Speaker 1: The club expects their golf proth and their assistant pros
Speaker 1: to make sure everything's perfect.
Speaker 2: We want a club row that can play like Tiger,
Speaker 2: teach like butch merchandise like Ralph Lauren, and tell jokes
Speaker 2: like Bob Hope.
Speaker 3: Right, it is absolutely The problem is the amount of
Speaker 3: pay for the amount of work.
Speaker 4: It doesn't mesh for clubs.
Speaker 5: If you don't make these changes, you're not going to
Speaker 5: get the people you want.
Speaker 4: Your product is going to suffer.
Speaker 5: People are not going to want to come play there,
Speaker 5: They're going to go elsewhere, and you're eventually going to
Speaker 5: go out of business.
Speaker 1: Is seth while helping He's the right guy in the
Speaker 1: driver's seat, But is there a vehicle he can drive
Speaker 1: that can make it any better?
Speaker 2: People are put on earth to make everybody's lives better, right, Like?
Speaker 2: How can he not want to be surrounded by those people?
Speaker 1: Right then?
Speaker 4: And that's what our PGA professional is.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not perfect, We're not perfect times far
Speaker 2: from perfect.
Speaker 4: We're moving the needle, making a lot.
Speaker 2: Of progress and I hope people are noticing it. But
Speaker 2: that's not the point either, right. The point is leaving
Speaker 2: the room better. And I'm going to keep fighting to
Speaker 2: do that every day.
Speaker 6: Put another log on the fire Nobody here is given time.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the fire Pit with Matt Janella.
Speaker 7: We're back for the fifth episode of this podcast series
Speaker 7: on the club pro crisis. This week we're looking at
Speaker 7: it through the lens of the PGA of America's Professional
Speaker 7: Golf Management. University programs one of two paths to becoming
Speaker 7: APGA member. For more on both paths, go to PGA
Speaker 7: dot org. Forward Slash membership in a four and a
Speaker 7: half to five year program involving classroom courses, paid internships,
Speaker 7: and opportunities for player development. There are currently sevenine teen
Speaker 7: nationwide universities that offer these PGM programs while students simultaneously
Speaker 7: get a bachelor's degree in marketing or business administration, hospitality administration,
Speaker 7: recreation and park management. One of the participating universities is
Speaker 7: Penn State, and today we're talking to doctor Bryan Soul,
Speaker 7: an associate teaching professor at Penn State for fifteen years.
Speaker 7: You'll hear Soul say that for the one hundred one
Speaker 7: hundred and twenty students in their program, they get five
Speaker 7: to eight internship offers per student. If you missed Part one,
Speaker 7: you missed some history of club pros from people like
Speaker 7: Butch Harmon.
Speaker 1: The old days, when you've got a good job, you
Speaker 1: just stayed there forever, and the members treated you like
Speaker 1: a member.
Speaker 4: You were great with them.
Speaker 1: And so I think what's evolved now is the club's
Speaker 1: down all the amenities. They own, the pro shops, they own,
Speaker 1: the cards, they owned, the backrooms, they own the driving ranges.
Speaker 1: Pros are paid a salary and a little percentage of stuffs.
Speaker 1: It's a different incentive world for guys to get into business.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: The people said to you all the time, well.
Speaker 1: You've been a golf pro your whole life. When you
Speaker 1: were a club pro, you must have played a lot
Speaker 1: of golf. No, not really. You're always working. You work
Speaker 1: every holiday, you work every weekend. It's a hard job.
Speaker 1: Now you have corporations on these clubs. They got the
Speaker 1: pros punch and time clocks. You know. Well, hr says
Speaker 1: you can only work forty hours a week. Well, heck
Speaker 1: we we being a golf pro my whole life. I
Speaker 1: turned probem to sixty five. We worked the sun when
Speaker 1: the sun was up, we worked when the sun went down,
Speaker 1: and we went home. That's not the way it is anymore.
