Hunt Gilliland is a director for the PGA of America.Chattanooga golf fans may hear a familiar voice in the background during live television coverage of the PGA Championship.
Hunt Gilliland, the director of golf at Council Fire Golf Club, will be working at the Atlanta Athletic Club as an announcer during the first two days of competition, a starter for the third round and a player escort for the final round.
The PGA of America assigned these duties to Gilliland, one of 14 members of the PGA board of directors. He represents the Tennessee, the Dixie and the Gulf States sections of the PGA, which required him to be away from his club about 50 days in the last year.
“This is a volunteer job we do,” Gilliland said. “We give the PGA our ideas, our thoughts, and we set policy. It’s like any other board of directors.
“It’s fun to be part of that and give back to my profession.”
Gilliland has been a witness to some of the most-talked-about events in golf in the last year. For one, he saw Dustin Johnson’s error from a bunker during last year’s PGA Championship.
“We were getting ready for the trophy ceremony, and then I got a sick feeling on the 18th green,” Gilliland said. “Dustin handled it so well. Then when [Martin] Kaymer won, he accepted the trophy again in private with us. It was a whole neat experience.”
Gilliland announced the groups coming up the 18th green last year at Whistling Straights.
“You wait for Tiger to walk up or Phil, or whoever, and as loud as I can announce them,” Gilliland said. “It’s neat to feel that roar. I didn’t get that roar when I played in the PGA Championship.”
Gilliland saw the first three rounds of the 2010 Ryder Cup in Wales from inside the ropes, all as part of his duties as a PGA director. Weather forced the tournament to conclude on Monday and Gilliland couldn’t get his flight changed. The European team won while he was somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.
And the kicker is that he was supposed to be an observer in the final match of the day. He missed history when Graeme McDowell beat Hunter Mahan in that final head-to-head match.
“The spirit of the competition and the crowd was incredible,” Gilliland said. “There’s 40,000 people there watching 14 matches. They’re yelling and chanting, very much like an SEC football game.
“It had a football excitement, which golf usually doesn’t.”
Who knows what he’ll witness in person this year, and the rest of the world will see on television with his voice booming in the background.