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Clacko’s role: Making announcers geniuses
Photo
Phil Clacko of Coitsville, right, stands near PGA golfer Stewart Cink (holding hat) and Cink’s caddie during the 2011 Bridgestone Tournament in Akron when Clacko was Cink’s spotter.
COITSVILLE
Phil Clacko has been around sports all his life, officiating high school football, basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball for four decades.
With all that behind him, the former Campbell Memorial assistant principal will have his eyes on the ball again as a spotter for CBS during PGA Tour events, specifically the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational starting Thursday in Akron.
Clacko, 62, is a perfect fit for the part-time gig, which gets him out of the house and inside the ropes while assisting viewers as they watch the game’s best players.
Working his fifth straight Firestone Country Club tournament to top off a three-tournament season, Clacko, by virtue of his position, will occasionally be on camera, but his assignments are strictly off-air audio.
The former educator’s two PGA Tour stints this year were at the Heritage in South Carolina in April and The Memorial at Muirfield in Dublin outside Columbus in May.
Clacko’s job is to spot and score a group, whether pairs or threesomes.
Via radio, he’s in communication with the broadcasters’ tower, which will ask Clacko how far out (yardage) a golfer is and then which club that golfer has chosen.
“I get the yardage, then when the caddie gets there, I signal him and he gives me the club selection,” Clacko said. “I radio the tower and then I’ll say, ‘Tiger Woods, 189, hitting a 9-iron.’
“Then those guys in the tower will announce it on TV, so everyone knows how far out he is and what club he’s using.
“In other words, we make them look like geniuses.”
When a golfer is at the tee box, Clacko goes ahead where the ball first lands.
“That’s where I get yardage [yards to go]. After they [the group of golfers] all get there and they [the tower] ask me the yardage and club, then I start heading down toward the green,” Clacko said. “Then they’ll ask, ‘What’s the order on your green, Phil?’ or ‘who’s putting for what?’ and I’ll relay it.
“I’ll give them Woods and [Jim] Furyk for birdie or Woods for birdie and Furyk for the third shot, if, maybe, I’m not on the green.
“This way they know what shot the individual’s going for — whether it’s a birdie chip, a birdie putt or whether it’s a third shot, a fourth shot, par, bogey, whatever.”
Clacko will follow the same group from tee to green on each hole and make the spot-and-score call at each stage: tee, fairway, green.
“If it’s a par 4 and it’s a tight hole and they don’t have enough faith in their driver or 3-wood to keep it out of trouble, they’ll hit an iron,” Clacko said. “I’ve got to relay all that to the tower.”
He’s got to keep track of everybody: where the golfers are, what number shot they’re hitting and their club selection.
“I’ve got to hustle and make sure I’m in position. There’s no laziness.”
Clacko has never lost track of shots, but once he had a spotter’s nightmare.
“I remember at Firestone one year I got a guy who took 9 on No. 16, which is the par 5 down the hill. He was in so much trouble, bouncing it off of trees.
“He even hit the ball backwards one time, then over the green. But I had to know where he was and how many shots he had and I had to call it in.”
Clacko is permitted inside the ropes, but, once he gives his information, he steps away.
“I make sure I’m out of their way, out of their vision.”
Clacko requested and was granted to be a spotter for Warren JFK High graduate Jason Kokrak in the Heritage.
“With him being a local guy, I asked my boss if I could have him on Thursday. I never met Jason before, but I knew him from high school when Warren JFK played at Campbell [Bedford Trails in Coitsville].
“[At Heritage] I saw Jason on a putting green with his caddie and walked up to him and introduced myself. We struck up a little conversation and that was it.”
Furyk and Stewart Cink are the two biggest names for whom Clacko has been a spotter.
The Thursday-Friday rounds are usually threesomes, while Saturday-Sunday is reduced to twosomes. But there are exceptions.
“If they’re expecting bad weather, they’ll go out in threesomes and go out earlier to try to get done quicker,” Clacko said. “Normally, on Saturday and Sunday, everybody goes off of No. 1, but, in with the threat of bad weather, they’ll go out in threesomes and they’ll send them off of Nos. 1 and 10. That way, they’ll get done quicker.”
Clacko doesn’t get paid any more or less whether he’s working a threesome or pairs.
“It’s all the same; I get paid per diem regardless how many I have,” Clacko said. The reward is the prestige that comes from being right next to the golfers.”
A full-time spotter’s job is reserved for those golfers with high world rankings — names such as Woods, Phil Mickelson, Luke Donald, Hunter Mahan and Keegan Bradley.
Clacko limits his travel to tournaments east of the Mississippi and those that fit his schedule.
“If I go farther than that, it costs me too much money.”
Another CBS event that he usually works is The Barclays. However, Clacko doesn’t want to fight the Long Island traffic to reach the Aug. 23-26 event at Bethpage Black in Farmingdale, N.Y.
“Motels in New York are really expensive,” Clacko said. “Cost is a big factor in where I go and which tournaments I work.”
This will be his first Barclays no-show in five years, but he’ll return when the tournament is back at Liberty National in New Jersey next summer.
Muirfield and Firestone are his favorites, as is Heritage because Clacko and his wife, Diane, make a vacation out of its proximity to Hilton Head, S.C.
“If lose a couple bucks, OK, as long as it’s not too much.”
To become a spotter, Clacko said he was in the right place at the right time in 2007.
“I was with another spotter at Firestone and they needed a replacement for someone who canceled,” Clacko said. “That’s when I jumped in and offered my services. They asked if I had experience and I said, ‘Yes, at the LPGA in Youngstown.’ ”
Before CBS covered the Barclays, Clacko was fond of the post-Firestone parties thrown by the network.
“They were end-of-year get-togethers with the big-wigs, usually at Tangiers in Akron. Now it’s after The Barclays. After that, it’s usually NBC, ABC or ESPN covering the golf.”