Speaker 1: It's a totally different environment. I'm not saying it's good
Speaker 1: or bad. I'm just saying it's not the one that
Speaker 1: I grew up in and the one I lived in.
Speaker 7: We've heard from Rick Riley of Wiltshire Country Club for
Speaker 7: over thirty years, whose father is in the pg of
Speaker 7: America's Hall of Fame.
Speaker 3: It's a great place to be, but you know, once
Speaker 3: the end, you got to put in the hours. You
Speaker 3: got to have a love for it. I mean, my
Speaker 3: dad always said there's two to be a good PGA professional.
Speaker 3: You got five points. You got to be a player.
Speaker 3: You got to be a teacher. You got to be
Speaker 3: an administrator, you got to be a rules expert. Probably
Speaker 3: most important, you have to be a people person. You
Speaker 3: cannot survive on my side of the business if you
Speaker 3: don't interact with people well and take care of people.
Speaker 7: And we've heard from Shane Ryan, author of the golf
Speaker 7: digestory entitled The Club pro Crisis, which was published in
Speaker 7: May of twenty twenty two. Ryan on the harsh reality
Speaker 7: of the industry.
Speaker 5: It felt like I was learning, on one hand about
Speaker 5: an industry that is fundamentally broken in terms of the
Speaker 5: working conditions that club pros exist under that there is
Speaker 5: so much demanded of them that there is a system
Speaker 5: in place where this was you know, I won't say
Speaker 5: it was fine with people, but it was standard and
Speaker 5: it was expected. And all of a sudden, a new
Speaker 5: generation is coming up saying we don't want to work
Speaker 5: like this, and so, you know, places are losing their pros.
Speaker 5: But they're faced with a reality where to meet the
Speaker 5: to meet the standards of what people how they want
Speaker 5: to work now saying Okay, maybe you know, you get
Speaker 5: a weekend off once in a while, maybe only work
Speaker 5: fifty hours a week instead of seventy or eighty. It
Speaker 5: would mean hiring more people, and that's something that they
Speaker 5: don't want to do for obvious reasons, right because that
Speaker 5: affects their budget and their bottom line. But the reality
Speaker 5: is the clubs who are not doing that are falling
Speaker 5: behind because either they can't fill positions or when they
Speaker 5: do fill positions, they're not filling them with the best people.
Speaker 5: And so you have this unbelievable sort of schism between
Speaker 5: what is expected, whether you're you know, the board at
Speaker 5: a club or the manager of a club versus what
Speaker 5: is the reality of what club pros want to do
Speaker 5: with their jobs, and so were the gap between it
Speaker 5: is so wide, and it got worse during the pandemic,
Speaker 5: and it's hard to see sometimes how it gets better.
Speaker 7: Meanwhile, in Part four, Seth Waugh, the PGA of America's
Speaker 7: CEO since twenty eighteen, talked about what he's doing to
Speaker 7: try and leave the room better than he found it.
Speaker 2: I think we've flipped the prism on the game. And
Speaker 2: I think you know, the greatest thing about what's going
Speaker 2: on right now, Matt, is the game has had its
Speaker 2: ups and downs, for sure, but for the first time,
Speaker 2: and it's it's it's history. Golf is cool, and golf's
Speaker 2: never been cool, right, and and that's awesome, and we
Speaker 2: need to make sure we continue to promote that right
Speaker 2: and have all these different ways to consume it now. Right,
Speaker 2: you have top golf, you have putt putt and all
Speaker 2: kinds of different forms you've got, you know, simulators you've got.
Speaker 2: And again, I've always believed, like you know, if you
Speaker 2: go shoot hoops in your backyard, you played basketball that day.
