Repeat performances

Classic Tents provides tents and flooring in its seventh year as official tent supplier to the PGA Championship, and Aggreko provides power for the eighth year.

The 2014 PGA Championship at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., attracted more than 250,000 people, requiring more than 200 tents for merchandise, hospitality and security. Classic Tents, subsidiary of Classic Party Rentals, Inglewood, Calif., provided those tents, along with 600,000 square feet of flooring, as the event’s official tent supplier for the seventh consecutive year.

The two largest tents were the PGA’s merchandise tent (132-by-300 feet) and the Wanamaker Club tent (100-by-400 feet). The clearspan tents featured a modular concept, allowing them to be installed at virtually any length. Flooring consisted of steel scaffold topped with wooden beams and plywood covered with specialized carpeting.

The project required two months of preparation for Classic Tents and several weeks to take down with a crew of 60, including Classic Tents employees, specialized contractors and local labor.

“It’s such an honor to be involved with the esteemed PGA Championship,” says Robert Kraak, president of the Tent and Structures Division of Classic Party Rentals. “It’s an event we are extremely proud to help produce.”

In its eighth year of providing large-scale power generation and temperature control for the event, Aggreko, Houston, Texas, worked with the PGA and the local utility to develop a cost-effective solution that took into account the various sizes of the temporary structures. The design incorporated both temporary power and electricity from the local utility to create a more efficient solution, resulting in significant cost and fuel savings.

The event used special cooling and power equipment built specifically for golf tournaments and significant spectator events. It includes uninterruptible generators operating in parallel—which provide cleaner, quieter and more convenient temporary power. Powering an event of this magnitude required more than 9 megawatts of power generators, 3,000 tons of cooling equipment, 35 miles of cable and a crew of 15 Aggreko technicians for installation and operations.