The latest major championship event coming to New Jersey is just four months away.
And make no doubt about it, the 2016 PGA Championship will be unlike the Super Bowl, the NCAA Tournament, Stanley Cup Finals or the NBA Finals that have come to the state since the turn of the century.

Just consider the venue — Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield — an iconic 120-year-old property whose two courses were designed by A.W. Tillinghast and built in 1922.

Championship Director Ryan Cannon said that makes it a far cry from the venues that hosted the other events, purpose-built facilities that had dedicated planning for seating, hospitality, media and every other facet of the operation.

“In all of A.W. Tillinghast’s infinite wisdom, he could never have imagined what a modern-day major championship would be like — and the operations that come with that,” Cannon said. “So it is the definition of fitting a square peg in a round hole from that regard.”

It’s the reason for three years of meticulous and often complex planning for the 2016 PGA Championship, but it’s all worthwhile for an event that has deep appeal to the state’s business community. The tournament will return to New Jersey for the first time since 2005 — and it figures to be a hotbed of corporate hospitality for companies of all sizes.

“It’s no secret that the tri-state area is the center of that business activity, arguably on the planet,” Cannon said. “So to conduct a championship like this in that market — if you’re looking at it purely through that lens — is obviously a good thing.”

Professional golf’s fourth major will take place at Baltusrol the week of July 25, drawing tens of thousands of spectators from all 50 states and nearly 40 countries. More than 3,000 volunteers have been recruited to help stage the event, including nearly a third of Baltusrol’s roughly 1,500 members, with operational help from dozens of local and national vendors.

For Garden State businesses, it’s a once-in-a-decade opportunity to wine and dine clients and key stakeholders.

“As a small business owner, there’s a huge advantage to having the event here in New Jersey,” said Gretchen Wilcox, founder and CEO of G.S. Wilcox & Co. in Morristown. “It’s such a special place and it’s a great place to entertain a client.”

Wilcox, a mortgage banker and an avid golfer, bought clubhouse tickets for the event and plans on entertaining throughout the week. It’s a worthwhile investment, she said, because “there is such a ‘wow’ factor to be part of this history and tradition.”

It’s why the 2016 PGA Championship team has spent more than a year selling hospitality packages that range as high as six figures, from five-person guest suites inside the Baltusrol clubhouse to 200-person chalets between the first tee and the 18th green.

Several options are still available, ranging from $34,500 for a 10-person table in the Championship Club to $325,000 for a private chalet for 100 guests.

But hospitality is just one piece of a planning effort that has been overseen by a team of about 10, who have been working from a trailer on the Baltusrol grounds in Springfield. Together, they coordinate everything from the massive volunteer effort to months of operational planning.

The event’s 3,500 volunteers will be required to work four four-hour shifts during the week, handling everything from player transport and day care to caddy services and serving as marshals. Cannon noted that all major sporting events have volunteers, but the effort for golf majors “is part of the identity of the actual championship itself” and critical to it taking place.

“It’s impossible for us to overstate the relative importance of the volunteer effort to the championship,” Cannon said. “It, quite simply, doesn’t happen unless we have that type of support from the golf community, so it’s huge.”

Not to mention that they’ll have full access to the grounds of the club during all seven days of championship week.

And yes, there are still volunteer positions available.

“It’s a great opportunity for our volunteers because … not only do they get to watch the players out there on the course, but they also get to see it from behind the scenes, almost in areas that not a lot of people get to see, which is really neat for them,” said Samantha Vera, volunteer operations manager for the championship. “It’s definitely a different experience for them.”

Staging the event means dealing with “an infinite number of moving parts,” said Sal Urso, operations manager for the event. Among the roughly 40 vendors that have been hired are more than 20 New Jersey businesses, performing services such as gravel construction, data and telecom management and transportation.

“We manage it here from a local level, but there’s a whole mass operation that constructs this temporary city that we build,” Urso said. One challenge stems from the unusual fact that Baltusrol “has two golf courses and not a lot of open land to build tents or park cars or bring people in and out, so they have allowed us to do a lot of our construction on their upper course.”

“Both courses are Top 100,” he said, referring to Golf Digest’s prestigious ranking. “So that’s a huge allowance for us to do that.”

It will be the 17th major championship hosted by Baltusrol in its 120-year history, and it is part of the club’s DNA. It’s why that it was a celebratory moment in 2008 when the PGA committed to bring the event back to the club in 2016.

“It was a wonderful success in 2005,” said Rick Jenkins, a longtime Baltusrol member and general chairman of 2016 PGA Championship. “As a club, we knew right away that we wanted to do it again.”

Putting aside the drama of 2005 — known for Phil Mickelson’s famous Monday flop shot on the 72nd hole — that brings with it the challenge of trying to do the event bigger and better.

“In some ways, that might as well have been 100 years ago because everything has evolved,” Cannon said. “So we have 40,000 people showing up on Day One and trying to ensure that the physical plan is ready for that is something that we spend years trying to be ready for.”

Among the changes from 2005 include roughly 1,000 additional grandstand seats and improved seating around holes 1, 4 and 18, he said. Another major shift is that attendees can now bring their cell phones — a policy adopted by the PGA of America in 2011 — which dovetails with the PGA app and other “ways to interact with the championship while you’re on site.”

“With that ability to bring the mobile device on site, it really is a game changer in the way that fans can experience the championship while they’re here,” Cannon said. “We want fans to feel like they can come out here and stay connected. But at the same time we also wanted to enhance their experience on site.”

What’s more, ticketed adults can bring up to four children under age 17 for free. And yes, there are still tickets available — with single tickets ranging from $25 for Monday’s practice round to $115 for the fourth round on Sunday, while a seven-day Wanamaker Club package costs $575.

Amid all the planning for this year’s PGA Championship, Cannon’s team recently met with representatives from the 2019 PGA Championship at Bethpage Black Course in Farmingdale, N.Y. It happens to be their next assignment, and he noted that “in some ways, your planning for the next one begins the minute the one you’re hosting ends.”

But first thing’s first. He expects fans and businesses to be in store for a first-class experience and a first-class tournament on the course.

“It will be unbelievably exciting to watch a whole generation of professional golfers be reintroduced to what a major championship competition is at this venue,” Cannon said. “Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler, Dustin Johnson — none of them have competed in a major championship here, so that is going to be just remarkable to watch, because this place is an incredibly special venue.”

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