Speaker 2: It wasn't five on five with reps, right, but it
Speaker 2: was it was it was hoops and and so you know,
Speaker 2: if you put on your carpet today you play golf
Speaker 2: and and you know and you took it. You know,
Speaker 2: check out your swinging in a mirror like you played
Speaker 2: golf that day. And we've got to embrace it in
Speaker 2: every form we possibly can't part threes, three holes, you know,
Speaker 2: hitt and balls in the way like yes, like work
Speaker 2: for all of it every day. Anything that is good
Speaker 2: for the game is ultimately good for our professionals. And
Speaker 2: so we're going to promote it and every way we
Speaker 2: can and celebrate it.
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Speaker 8: My name is Brian Soulet. I'm a PGA professional and
Speaker 8: an assistant teaching professor at Penn State University with the
Speaker 8: PGA Golf Management Program. I've been here for fourteen years.
Speaker 7: This idea that there is a club pro crisis. Do
Speaker 7: you buy into that concept?
Speaker 9: I think so. I think.
Speaker 8: In the past decade or so, we've seen a huge
Speaker 8: shift from golf facilities being able to pick and choose
Speaker 8: their employees and really get a lot of applicants for
Speaker 8: great positions. And in recent years we've seen that flip
Speaker 8: so at Penn State, we have about one hundred to
Speaker 8: one hundred and twenty students, and we're getting between five
Speaker 8: and eight positions posted with our program per student just
Speaker 8: for internships.
Speaker 9: So we have.
Speaker 8: Up to one thousand facilities that will contact us each
Speaker 8: year asking for access to our one hundred students. So
Speaker 8: the industry clearly is hungry for good new talent, and
Speaker 8: we're starting to see the benefits of that for our students,
Speaker 8: which is great. You know, it's giving opportunities for them
Speaker 8: to pick and choose the best jobs in the industry.
Speaker 8: But that's on the flip side. You know, your green
Speaker 8: grass facilities specifically are the ones who are struggling because
Speaker 8: they're struggling to find really good qualified help.
Speaker 7: And yet I'm also hearing and reading about and learning
Speaker 7: of about PGM programs closing all over. You know, at
Speaker 7: one point there wasn't a lot of them, then there
Speaker 7: was a lot of them, and now there's less of them.
Speaker 8: There was an influx of programs, So Penn State was
Speaker 8: one of the first four and that was what it
Speaker 8: was for decades until the early two thousands.
Speaker 9: It took off.
Speaker 8: I think at the peak there were twenty PGA accredited
Speaker 8: university programs. Now we're down to seventeen, and it feels
Speaker 8: like that's a leveling out. I'm a Clemson graduate and
Speaker 8: we're the most recent program to close. It was Clemson University.
Speaker 8: It was kind of the perfect storm there of the
Speaker 8: COVID crisis of rising costs and higher education right and
Speaker 8: them looking for programs that were a little bit under enrolled.
Speaker 8: So I think we're probably at a leveling off now.
Speaker 8: We're starting to see an uptick in student enrollments across
Speaker 8: the country, So I'm hoping that that means that that
Speaker 8: kind of the level that we're at right now is
Speaker 8: where we'll stay for the for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 7: From the time that you went to Clemson to what
Speaker 7: you are now teaching, how has the education of the
Speaker 7: club pro the PGA pro evolved.
Speaker 9: In your mind?
Speaker 8: That's a good question. It So I graduated in two
Speaker 8: thousand and five from Clemson. The PGA's curriculum back down
Speaker 8: was training very specifically for the students to become green
Speaker 8: grass head golf professionals. So we were studying merchandising, teaching
Speaker 8: the game, customer relations, and there was even a test
Speaker 8: Matt of physically going to a lab, pulling apart a
Speaker 8: golf club and assessing somebody's grip size and re building
Speaker 8: that club, and somebody was watching you pull this thing
Speaker 8: apart put it back together. You actually had to train
Speaker 8: to do club repair back then. So what we've seen
Speaker 8: in the past decade, let's call it, is an advancement
Speaker 8: in the education where they've dropped some of the more
Speaker 8: very traditional club pro education and they've become much more specialized.
