Sometimes, things just come together perfectly.

That’s really the only way I can describe Englewood Construction’s experience as a sponsor of the Ryder Cup last month. After the months of preparations, logistics, and, the occasional bit of worrying, the event went off flawlessly.

Well, unless of course you were the U.S. team, but we won’t get into that.

As a national general contractor dedicated to delivering the best commercial construction services to clients, we can identify quality work when we see it. What the PGA did for the Ryder Cup was nothing short of impressive.

The “wow-factor” was apparent the moment we entered Medinah Country Club. The PGA did an amazing job setting up what must have been an enormous undertaking. As a commercial general contractor, we took time to appreciate our surroundings and site work, which looked on par with some of the best commercial construction projects I have seen. Apparently, it took 14 weeks to construct all of the temporary luxury tents, concessions, and merchandising locations and it will take another five weeks just to tear them down. Our “hard hats” are off to the Ryder Cup construction crews and planners.

The idea behind sponsoring the Ryder Cup was to show our enormous gratitude to the clients that partnered with a national commercial construction firm like Englewood Construction on their new retail construction projects, new restaurant remodels, shopping center landlord site prep, etc. to help see us through one of the most difficult times the commercial real estate industry has ever faced.

In turn, we provided our clients, which include national and international retailers, with a very special Ryder Cup experience. Everything was top notch, from the amenities in the Captain’s Club tent to our views overlooking the 8th and 9th holes. In fact, our tent was so nice a reporter from Crain’s Chicago Business interviewed us for “Inside a Ryder Cup hospitality tent.”

Looking back however, the most important thing about the Ryder Cup wasn’t the luxury tent or even the golf. It was fostering personal relationships with our clients by talking to them about everything from our families and hobbies to movies and golf. There is no time like face time to learn you have things in common with clients outside of commercial construction news.

And while we tried to steer our conversations away from commercial construction trends and commercial material costs, they eventually came up. It’s wasn’t the goal of a function like this, but it’s good to hear commercial construction jobs are picking up and retail and restaurant developers are feeling optimistic. I guess you could say that we did business without actually trying to do business.

This leads me to an important round of “thank you’s”.

First, I can’t say enough about the team at Englewood Construction who put a lot of hours into making this happen. Coordinating with the Ryder Cup and all of our clients took a lot of time and dedication and to have it come off so well speaks to the quality of their work. Our outside real estate marketing firm, Taylor Johnson, was also instrumental in helping us spread the word and securing the Crain’s interview.

Most importantly, we have to thank our clients. None of this would have been possible without their continued business and dedication to Englewood Construction. The whole event reminded me just how lucky we are to work with so many amazing people.

Now about that U.S. team performance….

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