Ladies European Tour Tournament Director, former CPG staffer, and PGA Member Christiane Stenger, has extensive knowledge and experience in the sport that have led her to the forefront of some of golf’s biggest events, including the 2024 Olympic Games.
Christiane spoke to the CPG direct from Paris during the Olympic Golf women’s competition about her experiences as a Rules Official during the week, the electric atmosphere at Le Golf National, and her valuable advice for PGA Members early on in their careers looking to develop themselves.
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The Olympics so far have been amazing, and, knowing that I would come here, I’ve watched a lot on TV. Obviously the crowds were amazing for the men, but I have to say that it’s as good for the women. Especially the French girls have been supported massively, but so have the entire field – the fans have been amazing.
We could hardly move anywhere with buggies, which is always a good sign because it means that a lot of people are there to watch.
The atmosphere is amazing and it does feel different than a normal tournament because you just have far more people involved. People are really cheering each other along and they’re playing for their country rather than for prize money, which does give a bit of a different atmosphere.
Especially on the first tee when the players tee off – there are so many people cheering for every player and it is absolutely amazing.
My role this week has been as a rules official, but we do change the official assignments every day. Some days I’m assigned to a specific zone where I am responsible for any rulings popping up in that area. But on other days I’m assigned to be a rover, in charge of managing pace of play, and I could be either on the front nine or back nine, or as general rules, or keeping an overall picture.
To be part of the Olympics as a rules official is just amazing to be honest. It is always nice to be part of a big team, and we only get to meet the officials from the other tours where we do majors usually. So when we share tournaments it is always nice to meet up and collaborate. We have our colleagues from the LPGA but also we have people here from the PGA Tour, DP World Tour, The R&A, and USGA so it’s always really nice to be involved together and see what happens on the different tours and exchanging things.
The core setup this week is a little different to what we do on normal weeks on the LET, and much closer to what we do in major weeks. It is a bit tougher than the average LET tournament – the main differences are the course is playing slightly longer and green speed a bit faster. Plus we have an entire agronomy team here besides the local greenkeeping team and supervisor.
So there’s just more resources involved than what we normally have, but otherwise the standards are similar.
If I talk from a rules perspective, then if I’m just a rules official at one of our tournaments, then it is absolutely similar to what we do here. The only difference being that we have more referees out there than what we normally have. Normally we have around 6 – 8 rules officials out there – this week we are fortunate enough to have one rules official covering two or three holes, so we just have more staff on the ground.
My best piece of advice for a PGA member early in their career…? I started off with teaching and I really enjoyed my time doing that, but I think it is all about exploring what prospective options you actually have. Most people think it is purely teaching or maybe being a club manager, but there are so many options around what you can do as a PGA Member. Explore your options, try different things, and then try to find something that will inspire you to do it for the rest of your career. There is nothing wrong with doing one thing throughout your career at all but I am sure many would like to try different things along the way too.
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For more on the 2024 Olympic Golf visit igfgolf.org/olympic-games/2024/paris.
