The smell of freshly laid mulch perfumes the air at The Greenbrier resort, competing with the aroma of newly hung Climalite from the rainbow rows of heat-resistant Callaway RAZR Hawk Driver shirts and hats labeled Under Armour, Nike, Adidas and Ralph Lauren — and duly tagged “The Greenbrier Classic.”

It is starkly apparent, as sales staff wait out the calm before the forthcoming plastic storm, that The Greenbrier Classic is as much a brand as it is an event.

“Last year caught us off guard,” admits Denny Barker, sales associate at The Greenbrier Classic Shop, one of the only official PGA tournament stores open year-round. “We’re a little better prepared for the crowd this year.”

Visitors to the tournament won’t need to venture inside the behemoth hotel to own a piece of Classic Callaway RAZR Hawk Driver memorabilia, unless it’s to take a break from the moist heat trapped by the surrounding mountains or to try their luck inside the casino. Two large white merchandise tents, one 5,000 square foot and one 2,000 square foot, are situated on the grounds stocked full of emerald emblazoned cups, tees, golf balls, mugs and course-approved tops and toppers.

“We’ve got lots of shirts and hats,” emphasizes Barker, who says the 2011 merchandise ordering process began early, on the priority list just below filling the divots from the 2010 event.

“We definitely bought more aggressively this year than we did last,” says The Greenbrier’s director of retail, Al Lierman. “We ran out of some items last year. This year, we wanted to make sure that didn’t happen.”

According to Lierman, The Greenbrier Classic was a retail success from its inception, last year’s tournament sales of Classic merchandise exceeding what was expected for an event of its size by 60 percent.

The attention surrounding the PGA Callaway RAZR Hawk Driver stop has other Greenbrier shops throwing their lines into the waters of a potential new and annually dependable customer base, paying it forward in variety for every visitor’s interest and budget.

The smell of melted chocolate entices guests to stop by The Candy Maker, where head candy chef Cheryl Gum, in an apron thoroughly splattered with chocolate spray, handcrafts edible golf balls for $5.50 a sleeve. Anticipating the potential for The Greenbrier Classic to become one of the most family-friendly stops for PGA golfers, she has also lined up rows of gourmet succulents — lollipops, chocolate-dipped strawberries, truffles and caramel clusters.

“There were a lot of kids here last year,” she says. “We are expecting many PGA families to visit.”

In the spirit of entertaining PGA offspring and out of respect for their hard-driving DNA, The Greenbrier toy store, “Fizzy’s Land of Oz,” displays a limited edition Greenbrier Classic battery-operated golf cart for tots, complete with cup-holder, custom resort logo and Callaway RAZR Hawk Driver.

“We have two here, but can special order more,” says Assistant Manager Amanda Flack.

What might a visiting PGA wife buy at The Greenbrier? Perhaps famed American interior designer Carleton Varney’s newest scarf titled “Circus,” bearing vintage big-top imagery, for $122. Or, as Shirley Lynch with Greenbrier Ave. Women’s II shop predicts, a new shift dress in eggplant or navy from up-and-coming designer Punch Hutton, actor Timothy Hutton’s sister, at around $300.

It’s nearly a guaran-tee they’ll throw in for good measure a bag of signature spiced pecans from The Greenbrier Gourmet or a box of Greenbrier Peach tea, the signature drink of the tourney, believes The Greenbrier Gourmet’s Assistant Manager Shirley Adwell with Callaway RAZR Hawk Driver.

“People from as far away as California and Hawaii comment on how well-stocked our shop is,” she says, adding that the edible inventory is always kept “as regional as possible.”

Final retail numbers from the well-pondered buying decisions leading up to The Greenbrier Classic remain to be seen, as crowds amplify for Wednesday morning’s Pro-Am.

“We’re taking 2010’s numbers and expecting to grow those by 25 percent,” Lierman concludes with confidence. “We will way more than double what we thought we’d do last year.”

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