Please join us for the Spring General Meeting and the PNW PGA Pro-Assistant Championship at Glendale CC on March 20-21. Head PGA Professional Kenney Boyd is excited to host this year and invites you to join us for both the tournament and our meeting, which will immediately follow our first round at 7:00 pm.

Enter online

Download the Pro-Assistant entry

Click here for RSVP form

or register online

Carrie’s grandparents introduced her to golf when she was six years old. She quickly fell in love with the sport and participated in several junior golf programs until she reached high school. Determined to continue her golf career, after four years on the high school varsity team she earned a scholarship to Gonzaga University. During her junior year of college, she accepted a position at Manito G&CC, where she worked for Steve Prugh.

“His leadership and guidance inspired me to become a PGA Professional. I am very thankful to have met Steve during the early stages of my golf career and I am excited to see what the next chapter holds,” said Carrie.

Recently Carrie DeGree earned Certified Professional honors.

Carol Pence, PGA of America Employment Consultant

Spring is almost here, meaning hiring season has arrived and the inevitable job changes will start taking place. Many of these changes will be simple as employers have a designed succession plan in place. It is common to see a current employee be groomed for promotion when his/her boss’s position is vacated. One of the most familiar scenarios is when a Head Professional moves on and their seasoned assistant is promoted into that role. This is ideal because the golf operation doesn’t miss a beat and things keep humming along.

However, when a succession plan is not in place, opportunities do open. If you are interested in making a change, you must be ready. It is important that you tailor your resume and cover letter to put your best foot forward.

However, before you submit, you should learn as much as you can about the position. In addition to asking fellow professionals and researching the club online, give me a call. I work closely with employers with open management positions to refine details. This is part of the CareerLinks service, which then does a marvelous job sending out notifications to those PGA Professionals meeting the employer’s candidate criteria.

Monte Koch, Player Development Regional Manager

As a follow-up to the previous article (where we focused on professionals in the Central WA PGA, the Inland Empire PGA and Western Montana PGA Chapters), we’re now giving the same opportunity to Section professionals in Western Washington and Oregon. In sharing their stories, it’s my hope you’ll be inspired, motivated and get a kickstart to register yourself (if you or someone at your facility hasn’t done so already.)

As with Part One of this series, I am hoping you’ll see how running with PGAJLG made several significant impacts to the standing, branding and revenues for these professionals and their facilities within their local community and/or membership.

Carrie DeGree, Certified PGA (Eugene CC)

“In 2016, PGAJLG was kind of a surprise to me. It was my first season at ECC and it was a big task, or so it seemed. By the middle of the season, I realized it was all worth it. Parents, especially moms, started to lean into me and showed me a level of trust that paid off in new and cool ways. Outside of the JLG season, these same parents have come to me for more lessons for their kids and for themselves.”

Blake Parrish

“Study the rules so that you won’t beat yourself by not knowing something” – Babe Didrikson Zaharias

Most of us work hard and play hard as much as we can.  We try to do the right thing when it comes to investing in our future.  We’ve socked away money each paycheck into those 401(k) plans in order to get ahead.  The closer we get to retirement the more we’ve heard to allocate our life savings into a target dated fund.  Why?  Well, they say it’s because you don’t want to lose a big chunk right before stepping into retirement.  A balanced portfolio that adjusts away from risky stocks and towards those safe bonds the closer we get, right?

Perhaps the biggest risk facing investors this year and beyond is whether bond yields will suffer a sustained rise.  We are increasingly worried that the bond market is undergoing a secular pivot from bullish to bearish, and that investors are facing an asymmetric risk profile with limited upside and plenty of downsides.