CEO's Report

Frank Talarico

We Do It Because We Care

Those of us who enjoy reading, and listening, to business thought leaders have at some point read or listened to Simon Sinek.  Sinek, for those who may think his name sounds familiar, is the author of “Start With Why,” and “Leaders Eat Last.”

I’ve actually had the pleasure of meeting Sinek, informally.  He was getting coffee in San Francisco with his business partner, I was with my wife, and we had to at the very least say hello.  My wife Suzi is the Chief Nursing Officer for Providence Health Care. In her position, she developed and then deployed across the health system a new approach to a more authentic, empathetic brand of patient care.  Her program is based largely upon Sinek’s philosophy.  His views on business and leadership applies to many sectors.  It applies to golf just as much as it applies to healthcare.

One of my favorite Sinek discussions is around the importance of showing care for those you are asked to lead, for your team.  As we continue to navigate the ebb and flow of Covid’s impact on our professional and personal lives, his is a timely reminder that each of us holds a critical role in the lives of those around us.

Sinek loves to tell the story of former U.S. Army Captain William D. Swenson. In 2009, Captain Swenson was on an operation in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border.  In the midst of his mission, he and his men were ambushed. The ambush was devastating.  Many of Captain Swanson’s men were injured. During this ambush, Swenson called for air support.  Selfless, Swanson ran through enemy fire to rescue the wounded. The entire, harrowing ordeal was recorded by a GoPro camera on one of the medic’s helmets. With two of his fellow soldiers, Swenson brought in a severely wounded sergeant to a helicopter for medical evacuation. What is most striking about the video is that you see Swenson bend over and give the wounded sergeant a kiss on his forehead before he turns around to rescue more.

Sinek points out this gesture was unusual—and important. It was a leader showing intense care for one of his subordinates.  Sinek’s analysis of the situation is instructive for all of us.  “In the military, they give medals to people who sacrifice themselves so that others may gain,” says Sinek. “In business, they give bonuses to people who sacrifice others so that they may gain.”

It’s not that people in the military are inherently better than those in business—it’s just a different environment. What makes that environment so “different?”  For starters, it’s one that values—and rewards—trust and cooperation.  Not too surprising, success is best achieved in that environment because there is trust and cooperation.  How is this any different than our respective environments?  It’s not.

We don’t need to run through gunfire to earn our teams’ trust, but have we asked ourselves lately what could we do to inspire a heightened sense of cooperation at work and at home?  We in the PNWPGA talk a great deal about alignment—everyone pulling in the same direction.  We do this because it is necessary and because it works.

Consider the new kinds of successes each of us might enjoy if we not only pulled in the same direction, but did so in an environment where no matter a colleague’s rank or responsibility within the organization they trusted that the person to the right and to the left of them shared the same priorities.  As leaders, each of us has the opportunity—and the privilege—to create this environment.  I encourage us to intentionally do so.

This month I want to say a very special thanks to our Section Sponsors, all of them, for all “pulling in the same direction” with us.  I ask that you, too, thank them.  A full list with reps’ contact info can be found on Online Member Handbook (Section ForeTees).

Online Member Handbook

This month I am very pleased to announce a new and exciting addition to our family of Section Sponsors, Farmers Insurance and the Jared Bouchey Agency.  The Jared Bouchey Agency is now a Section event sponsor as well as the creators of the “Jared Bouchey Agency Hole in One Fund.”  Their generous sponsorship is $15,000 per year, for a three-year term ($45,000).  Funds will be used to sponsor the annual PNWPGA Pro Assistant tournament ($5,000) as well as establish an annual PNWPGA Hole in One Fund ($10,000).  In the event no one wins the Hole in One in any year, $5,000 of the original fund is reinvested in the following year, while $5,000 is donated to the PNWPGA Junior Fund.

You will start to see more formal announcements, a QR Code to register for eligibility, and further promotions in the coming weeks.  Our very special thanks to Jared Bouchey and the Jared Bouchey Agency for their generous support of the PNWPGA.

I would be remiss, too, if I did not thank each of our participants in the 1% Club.  Thanks to you, Madeline Koch and Lillie Mueller were recently awarded scholarships through the Bunny Mason Scholarship.  Thank you for your generously supporting the PNWPGA Junior Golf Fund, and for making an indelible mark on these young people’s lives.

Lastly, my personal congratulations to the Hudson Cup Professionals for, once again, defending their respective titles and keeping the Cup out of the hands of our amateur friends.  Well done gentlemen!

As always, should I or any member of the Section Staff be able to be of service, never hesitate to contact us.  See you all Wednesday, 10/20/21, 7:30 AM Pacific, at the Virtual Fall Meeting.

