Donald Chornak, a familiar voice to PGA players

PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. - Donald Chornak says the first hole is an office.  

"When they arrive here, it's business time," he said.

Chornak is the office manager, also known as the "Starter."  He greets the players, hands out the score cards and announces their names.  

"I've been doing this since I had hair and that's a considerable length of time," he said.  The announcer has been doing his work for almost 50 years.

He knows the name of every golfer.

"Many of our players are from outside the country, so it's a challenge for me because I'm not polylingual so I try my best to do it and I sometimes ask them many times how to say their name," he said.

Down to the second, he knows when each person clocks in.  

"If he should be seconds late, just seconds, I keep an atomic clock here by hand and there's one right over there.  And of course they are synchronized, they would receive a two-stroke penalty and if they are 5 minutes late it is complete disqualification," he explained.

He sometimes sees tremendous growth in the players.  He has had players introduce themselves as amateurs, hopeful he will announce them one day, and come back years later.

"Put his arms around me and said remember when we talked about this, he proceeded to do very well at that tournament."

Golf has been good to Chornak.  For the first hole, he thinks is the seat at the corner office.