Par for the course

Published 9:00 pm Monday, August 14, 2006

SNOQUALMIE – Pressure getting to you, Chuck?

Starting to feel a little stressed?

Ha!

Chuck Nelson is the epitome of cool.

He’s sitting above the 18th green at the Tournament Players Course at Snoqualmie Ridge, site of the Boeing Greater Seattle Classic this weekend.

He looks as if he’s just shot a nice round of golf and is enjoying the sunny, warm, clear morning.

And the view.

Remember the line from “Field of Dreams” – “Is this heaven?” And Kevin Costner replies, “No, it’s Iowa.”

Well, this isn’t Iowa.

Heaven? It’s gotta be close.

From where he sits – sunglasses in place, legs crossed, hands folded, voice soft and unhurried – Nelson looks out on what has to be one of the most breathtaking golf scenes anywhere in the country: The lush Snoqualmie Valley with the Cascade Mountains as a backdrop.

It’s picture postcard beautiful.

“It’s a great place to come and have a picnic,” Nelson suggests. “Come and buy a hot dog and a Pepsi and enjoy the scenery.”

And oh, by the way, he reminds you, “there are 78 of the best 50-and-over golfers in the world here to entertain you.”

And it’s Nelson’s job to make sure everything goes smoothly and everyone has a good time.

If it’s like last year, it will and they will.

“I got a sense that people thought they’d come out and watch some old guys play golf,” Nelson muses, “and they showed up and there was a major professional sporting event going on.”

People came by the thousands – 53,000 all told – to watch the inaugural Boeing Greater Seattle Classic featuring players from the Champions Tour – what used to be the PGA Senior Tour.

And after it was over, the tournament director – the Everett-raised Nelson – breathed a sigh of relief.

Because one week before the event, he had stood on a hill overlooking the course and said in a hushed tone: “I sure hope people come. We need for them to come.”

They came and they bought hot dogs and soft drinks and T-shirts and all the other stuff they sell at a professional golf tournament and when the final figures were tallied, close to $600,000 had been raised for The Heart Institute at Virginia Mason Medical Center.

And that made everyone who had a hand in the tournament feel good.

“In terms of Champions Tour events, we were in the top handful, both in terms of attendance and in terms of bottom-line charitable contribution,” Nelson said. “And the players were thrilled with the support they got here. It makes them feel good to play in front of lots of people.”

While he said it’s impossible to predict what the crowds will be for the Friday-through-Sunday tournament this week because it’s “largely a walkup deal,” he noted that “the buzz has been good.”

The weather should be, too.

Sounding like a Snoqualmie Chamber of Commerce spokesperson, Nelson reeled off the pertinent facts: “The average temperature at Snoqualmie on our dates is 77 degrees. The average rainfall, total, for the month of August is 1.35 inches. The odds are pretty good that we’ll have good weather.”

They did last year: it was in the 80s every day.

Nelson carries the tag “executive director,” which, in essence, means he coordinates everything. Which also means he has more wires attached to him during the week-long program of events – which includes the Wells Fargo Pro-Am on Wednesday and Thursday – than an electrical panel.

“I’m all wired up – cell phone, Tour radio, tournament radio – so I basically just kind of listen to everything and answer a lot of questions,” he said. “It’s like, ‘Hey, the garbage cans on 14 need to be emptied.’ OK, I’m on it. ‘OK, we need help lining people up for the bus dropoff.’ OK, we’re on our way.’”

Not every problem is so routine.

Last year, one of the pros was having a bad round and attributed it to his golf cart: No. 13.

“So when he came around the turn (he was at No. 8 when he made this determination), we had a different number cart and the number on the cart did not add up to 13 or 4,” Nelson recalled. “(After that) he played OK, but it didn’t make a dramatic difference.”

Last year, Nelson anticipated a big list of things to do – which turned into a “giant” list. “But the level of detail underneath each of those (major) items is significant,” he said.

* “Make sure the sponsors have a great time. ‘You want five tables in there or four?’ “

* For the skyboxes (which sell for $25,0000 apiece), “we have to find somebody to build the scaffolding, to build the flooring, to supply the tent.”

* “How do you get power from the generator to the skyboxes? Who wants cable? Who wants Internet access?”

* The pros need cars. The pros get cars – 78 Cadillacs.

* The caddies need a place to stay.

* (Very important) He has to make sure there are plenty of comfort stations to accommodate the crowds. “We’ve got just over 100 Honey Buckets,” Nelson said. “The Honey Bucket guys are great to do business with.”

And so on and so forth.

It’d be enough to drive some people batty.

That’s why Nelson was a perfect pick for tournament director. He doesn’t rattle.

“Rather than getting stressed out, he accepts it as a challenge and goes to work on it,” his father, Al, said. “He was like that even as a boy.”

Witness his life as a kicker at the University of Washington.

All the Huskies offered him was an opportunity to walk on. He accepted and walked into the record book, leaving with the highest field-goal kicking percentage (.813) in UW history. It still stands, after more than 20 years.

“When he was playing at Washington, the other players would say don’t even talk to him after Thursday,” the elder Nelson said. “He was so focused. He was that way in school, too.”

Chuck is quick to point out that, just as a kicker needs help from 10 other players to be successful, he has a strong army of volunteers who make his current job much less stressful. “I have great confidence in everybody who’s working on this thing,” he said. “My stress level last year as we got closer to the event was lower than it was for the couple of months leading into it because to a certain degree the hay’s in the barn.

“You get to the point where, ‘OK, the golf course is here, the players are going to show up, we’ve done everything we can do on every other front, we’re ready if problems come up, we’ll handle them as they come up, there’s nothing more we can do.’”

He came into this job with a strong resume, including a position as CEO of an investment firm before the tournament people beckoned. He also had experience putting on a golf tournament with his own Chuck Nelson Celebrity Golf Classic to benefit the Boys and Girls Club of Snohomish County.

Now his focus is on making the Boeing Greater Seattle Classic into something special, a mid-summer event that people circle on their calendars.

“When I took this job, it was not my intention to get this thing up and running and then move on to something else,” he said. “If this works the way we all want it to, if Boeing continues to be happy and our other sponsors are happy and the event stays around, I’d be happy to run it for 20 years and build it into the best Champions Tour tournament or the best professional golf tournament in America.”

It got off to a good start. The feedback from the pros about the course after last year’s tournament was uplifting. “They play a lot of golf courses and they know good from bad,” Nelson said, “and there were no negative comments whatsoever.”

And they were not oblivious to the surroundings.

“Maybe it’s because the Champions Tour is a little more relaxed than the regular tour, but they were stunned at how beautiful it is,” he said. “From the 12th hole on, you’re virtually playing along the rim of the valley with a view of the valley, Mt. Si and the whole bit. From the 12th tee, you can see Snoqualmie Falls.

“And they noticed.”