NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — The PGA Championship at Aronimink Golf Club in Delaware County is over — but the cleanup has just begun and is expected to take months.
If you watched the PGA Championship and have played at Aronimink, you might have noticed a few things were different than usual on the golf course.
“We lengthened the golf course, we added five new tees to give it some length on the holes,” said Mike Lewers, general chairman of the 108th PGA Championship. “We think we needed to make it a little more challenging and we narrowed about a half-dozen fairways.”
Lewers said another big change to the grounds that was obvious was their addition of tents, stands and concessions. “We started in early February. We had over 200 structures of varying sizes,” he said.
Now that the championship is over, those structures must come down. “It’ll probably take a couple months to get everything down. There’s a lot of infrastructure on the golf course,” he said, “but it probably won’t take as long as it did to build it up.”
The tournament chairman added it would also take some time to get the course and the grass on the grounds back together.
“The course will show some wear and tear during the next few months because of spectators and the flow and the traffic that we had on the golf course,” said Lewers.
Having more than 200,000 guests on the course, Lewers believes, was well worth taking on the cleanup, especially since his team received so much praise for how good the views were for people to watch and enjoy the tournament.
“The championship exceeded expectations on all fronts.”
