He Built This City

"Usually the club wants about twice what we want to pay," Bussey says. "We talk, negotiate a little and meet somewhere in the middle."

Bussey is 59 but looks younger even though his hair has for the most part turned gray; his round face frequently in a smile. A big part of his job is convincing people he has never met to trust him -- and he's good at it.

"Frank never comes off as a tough guy even when he's telling people that things have to be done a certain way whether they like it or not," says Lopuszynski. "He can give orders without sounding like he's giving orders. If you ask him to do something, he'll shake his head, tell you it's impossible but before you know it, he's done it."

Bussey's father managed hotels when Frank was growing up and often put his son to work. "The joke was, if you didn't do your job well my dad was going to bring me in to replace you because I worked cheap," he says. "I learned a lot more than I wanted to learn."

He was a good enough tennis player to get a scholarship to Florida Atlantic University, then went to work after graduation building tennis courts and directing operations for tennis tournaments. He decided, eventually, that he preferred working in golf. "Tennis tournaments are played at night and can be stopped by 10 drops of rain," he says. "Golf tournaments are never played at night, and it takes lightning to get the players off the course."

He smiles. "I don't mind early mornings. I'm not crazy about late nights."

In 1991, he was hired by the Pebble Beach Company to run operations for the 1992 U.S. Open. That was the year the USGA decided it needed full-time operations people because it was taking over more and more of the day-to-day running of the Open each year. Steve Worthy became the operations director for the '93 Open at Baltusrol. Bussey was hired as his first lieutenant. They worked together until Worthy left to become the executive vice president of the foundation that runs the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. Oakmont was Bussey's first Open without Worthy.

Tent villages, here at Oakmont for last year's U.S. Open, are part of Bussey's domain.
Photo: Duane Rieder

"My role hasn't changed that much," he says. "I have a new title, but it's still pretty much the same job."

Which means he must be able to do almost anything -- including operate every piece of machinery on the grounds in case of an emergency.

"You try to be organized and prepared well in advance of the tournament starting," he says. "But invariably, on Wednesday night you're running around like crazy, putting up a new fence or rebuilding a road wiped out by rain or finding extra parking passes for a player who has lost the ones he was given. You accept the fact that nothing is routine. It's almost like building a small city, running it for a week and then taking it all down."

Which might explain why Bussey's nickname is The Mayor. That started in 1998 after the Open at the Olympic Club, when his vendor and operations staff presented him with a large sign that said, "Busseyville -- Frank Bussey, Mayor. Population: 1."

For a long time leading up to the Open, Bussey is often the only citizen of Busseyville, dealing daily with different visitors -- vendors, construction people, club employees, volunteers. During Open week, he's surrounded by thousands of people. Which he finds relaxing.

"Once everything is up, once we've identified the problems and dealt with them, it's really just a matter of putting out a fire here and there during the Open," he says. "The run-up is the tough part because a lot of times you're dealing with people who say, 'We can't do that.' You have to tell them that they can, and they will."

Some problems are fixed more easily than others. In 2002, the USGA decided to go to a two-tee start for the first time. Because the 10th tee at Bethpage Black is about as far from the clubhouse as any spot on the course, Bussey and Worthy had to find the fastest and easiest way possible to get players from the clubhouse to the 10th tee. With security extremely tight in the year after September 11, there weren't a lot of options.