Hill, Woods posted a final round 63 to record a two-shot victory over Aaron Baddeley. Hamilton was working behind the 18th green as Woods approached. He said just as if a tour official asked if everything was under control, fans broke through the ropes and spilled out onto the golf course to follow Woods up the fairway.

The photo of Woods being followed up the 18th fairway by a sea of fans went viral and instantly become part of the collection of memories that Hamilton has accumulated over the years.

“Those kind of things you have to deal with,” Hamilton said. “You kind of prepare for that and that’s maybe where my experience has helped out a little bit …if you can share those experiences with (tournament officials) and tell them what to expect, they’ll be ready for it and can deal with it before it happens.

“We thought we had that thing (at Cog Hill) well under control, but when you’ve got a couple of thousand people behind the ropes and they decide they’re going to break under the ropes and start following Woods in at the end, there’s not much you can do before it gets away from you.”

During his volunteering career, Hamilton has worked every major event in the Chicago area from Ryder Cups to the PGA Championship, U.S. Open, and other major tournaments that have brought the world’s elite golfers to the region. While he, like other golf fans, has their fan favorites — including Wheaton’s Kevin Streelman —Hamilton says he focuses on making sure things run smoothly over anything else.

That will be the plan again for the upcoming BMW Championship, where Hamilton will again be a familiar face. While he does not claim any sort of friendship with tour players, he has come to become someone professional golfers have gotten to know over the years. But Hamilton is also a welcome sight for people like Megan Gormley, the Western Golf Association’s director of volunteers.

Gormley puts Hamilton into a class of his own based on the years of part-time service he has dedicated to the PGA Tour and BMW Championship over more than four decades. While all of the volunteers play a critical role in the success of major PGA events, Gormley said that Hamilton’s dedication to the sport and to his duties sets him apart.

“He knows how important the BMW Championship is to us, but he’s a very dedicated, loyal supporter and he loves doing it,” Gormley told Patch on Thursday. “He’s done this year after year, and every year we approach him and ask, ‘Are you willing to commit to do this again and move on to the next year’, there’s never a hesitation.

She added: “Unfortunately when that day comes when (Hamilton doesn’t volunteer), it’s going to be a sad day for sure, but I’m hoping that’s not anytime soon.”

Hamilton was recognized in 2006 as the PGA Tour’s Volunteer of the Year — an honor that he doesn’t take lightly. While each tournament means long hours at a particular venue and helping things to run smoothly, Hamilton’s love of golf and his appreciation for what tour pros bring to each event, there aren’t a lot of places he would rather be.

That is especially true considering the way that the PGA Tour and Western Golf Association give back in the ways that they do, benefitting local caddies.

“That’s the thing I think I am most proud of is when people gripe about how much money these (golfers) are making, a huge percentage of the money coming from this event is going to educate these (Evans) scholars,” Hamilton told Patch on Thursday.

“So, whatever I can do to help that, that’s what I’m going to do.”