A lifetime of volunteering honored as Ken Hoffman recognized at Arnold Palmer Invitational

Ken Hoffman was a first-time volunteer at the 1979 Bay Hill Citrus Classic when Bob Byman beat John Schroeder in a playoff.

Long before ShotLink revolutionized the PGA TOUR’s scoring system, Hoffman was stationed at the sixth hole where he waited for walkie-talkie transmissions from volunteers at the fifth green. They’d radio the scores of the players heading to the tee, and he would post them on a large metal status board so the fans could stay informed.

“Back then the communications, we didn't have iPhones and things like that,” Hoffman says.

While that would be Byman’s lone PGA TOUR win, it wasn’t the only time Hoffman volunteered at the tournament. In fact, he has worked every year since 1979, making the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard his 46th as a volunteer.

Hoffman has served in a variety of capacities, including overseeing security, locator boards and leaderboards, as well as spending eight years on the Volunteer Executive Board. In 2017 and ’18, he was the general chairman of the entire volunteer operation.

“At that point, they kind of put you out to pasture,” Hoffman says, laughing.

Only, he signed up to volunteer again. And again, and again. Three years ago, he was asked to join the Volunteer Executive Leadership Team (VELT), where he oversees the scoring operation and four other committees.

The executive team at the Arnold Palmer Invitational thinks so highly of Hoffman that unbeknownst to him, they nominated him for the 2024 PGA TOUR Volunteer of the Year Award. He was surprised with the news he’d won the honor in December during an interview with the PGA TOUR.

“It has kind of taken me a bit to know what it really means,” Hoffman says with a hitch in his voice. “To be honored that way, what do you say? Every time I think about it, I get emotional.”

Drew Donovan, the tournament director of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, did the honors that day as he highlighted Hoffman’s long-time service to the event.

“He's going on and on about all this stuff that I do,” says Hoffman, who spent 43 years as a senior risk engineering consultant with Zurich before he retired. “Afterwards, I said, 'Drew, I thought Oprah was going to pop out somewhere and give me a car.'”

There was no car. Or Oprah, either. But the TOUR donated $10,000 to a charity of Hoffman’s choosing, which – not surprisingly – happened to be the Arnold & Winnie Palmer Foundation, the primary beneficiary of the tournament he loves.

Hoffman started volunteering on a lark. A friend he played softball with mentioned that the tournament was moving from Rio Pinar Country Club to Bay Hill and suggested they sign up to work behind the scenes. Hoffman thought it would be fun and mailed in his registration.

After several years working the status boards, Hoffman went to Jim Bell, who would helm the Arnold Palmer Invitational for 27 years, and told him he wanted to be more involved. So, Bell put Hoffman, who had a degree in police science, in charge of the security vendors.

“I spent most of my time keeping those people awake,” Hoffman said with a chuckle.

Maybe that explains how the owner of Circus World, a now-defunct theme park about an hour from Orlando, was able to get one of his elephants past security on Sunday and delivered to his house by the 18th green at Bay Hill. Imagine the scene, if you will.

“It was a big elephant, and he brought it behind his house, and he was giving elephant rides to his guests,” Hoffman recalls. “So, Jim Bell wasn't really happy about that. I mean, there's nothing I could do. I didn't expect an elephant to come through the gate.”

Hoffman also remembers helping Roger Clemens, one of the greatest pitchers in major league history, find out what hole his buddy Billy Andrade was playing, then taking him there. At the time, Hoffman was working the locator boards, the magnetic course maps that displayed the group numbers of the players on the course. Again, radio transmissions from hole volunteers made this possible.

When the tournament switched from manual to electronic leaderboards, Hoffman and his crew had a particularly early wake-up call. The boards were powered by golf carts, so they met at Bay Hill around 3:30 a.m. to take them out and hook them up.

One of Hoffman’s favorite things to do has nothing to do with actual tournament operations, though. He likes to go out to where the buses assemble to take the volunteers back to their cars each day. It takes about 1,500 volunteers to put on the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and Hoffman likes to shake their hands and tell them how much they are appreciated.

Hoffman does that because he knows the PGA TOUR’s Signature Event is much more than birdies and bogeys and a chance to see the world’s best players perform. He realized that the first time he went to the Orlando Health Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies and saw the life-saving work that goes on there.

“When I first started at Bay Hill, I was having fun and watching the pros and meeting people and watching the tournament,” Hoffman says. “Then later on, Arnold … he started the Arnold and Winnie Palmer Hospital. And so that's when it all changed to, I'm not just being a volunteer here doing things. It's about the charities that he was involved in.”

Hoffman was a Palmer fan “back in the day,” and he remembers distinctly the first time he spoke to the World Golf Hall of Famer as he went out to check on the manual leaderboard at the seventh hole. It was a cordial but brief conversation. Little did he know that he would later spend time with Palmer at the course he grew up playing in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, with other members of the executive board.

“He’s just done so much for the community, the hospital,” says Hoffman, who attended Palmer’s memorial service. “I have the utmost respect for him and the volunteers. I have so much respect because I'm one of them.

“And the fact that, I mean, we're a volunteer family. We have people there for years and years and years. And not only are we a family we are now part of 'Arnie's Army,' which is pretty spectacular.”