Colonial galleries are savvy, golf-first and Jordan Spieth fans

For all of the Dean & DeLuca Invitational’s 70-year history, golf fans in the Dallas-Fort Worth area have been some of the most fortunate in the country, with two PGA Tour stops 30 miles apart.

As such, somewhere along the way a perception crept up that fans go to Colonial Country Club, where Ben Hogan won his home city PGA Tour event five times, to really dive into the golf, and go to the one named after Byron Nelson in Irving more to socialize, Dean & DeLuca Invitational tournament director Michael Tothe said.

Anyone associated with the event will tell you a Colonial crowd is a savvy crowd — a golf-first crowd. Dick McHargue, a Dean & DeLuca Invitational volunteer for a record 57 years, thinks the course layout has something to do with that.

“It’s easy for the fans to follow the golf because they don’t have to walk nine miles to see the golf,” McHargue said. “These are real golf fans who love the game and love the course.”

The natural flow of spectators and galleries en masse works its way through large congregation areas on the course’s early holes. Tothe remembers weekend galleries in the thousands for Colleyville resident Ryan Palmer at the first tee as he was on his way to a tie for fifth in 2012, Tothe’s first year as tournament director.

The big galleries stick around through holes 3, 4 and 5, known collectively as the “Horrible Horseshoe,” as the main spectator entrance puts fans just a hop, skip and a jump away.

So who are these fans that fill the galleries and relish the opportunity to get close to their favorite golfer in a quiet moment, and what is it about a golfer that drives a Colonial crowd in his direction?

At any PGA Tour tournament, a golfer’s current position on the leader board and his recent success on tour are going to be the biggest drivers of gallery size, followed immediately by said golfer’s hometown.

That local connection no doubt amplified Palmer’s gallery appeal in 2012 and finished the year ranked No. 118 in the World Golf Rankings.

All that circumstantial data points to larger-than-average galleries for Dallas native Jordan Spieth, one of three 2015 tournament runners-up. He has the recent tour results, even after his Masters meltdown on No. 12 left him in a tie for second when the dust settled on Danny Willett’s first PGA Tour win.

Like last year, Spieth enters the Dean & DeLuca field as the second-ranked golfer in the world, this year behind Australia’s Jason Day.

But the Fort Worth crowds latch onto golfers with Spieth’s credentials for another reason, one illustrated perfectly by some of Australia’s best golfers in recent years. If you show a Colonial crowd you’ve got the goods on the Colonial course, they’ll reward you in subsequent years.

To wit: from 2005 to 2008 Australians Peter Lonard, Nathan Green and Rod Pampling had two top-five finishes apiece in Fort Worth. Tothe said gallery ranks following them and fellow Aussies Day, Geoff Ogilvy and John Senden swelled substantially for the next few years as savvy Fort Worth fans anticipated Australia’s run of success in their town would continue.

The Aussie assault on Colonial died down in 2010-13 before Adam Scott broke through for the crown in 2014, with Senden placing fifth that year.

Dean & DeLuca Invitational tournament coordinator Tracy Childers said that in anticipation of Spieth’s swelling galleries this year, two to three additional volunteer marshals would be walking the course along with Spieth’s playing group in case additional crowd control becomes necessary, a common practice for high-profile golfers and tournament leaders.

“It’s like having a playoff buzz in your building when the real notable players in the field are near the top of the leader board,” Tothe said. “You start to hear louder roars at 13 and at 15 and it spreads quickly throughout the course.”

Of the more than 1,500 tournament volunteers, nearly 600 are marshals.

McHargue’s first volunteer position was as a marshal in the 1960s, with most of that time spent patrolling the fifth green.

“Most in the galleries are very courteous. I can’t ever remember a crowd getting out of line,” McHargue said. “Sometimes you have to tell people where to stand and move them back, but that’s just the golf crowd wanting to get as close as possible.”

It’s safe to say that a Dean & DeLuca gallery falls somewhere between the 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale (Ariz.) with fans screaming “Mashed potaotes!” at the top of their lungs and the Masters, where you might get thrown out of town for even calling crowds galleries because the proper term is “patrons.”

Besides the Fort Worth fans’ knowledge of the game, courteousness and falling in the middle of the gallery-behavior spectrum, McHargue is quick to recall one more note about Fort Worth golf fans from his 57 years roaming Colonial.

“We’ve always had our share of good-looking girls in the crowd,” McHargue said.

This story was originally published May 24, 2016 at 6:38 PM with the headline "Colonial galleries are savvy, golf-first and Jordan Spieth fans."