Frank Talarico, CEO
ftalarico@pgahq.com

District 14 Director's Report

Doug Doxsie, PGA

We are just a few weeks away from the PGA Annual Meeting which will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin this year. The Board of Directors, past presidents, and delegates are certainly excited to meet in person this year after last year’s virtual meeting. This year, delegates will have the option of attending in person or virtually to conduct our association’s business.

On a more local level, our Pacific Northwest PGA Section and Chapter fall meetings are right around the corner as well. I encourage everyone to stay engaged with the Section and their Chapter and attend these meetings. Whether held virtually or in person, this is an opportunity to stay up to date on what is happening with YOUR PGA.  The information provided at these meetings is for your benefit and often fosters more discussion, questions, and ideas. It is also a great networking and information tool for your career. The Board of Directors and staff of the Section and Chapters work hard all year on your behalf, and they will have plenty of great information to share. I know they would be pleased to see strong attendance at these meetings.  

I wanted to update you on the PGA PGM Education Program. With the onset of COVID-19, all three levels of the program moved to a virtual education program indefinitely. As we are preparing to open PGA Frisco, the Employment, Education and Membership Committees recommended‒and the Board of Directors approved‒that Level 1 will remain all-virtual going forward and we will reinstate levels 2 and 3 to be in-person required seminars. This will take effect when the PGA Education Center at Frisco is ready (projected March 2022) and COVID-19 protocols allow safe travel and meetings.  The Committees felt strongly that the experiences Associates receive from the in-person seminars are invaluable.

The second approval was to reduce the costs of the entire PGA PGM Associate Education program. At this writing, details are being finalized but the consensus was that we needed to offer the exceptional education for Associates at a more affordable price. Look for more detailed information about how the PGA PGM Associate Education Program will be implemented on PGA.org.

Lastly, as I conclude my second year of a three-year term on the PGA Board of Directors, I want to again thank you for the opportunity to represent you. I feel like our Board has accomplished many great things despite the pandemic during the last two years, but we have a lot more to get done. Please continue to reach out if you have ideas, questions or concerns about our association.

Stay safe, stay healthy and thanks for all you do,

Doug Doxsie, PGA
Seattle Golf Club
PGA District 14 Director
425-681-8889
doxpga@msn.com

PGA Jr. League

Branden Thompson, PGA - Regional League Manager

I hope that you were able to catch some of the live coverage of the National Car Rental PGA Jr. League Championship. It was an amazing event won by the team from Utah. Travis Huskisson and his squad should be proud of their showing at the Regional. They played the national champions extremely well and I’m certain they were also one of the best teams in the country.

We will end the year with over 3,500 kids participating at 110 facilities. That’s an amazing 31 players per facility, which goes to show the power of growing the program. An average program fee of $211 in the Section means the average facility brought in $6,500 in direct revenue from registration fees. Our research shows that the total financial impact is 6 times the program fee, equally over $35k in revenue seen by the average facility.

Here are the top 5 facilities in 2021 in participation:

1. Meadow Springs CC, Jason Aichele, PGA - 185 players
2. First Tee of Greater Seattle, Evan Johnsen, PGA - 153 players
3. Meadow Park GC, Ben Talbot, PGA - 122 players
4. Chambers Bay, Matt Montecucco, PGA - 117 players
5. Meridian Valley CC, Baylor Comstock, PGA and Brian Thornton, PGA - 109 players

2022 Planning

I know we are heading into the off-season and some well-deserved down time for all of you. There will be a few changes for 2022, so please be on the lookout for communications regarding these as well as helpful webinar/tutoring opportunities. The main change will be a new registration system to make it easier on you and your players. You must join a session to learn about that. Session dates and times will be announced soon.

One-on-one Assistance

Want to  discuss PGA Jr. League, Family Cup, or just bounce some ideas around? The following link will take you to my Calendly page where you can choose a time that works for you, and eliminate the need to email back and forth. 

Click Here to schedule

Regards,

Branden Thompson, PGA
561-293-2585
bthompson@pgahq.com

Improve Your Compensation and Work/Life Balance

Monte Koch, PGA of America Employment Consultant

Many of us are feeling burnt out from what has been, as one golf professional described it, “like fitting 18 months of golf in 12 months”. Many of us in the role of employer found it more difficult to recruit talent to cover shifts and meet the new demand from customers and club members. This certainly brings a new set of challenges for PGA Professionals and the golf industry as a whole. With this amount of business for golf facilities comes significant threats to those of us who “make the business of golf work” including golf professionals, managers and agronomic professionals.

