'This is kind of my hometown event': Millbury's Gary Young will be chief referee for the PGA Tour at Travelers Championship

TPC River Highlands, site of the Travelers Championship in Cromwell, Connecticut, has undergone several enhancements the last few years, and two PGA Tour officials from the Worcester area played key roles in making them happen.

Gary Young, PGA Tour senior vice president of rules and competitions, is a member of the Tour’s enhancements competitions committee which decides which improvements are needed at courses which host PGA Tour events, and Milan Moore, PGA Tour director of golf course design and construction, has overseen many course upgrades on Tour, including those at TPC River Highlands.

Young grew up in Northbridge and lives in Millbury. Moore grew up in Shrewsbury. When Young was the head pro at Pleasant Valley CC in Sutton before joining the PGA Tour as a rules official in August of 2007, he gave lessons to Moore when she was a young girl.

“It’s kind of crazy,” Young said. “To see her grow into what she’s doing now and have the role with the PGA Tour she has, it’s quite impressive. There’s not many females in that role, and she’s just ideally suited for it.”

Moore, a 2004 graduate of Tufts University, has worked in design for the PGA Tour for 21 years. Her father, the late Dr. Roger Moore, was one of the original members at PV.

The PGA Tour looks at the data after every event to see how each course holds up to the modern player and then makes competitive enhancements.

At TPC River Highlands over the last five years, the Tour has refined the course, upgraded the practice facilities and built a bigger clubhouse with financial assistance from Travelers, the title sponsor. Since Keegan Bradley set a tournament record by shooting 23-under 257 to win the Travelers last year, the Tour has tweaked six holes, but Young said the changes already were scheduled before he set the record.

Young said the PGA Tour focuses more on the excitement of the competition than the score. If it doesn’t rain during the Travelers June 20-23 and the conditions are firm and fast, he expects the winning score to be about 14 or 15 under par. But when the course is wet and soft, the scores are usually lower.

Young will work the Travelers for the 17th consecutive year, his longest association with any PGA Tour event.

“Now that it’s the last remaining event in New England and the Northeast, this is kind of my hometown event,” said Young, who was at TPC River Highlands for the Travelers media day last Monday.

It takes him a little more than an hour to make the 68-mile drive from his home in Millbury to TPC River Highlands, but he stays near the course during the week of the tournament.

For the fourth consecutive year, he will serve as the chief referee at the Travelers. He sometimes appears on the television broadcast to explain a weather delay or a rule infraction.

“We’re definitely not TV stars,” Young said of him and his fellow rules officials. “We are background players in a sport. That’s the way it should be.”

Young likes to tell people that if they see him on television during a golf event, something bad must have happened. He has become what he calls a “pseudo weather expert” by hanging around with the on-site meteorologist, and he said it drives his wife, Lauri, crazy. Sometimes when he’s on the road, he calls her to warn her about a storm heading her way.

“She’ll say, ‘Gary, I’ve got this handled. We have meteorologists back here,’ ” he said.

Young used to serve as the advance official at the Travelers, marking the course for out of bounds and other things, tracking the player field with the Tour competitions department, working with the local superintendent and Tour agronomist to determine greens speed and height of the tees, fairways and rough, and overseeing the construction of grandstands and luxury boxes to make sure they don’t affect the competition.

Moore oversaw work on the aforementioned six holes at the Travelers from September through early December.

The first fairway was narrowed closer to the green to provide the same width in the landing area for the longer hitters as it does for the shorter hitters.

Mounds with fescue were added to the par-5 sixth and 13th holes to give the longer hitters something to think about while they try to reach the green in two shots.

The ninth and 11th greens were shrunk in size and surrounded by grassy hollows with deep rough.

“Rather than adding yardage, which seems to be everyone’s answer nowadays,” Young said, “we take a look at the way the course is designed. It’s always been a second shot golf course, which requires precision iron play and a good short game. We wanted to keep that.”

Data revealed that the longer hitters drove beyond the bunkers on the par-4 12th hole, so the fairway was ended at 300 yards by growing primary rough on the downslope. The longest hitters will probably hit 3-wood instead of a driver to avoid the rough.

The Tour wants to improve the fan experience by widening walking areas throughout the course to improve the flow of the galleries and by installing interactive venues.

Tournament sites also need room for the increased number of semi-trucks and trailers for player fitness vehicles and television equipment.

“It’s a bigger show now than it used to be 10, 20 years ago on the PGA Tour,” Young said. “It grows every year, and the property needs to reflect that.”

The PGA Tour doesn’t fully own every TPC course, but it is the sole owner of TPC River Highlands. On the other hand, the Tour is a minority owner of TPC Boston in Norton. TPC Boston hosted 17 PGA Tour events from 2003-2020 and will be the home of the LPGA Tour’s FM Global Championship Aug. 29-Sept. 1.

TPC River Highlands currently has the only PGA Tour event in New England, but Young believes the PGA Tour will return to TPC Boston someday, possibly as part of a rotation with other sites. So after the LPGA Tour event finishes, the PGA Tour will work with Gil Hanse on upgrades at TPC Boston, including building new greens complexes on the fifth and seventh holes.

TPC Boston opened in 2002 as an Arnold Palmer design and was redesigned by Hanse and Brad Faxon in 2007.

Young is considering regaining his amateur status, but he hasn’t gotten around to it yet. He no longer plays a lot of golf, but last year he did get to play at Newport Country Club for the first time, and he fell in love with it. Newport will host the U.S. Senior Open June 27-30, the week after the Travelers.

Young said due to the advanced equipment and the improved player conditioning, the seniors may find Newport to be on the shorter side.

“But whatever that golf course may lack in distance,” he said, “with the character of the golf course and the difficulty of the greens, it will be a good challenge.”

Young is an honorary member at PV, where he worked for 22 years and which hosted 32 PGA Tour events and 13 LPGA Tour events from the early 1960s through 1999. He hasn’t played PV since August, but last Wednesday co-owner Jay Kunkel invited him to give his opinions on work being done on the course.

“The place looks great, it came through the winter very well,” Young said. “I would expect by the time we get to Memorial Day, the place is going to be in fantastic condition.”

Brusco at National Club Pro Championship

Worcester Country Club teaching pro Bob Brusco tied for 58th in the PGA Professional Championship last Sunday through Wednesday at the PGA Frisco Fields Ranch East and West Courses in Frisco, Texas.

The Grafton resident shot 77-70-78-76 for a total of 13-over 301 in the tournament, which is also known as the National Club Pro Championship. He earned $4,100 as the top NEPGA golfer in the event.

Bruso was the Central Mass. Division 2 medalist his senior year at Auburn High and a third-team All-American as a senior at Worcester State.

Ideas, comments welcome

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—Contact Bill Doyle at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter, @BillDoyle15.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Central Mass. natives Gary Young, Milan Moore help enhance PGA Tour's Travelers Championship