Rare is the young golfer who dreams of one day running a golf tournament as opposed to competing in it, but such was the case with Florida native Danielle Carrera.
“I was 14 years old and had just started playing golf when I helped out a family friend who was running an event on the Space Coast Junior Golf Tour as a volunteer,” she said. “And I loved the job.”
Carrera could not shake her affection for that line of work even as she played college golf and captained the women’s team at Carson-Newman University and then began toiling after graduation as a teaching professional at the Warren Golf Course in South Bend, Indiana, which also happens to be the home track of the Notre Dame golf teams.
Soon, she was working the 2018 U.S. Senior Open at The Broadmoor, and then secured an internship with what is now known as Eventive Sports. That company ran the 2019 U.S. Senior Open at the Warren course, where Carrera worked on the management team. She later landed a position managing the championship’s volunteer program, among other things.
It’s a big job and one that requires Carrera, who still carries a 2-handicap, to oversee a variety of tasks, from strategic planning and budget development to interacting with the title sponsors (Butterfield Bank and the Bermuda Tourism Authority) and attracting the strongest possible fields. Then there is dealing with the crises that inevitably arise. Such as the time before the 2021 tourney when a sudden storm blew the hospitality structure by the 16th hole of the Robert Trent Jones-designed Port Royal Golf Course into the Atlantic Ocean.
It also is a position that regularly reaffirms her teenage intuitions to enter that field.
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