Top employers have been savvy enough to give raises where they were due. Others haven’t caught on yet and may soon lose their key talent if they don’t show how much they value those who make the front-line golfer experience what it is. This is your opportunity to show proof of how much value you bring to the business and facility, but to do that you’ve got to “Do Your Work”.

“Do Your Work” on Your Compensation

Would you like to be paid more? (I know it is yes.) If you’re going to get a raise, how will that happen? Will you trust it to luck, or will you work on the areas that you can actually control? For the compensation question, it would seem these are the areas YOU have influence over including:

• Complete the Compensation Profile (at least once a year, and anytime after your compensation package “situation” has changed). It takes 20% of the time the old Compensation Survey took to complete!
  • The more unique your career path is, the more it matters.
  • The more rural your facility is, the more it matters (because we have less facilities to compare yours with).
  • The opposite is also true, the more metropolitan (due to costs of housing, commuting time costs, and much more).
  • The more unique your facility is, the more it matters.
  • The more unique your career goals are, the more it matters.
• Work with me to create a comp report YOU CAN USE. Thanks to some collaboration and suggestions by longtime Section professionals and leaders, I have been able to create an effective compensation report that fully considers the bullet points above regarding compensation. These bullets and a few others are really the questions that define a particular facility and/or their golf professional’s “neighborhood.” My comp report seeks to collaborate with the lead professional(s) at the facility on accurately defining that neighborhood based on tangible and intangible factors. And, with greater participation in the Compensation Profile, I have access to reporting that allows me to build better, more relevant comp reports based on the right “neighborhood” for the given facility/golf professional.
• If you’re interested in getting a comp report of this nature from me, here’s what I’ll be looking for:
  • Are you the highest ranking PGA at your facility? (If not, how can we work with that person to help everyone at your facility?)
  • Have you (and your staff, if applicable) completed your comp profile?
  • Which position to study first?
  • What is the “right neighborhood” for you?
  • What is the due date? More time is better!

Complete Your Compensation Profile

“Do Your Work” on Work/Life Balance

Customers and members can still be “served at the desired level” while golf professionals find some semblance of work/life balance. Think about ways this could work. Talk with your peers at similar facilities and talk with me about innovating new concepts and new looks for golf shop hours, coverage and similar. I once heard Marcus King, PGA CCE, General Manager at Sahalee say something brilliant about work/life balance. He said, “I don’t want to put my golf professional staff in a place where they are overworked…working more than 50 hours a week on a regular basis, to the point where they have nothing left in the tank for our members. That cost in service and likely staff turnover is not good for business at a private club.” With that in mind, some smart, innovative golf professionals and their club leadership are:

• Reconsidering golf shop hours based on actual member check-in and shopping traffic vs “traditional shop hours.” In some cases, shops are going to 7 am – 6 pm on normal operations days vs the typical 7 am – 8 pm mid-season (saving 2 hours a day)
• Cross-training outside staff to be able to manage “early and late players, cart fees, etc.” via credit card and/or member charges (so golf shop doesn’t have to open)
• Offering full-time assistants options to get two full days off a week in season (5 x 10 hrs) and even three off out of season (4 x 10 hrs or similar.) This is a recruiting and/or a retention concept to get talent.
• Survey your customer or membership base to find out what their top 3-5 priorities are…and be prepared to respond, change your program(s) as needed, and then provide the context to “manage change” and educate your customers or members on why it is beneficial to them.
• What concept(s) is the right one for you and your facility?

Just as I mentioned in my August 2021 article, Where to Focus Yourself to Be Most Effective, you don’t have to feel like you have no “input” on the way your career is going. You do in the areas that are in your “Locus of Control.” You do have significant influence over how your compensation story moves ahead from here based on your commitment to focus on what you can control and the “things that matter” in your unique compensation equation.

Where to Focus Yourself to Be Most Effective

I welcome the chance to assist you with this and more in the coming months if you trust me with the opportunity.

 Hope to see you around the Section sometime soon,

Monte Koch, PGA Certified Professional/Player Development | Career Consultant
PGA Career Services | PGA of America
Serving PGA professionals, employers in the Pacific NW & Rocky Mountain PGA Sections
Email: Mkoch@pgahq.com Cell: 206/335-5260

Book a 30 Minute Virtual Meeting

Online Professional Development

Update your Job Preferences

Complete/Update your Compensation Profile

Career Planning and Coaching

Prugh and Hatley Win PNW Pro-Amateur Championship

Tanner T. Montgomery, PGA
Manager of Tournament Operations

PGA Professional Corey Prugh of Community Colleges of Spokane and amateur Reid Hatley of Hayden Lake CC won the Pacific Golf & Turf Pro-Amateur Championship at Palouse Ridge GC. Their combined rounds of 61-61–122 tied with the event record, set by PGA Professional Jeff Gove and Derek Slackman in 2017, also at Palouse Ridge GC. PGA Professional Craig Crandall of Rock Creek CC and amateur Hunter Westcott finished in second place, two shots back.

