Pinehurst didn't putter around with the open.

• Author: Roush, Chris
• Position: SPORTS SECTION

Hiring thousands of employees. Negotiating hundreds of supply contracts. Finding business partners. Millions of dollars in local economic impact that depend on your performance. Typical worries of a business executive? Sure. Then how about shutting down within a week of opening, by design? That's what's different about Reg Jones and Beth Kocher's most recent venture.

It's called the 2005 U.S. Open Championship, held in June on Pinehurst Resort's No. 2 course. Jones, the Pinehurst vice president who is director of the Open, and Kocher, the resort's executive vice president and chair of the tournament's executive committee, started planning five years ago. Now that the tournament is over, all that work is being dismantled. By early August, a multimillion-dollar operation supporting more than 380,000 customers will no longer exist. Volunteers will have gone. Companies will have folded their hospitality tents. All that will be left is the money made by Pinehurst's owner, Dallas-based ClubCorp, and Sandhills businesses.

A month before the event, no one was predicting how this year's tournament would stack up financially against 1999, the last time Pinehurst hosted the Open. ClubCorp made $10 million then but would not project its earnings this year. The local convention and visitors bureau forecast $70 million in direct spending this year and an overall economic impact of $128 million--lower than its estimate of a $160 million impact in 1999. CVB President Caleb Miles says the numbers aren't comparable because the earlier estimate was based on the impact at other U.S. Open sites. The 2005 projection--which also lags Pinehurst's forecast of $153 million--is based on information gathered in 1999.

There was reason to believe in the months before the tournament that spending could fall short of the 1999 level. "That's because of what corporations are spending," Miles says. "We're not seeing the spending we saw back in the late '90s."

Don't blame Jones and Kocher, both of whom worked on the 1999 tournament. Jones was director of operations then, handling transportation for fans and other logistics, while Kocher was in a job similar to the one she holds now. They took what they learned then and used it this year. They also visited the sites of the last five Opens.

"Every year, you find a better way to do something," Jones says. Among the changes based on their trips were lengthening the course by nearly 100 yards and adding space to the merchandise...