CP Communications Battles Tough Weather as PGA Season Begins in Hawaii

Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc on the Northeast this past fall and even though it led to the last-minute cancellation of the NYC Marathon, CP was ready to broadcast the event. Even in 2013, the weather isn’t cooperating any better for the company.

CP shipped three trucks; HDRF6, RF7 and RF 8 across the pacific to Hawaii for the start of the PGA golf season at Kapalua Golf Resort in Maui for the Hyundai Tournament of Champions. The event was scheduled to play starting on Jan. 3 with the Pro-Am and continue through the weekend ending with the final round on Monday. CP started laying down fiber optic cable on the Dec. 31 to be ready for rehearsal and the Pro-Am on the 3rd. Yet again, CP was ready but the Pro-Am was cancelled due to weather. High winds gusting up to 65MPH kept the players off the course.

“We are becoming very adept at setting up shows in short time under adverse conditions”, says Kurt Heitmann, SVP of CP. “We have the best golf crews out there and they get the job done no matter what the conditions.”

And the conditions were bad. For the next three days the tournament cancelled play because of the high winds that actually blew down some scaffolding and caused many balls to be blown right off the greens. The final round was pushed to Tuesday and the tournament was shortened to 54 holes.

“This really put the whole operation behind for the Sony Open which follows right after this one,” says Heitmann. “We put two trucks on a barge and shipped them overnight back to Honolulu to arrive on Wednesday at 3pm. And we have to be ready for golf tomorrow. It doesn’t get any tighter then that as far as timing goes.

“We are only using low mini site RF sites for golf now so that help us to be able to quickly deploy our systems and be up and running in very little time. The Sony Open was pre fibered by another crew and we are showing up and should be plug and play.” We are just hoping for better weather!”