Get Ready
American writer Paul Theroux once explained that “Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.” It feels as though there is a lot of preparation to be made for the coming year and our coming season. At the Section, we have already made some critical moves to ensure that our capacity to serve the member and grow the game is better than ever.
In December, the Section announced the creation of a new position, Manager of Tournament Operations. As first announced in my column last month, Tanner Montgomery, PGA has been selected for this new role. In concert with this hire, the Section in partnership with the Inland Empire, Central Washington, and Western Montana Chapters, has redefined the Executive Director position that will now serve those three chapters. We are very excited to recruit for a position that so comprehensively will support the members in these areas, putting the attention entirely on the chapters needs and opportunities. The posting for this position closes February 24, 2021.
Planning for the Spring Meeting of your Board of Directors is already underway. In advance of this virtual meeting, I encourage interested members to review and submit both the Yamaha Player Development Grants and the Junior Funds’ Youth Player Development Grants. A total of $24,000 is available to help support your local programs. Our thanks to Mr. Ben Foreman of Yamaha for his continued support. Additionally, the Junior Fund grants are made possible by the support of all of you who contributed to the 1% Club and PNW PGA Junior Fund. Applications for both are due no later than March 15, 2021.
2021 Yamaha Player Development Grants & Youth Player Development Grants
While the Special Awards portion of our Pro-Assistant tournament regrettably has been postponed due to Covid-19 safety protocols, we encourage you to enter the tournament when entries become available shortly. A reminder, in 2021 all tournament entries will be done online. This improves the Section staff’s ability to efficiently and effectively administer what is arguably the largest and best tournament program in the country. The Special Awards celebration will now take place in conjunction with the PNW PGA Professional Championship, hosted this year at Arrowhead Country Club. More details will soon follow.
To assure the financial health of our Section, the PNWPGA coordinates some of the more attractive destination Pro-Ams in the United States. As you know, the Hawaii event in January, 2021 had to be cancelled due to travel restrictions. Nonetheless, we are proud to report that we have a record field of forty-two teams for the Vegas Pro Am. Our thanks to those who are playing in that field, and, particularly, to our very generous title sponsor, Mr. Grant Holcomb. Staff has been aggressively seeking out additional destination Pro-Am opportunities. I am excited to encourage you to look for details in the coming weeks about two, new destination Pro-Ams to be announced in Arizona and Mexico.
Lastly, the Section is already executing new strategies to leverage the recent increase in golf participation. We encourage you to consistently consider ways that you and your facilities will make this “spike” a trend and not simply a short-lived phenomenon. Your Section is not only seeking to understand what lies behind the new numbers of golfers, we are working to share what we see with your respective chapters so that all aspects of your membership are positively impacted. For example, according to the National Golf Foundation, the flood of new faces was a compilation of demographics, perhaps, no one might have expected including Youth (+ 630,000 nationally), Beginners (+ 570,000), Women (+ 450,000), and Non-Caucasians (+ 320,000). What will make our continued success easier to ensure is, first, recognizing that there is an “incongruence between our current customers and those who want in.” Demand for golf is higher than ever, skews remarkably younger, more female, more diverse and more average in income, as compared to the golfers many of us may serve today. The best advice is, quite simply, to be ready. If 2020 did nothing else, it taught us that there a simply some things in life that we cannot prepare for, though with the increase in golf across our industry, we must set our strategies to capture and retain this growth.
Frank Talarico, CEO