Designed by the late John Harbottle III and carved into a broad expanse of rolling hills on the Pullman campus of Washington State University, Palouse Ridge Golf Club is one of America’s finest public-access courses. This majestic 7,308-yard layout takes players on an unforgettable journey through the Palouse.

“Palouse Ridge is just a great layout golf course. It has a lot of everything. It seems to set up for good ball striking and if you do that you can make a lot of birdies. That is what we did,” commented Hatley.

This marked the second victory for Prugh and Hatley, who had won this event in 2013 with a very interesting correlation.

“In 2013 I had a hole in one, and Corey this year. It was very close coming down to the final holes and his hole in one (on the 34th hole) maybe gave us a few shots to relax a bit on 17 and 18,” Hatley noted.

Asked what this event means to them, Prugh said, “Reid and I have known each other now for 37 years and have played golf together for most of that time so it’s really cool to win together. We were excited to go have some fun, and to be able to win with that mentality proves that we all should have fun more often on the course.”

“Corey and I have been best friends for a long time. We always enjoy playing in this event together. It gives us a good chance to hang out like we did as kids,” added Hatley.

We would like to thank Pete Trudeau and Jason Letus of Pacific Golf & Turf for being the title sponsor of this incredibly fun event. Thank you to Therabody for becoming a supporting sponsor. We would also like to thank PGA Professional Jeremy Wexler and all of the staff at Palouse Ridge GC for hosting.

Final results

Employment Opportunities

Monte Koch, PGA of America Employment Consultant

Click here to access the PNW PGA job postings

Your Compensation Profile Participation is Needed

Do it for yourself and your peers. Here are some of the reasons I have heard from PGA Members and Associates for why they have not completed your profile yet… and my responses.

• "It takes too long to complete" – I promise it doesn’t. The newly designed profile can be completed in under 5 minutes, and in most cases, much less. (And your info is still confidential!)
• " I am in a non-traditional classification and you don’t need my information" – Yes, we do! I get requests for compensation information for all 24 Active Classifications. In reality, the more unique your role and/or the more rural your work is, the more we need your data (the more you need it.)
• "My compensation is pretty low, and I don’t want to bring down the average" – The more I know, the more I can help. I can even use data on “low” compensation and compare it to other industries to help employers understand why they are having a difficult time attracting/retaining talent. And, when I do comparisons for comp reports, I compare the role, the facility "neighborhood" and the market (e.g. metro vs rural, facility type and reputation, etc.) I need more info in the middle compensation bands so help me help those in this area. Again, I can only do that if I have the data. 

PLEASE, PLEASE (I did it again) click the link below to access and complete your compensation profile (you will need to login to http://PGA.org). Tell your co-workers to do it…tell your PGA friends to do it. In the past, the PNW was one of the top reporters in the country, and we can be again. We can do better. Let’s show that we are the best PGA Section in the country.

Finally, please don't hesitate to call or email me if you have any questions or difficulty in completing your profile. Thank you for your contribution to this important tool used to impact compensation for you and your peers!

Complete your Compensation Profile Survey now >>

Regards, Monte

Open Events

"Fore the Best" Podcast hosted by Monte Koch

Every Thursday @ 9:00 AM Pacific

Latest Episode: Dudley Beard

PNW PGA Annual Fall Meeting

October 20 @ 7:30 AM Pacific
Check your email or the Online Member Handbook (Section ForeTees) for meeting login information

PNW PGA “Stay Involved” Education - all times listed in PDT

October 27 @ 6:00 - 7:00 PM: Increasing Relationships for Women Professionals, presented by Barb Trammell, PGA and Molly Cooper, PGA
Learn More

PNW PGA Arizona Sun Pro-Am

December 5-9, 2021
Fort McDowell, AZ - We-Ko-Pa Casino Resort
Enter online

2022 Tournament Schedule

Start planning on playing next season!
2022 Tournament Schedule

SrPPC Qualifiers

The 33rd Senior PGA Professional Championship takes place October 21-24, 2021 at PGA Golf Club in Port St. Lucie, FL. Top finishers will earn a berth in the 83rd KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship on May 25-30 at Southern Hills Country Club Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Representing the Pacific Northwest Section are: Jeff Coston of Semiahmoo G&CC, Rob Gibbons of Arrowhead GC, Monte Hanson of Bend GC, Mark Knowles of McCormick Woods GC, Bob Rannow of Ocean Dunes Golf Links and Tony Robydek of Meadow Park GC.  Good luck, gentlemen!