Planning his approach.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: Bruno Event Team

The U.S. Senior Open at the Broadmoor East golf course in Colorado Springs won't take place until the summer of 2008. Which is exactly why Douglas Habgood already is operating on red alert.

Habgood is a professional worrier. He gets paid to fret about the exact spot and the exact time at which buses will drop off passengers and how high the rough will be allowed to grow alongside the fairways, and where hired contractors will plant temporary tents ringing the back nine at the esteemed golf course, which opened in 1918 and, exactly 90 years later, will play host to some of the best-recognized veteran duffers in the game for three days starting next July.

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There are still 17 months to go before the first golfer whacks the first golf ball onto fairway No. 1, and Habgood is working like a dog.

"You only have one shot and you've got to be perfect," he says. He should know. Habgood is one of a few specialists in the country who work the behind-the-scenes fringes of U.S. Golf Association tournaments. If he does his job perfectly, you'll never notice him or his five-person staff, who are now busy wrapping up corporate sponsorships and working with the grounds crew to modify the Broadmoor East course with bedeviling adjustments like narrower fairways and elongated tee boxes.

Habgood works for Bruno Event Team, an Alabama outfit that represents a growing part of the multi-billion dollar U.S. sports industry--the people and companies that manage events and take on responsibility for everything from making sure there are enough snacks in the warming trays to cleaning up after the party's over.

For the 34-year-old Habgood, whose firm contracts with the PGA to carry out events, it's a nomadic life. Habgood headed straight to Colorado Springs after managing the 2005 Women's Open at Cherry Hills Golf Club in Denver. Sometime after the last putt rattles into the 18th hole at the Senior Open, he'll head either to Pittsburgh or Seattle to begin planning another USGA event.

"I've been living in Colorado Springs since 2005, and this is my sole project," he says. "This is it."

The early order of business has involved some old-fashioned working of the telephone, as Habgood and his staff work to sell out a small number of corporate sponsorships that can cost Colorado companies like FirstBank, one of the earliest to sign up, anywhere from $25,000 to the low six figures. The wide pricing disparity reflects the fact that no two deals are exactly...