Harwick CEO a longtime Bridgestone Invitational volunteer

AKRON—As an avalanche of paperwork descended on the caddies earlier this week at Firestone Country Club, the scene may have looked chaotic to outsiders. But Ernie Pouttu knew better.

Pouttu, president and CEO of Akron-based Harwick Standard Distribution Corp. and a longtime Bridgestone Invitational volunteer, said the process of getting caddies their registration and PGA Tour release forms, yardage books, sign-in sheets and more was very calm. That's because everyone, from the caddies to the volunteers, is so familiar with how Bridgestone works, the potentially hectic housekeeping was handled smoothly.

Since 1979, Pouttu has volunteered in different roles at the Bridgestone Invitational, which runs through Sunday, Aug. 9. This year, he is as co-chair of the Caddies Committee.

“Everything's timing,” he said. “It's checking our watch a hundred times a day, making sure we have people in their positions.”

Pouttu said he was a “casual fan” of golf when he first volunteered for the tournament, then called the NEC World Series of Golf, during its third year as a PGA Tour event. Pouttu, then 24, was a member of the Akron chapter of the United States Junior Chamber and with that organization signed up to work as a marshal at the tournament.

The job was basically crowd control, but it put Pouttu—toting “Quiet Please” signs and moving stakes to accommodate putting positions—inside the ropes, right next to the golfers.

Firestone saw an era of legends throughout the 1980s like Tom Watson, Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus. During that time, Pouttu, who joined Harwick Standard's finance department in 1984 and has been CEO since 2007, made his way through various volunteer capacities with the tournament, primarily working with the caddies and as a marshal.

By the 1990s, he was the vice chairman of construction, overseeing the efforts of carpenters and the operation of the electronic scoreboard. He also worked in the credentials department, which made for some uncomfortably warm August days while in a jacket and tie he checked tickets.

Pouttu calls Firestone's golf course “fan friendly.” It puts spectators right next to the players and is a rare chance to see world-class golfers in Akron. The tournament is also friendly to the community, he said.

That's the real draw for Pouttu, he said, and why he volunteers: what the Bridgestone Invitational gives back to the Akron community. Take the tournament's fundraising efforts. Last year, it raised $1.2 million for local organizations, such as the Susan G. Komen Akron Race for the Cure and Akron Children's Hospital.

With nearly four decades of volunteering under his belt, Pouttu gets the added bonus of what he calls the “family feel” of working with his fellow volunteers. Many of them are people he sees only once a year. Some come from as far away as Oklahoma. Others have served for more 50 years, trumping Pouttu's 37 tournaments. But he's not looking to compete with those numbers.

“(When) I'm out there, I'm not president of Harwick Standard,” he said. “I am Ernie Pouttu, co-chair of the Caddies Committee, who is a volunteer.”

Pouttu points out that the early years of the tournament were more glamorous than today's highly structured event.

“The people doing the work did a lot more hands-on,” he said. “If a Porta Potty needed to be moved, we moved it. If bleachers needed to be moved, we moved them.”

Pouttu became chair of the Caddies Committee about six years ago and brought on Steve Kelly, a former Harwick colleague, as co-chair last year. The position usually means taking vacation time for the 12-hour days during tournament week, plus about 20 hours of meetings and prep ahead of the invitational. During the other 51 weeks of the year, Pouttu finds time to improve his own golf game, usually at Portage Country Club.

Pouttu has a lot of trust in his co-volunteers, so much that he expected the rest of the week to go as smoothly as it started. But if a potentially disastrous situation hits the Bridgestone caddies, he'll probably just fall back on his experience.

A couple years back, Pouttu was prepping the Velcro plaques bearing the golfer's last name and the flag of his home country that caddies wear on their bibs. On the plaque for Austrian golfer Bernd Wiesberger, Pouttu noticed the flag wasn't the horizontal red and white stripes of the Austrian flag. Instead, it was the Australian flag, with its sea of blue and Union Jack in the corner.

Pouttu pulled out his phone for a quick Google search and confirmed Wiesberger was Austrian, and not Australian. He then told tournament official about the mix-up. The good news was that a new plaque could be made; the bad news was there was no guarantee it would be ready by the tournament's start.

The day before the start of play, the plaque hadn't been fixed and Pouttu told Wiesberger's caddie that he might be a bag carrier without a golfer's name. Luckily, the caddie laughed it off, and, even better, the plaque ended up being ready for Wiesberger's first round.

“I like to prepare for that stuff rather than have it happen,” Pouttu said.