Speaker 8: So what we're seeing now is that we've got students
Speaker 8: who are tracking very specifically, just saying early in their
Speaker 8: college career, I want to be a teacher, or I
Speaker 8: want to be a tournament director, or I want to
Speaker 8: be a merchandiser. And they've i think, built a really
Speaker 8: good education program now where they're really specializing and allowed
Speaker 8: allowing people to pick and choose their path a little
Speaker 8: bit more specifically, rather than pushing everybody into that old
Speaker 8: school green grass golf pro kind of mold.
Speaker 7: Which is cool, but also does that make it tough
Speaker 7: on PGM programs then, because you have a sort of
Speaker 7: a splintered set of teaching going on, and then how
Speaker 7: do you have a program to get enough students in
Speaker 7: each one of those different verticals, right, Like, you've got
Speaker 7: to have teachers in those different works, then you have
Speaker 7: to have enough students to justify a splintering of those verticals.
Speaker 7: Is that also kind of part of the problem too.
Speaker 8: No, I think it's been a pretty cool change. So
Speaker 8: each of the university programs kind of has its own strength, right.
Speaker 8: So at Penn State, we're located in the northeast. Most
Speaker 8: of the facilities that our alumni go to are private facilities,
Speaker 8: typically upscale private, so we're able to kind of cater
Speaker 8: the way that we deliver the PGA's education towards that.
Speaker 8: But then also we have an amazing on campus facility.
Speaker 8: It's a three day, three bay teaching and coaching center
Speaker 8: that has force plates and three D motion capture technology.
Speaker 8: So we've had a plethora of students in the past
Speaker 8: five to eight years really go down that teaching path
Speaker 8: because we're well outfitted to deliver.
Speaker 9: That part of the curriculum.
Speaker 8: I think the other programs each of their own strength,
Speaker 8: and that's where when students are thinking about which program
Speaker 8: do I want to attend, Which university do I want
Speaker 8: to go to, we tell them visit campus, you need
Speaker 8: to see it. You need to meet the people, You
Speaker 8: need to see what their expertise has to offer. And
Speaker 8: and that's I think part of the process is early
Speaker 8: on choosing the right university for you. So we're each
Speaker 8: each program definitely has a niche.
Speaker 7: Bob for go back to Claude Harmon and and you know,
Speaker 7: now guys like Rick Riley at Wilsher who's been there
Speaker 7: over thirty years. You know, do you do we do
Speaker 7: you think that that kind of figurehead mega mentor you know, multitasking,
Speaker 7: you know, leader of a of a golf shop?
Speaker 6: Uh?
Speaker 7: Is that adot? Is that literally kind of like about
Speaker 7: to be extinct? And and it's going to be this
Speaker 7: collection of specialists that may be overseen by a quote
Speaker 7: director of golf or a president of a club or something.
Speaker 7: Is that is that ultimately kind of we're where we
Speaker 7: are or where we're headed?
Speaker 8: I hope not, because and I don't think that we're
Speaker 8: going in that direction because enough of the new generation
Speaker 8: is being mentored by the Bob Fords, the Tony Pancake
Speaker 8: at Crooked Stick, Scott and I at Marion Golf Club.
Speaker 8: These folks are so good with people, and they've trained
Speaker 8: their assistants who have then moved on to become head professionals,
Speaker 8: to kind of have that same way about them of
Speaker 8: running a facility, being the figurehead, being a mentor. So
Speaker 8: what's been really fun for me. I've been here for
Speaker 8: fifteen years almost at Penn State. Now some of my
Speaker 8: earliest graduates are in those positions, so they're in their
Speaker 8: mid coming up on upper thirties. A great example is
Speaker 8: a gentleman by the name of Jack Davis. He's the
Speaker 8: head professional at Essex County Club, really cool Donald Ross,
Speaker 8: just north of Boston. He's just got a great program
Speaker 8: up there. He's got a good group of assistant golf pros,
Speaker 8: he's got a great internship program. So I think that's
Speaker 8: not going to die because those facilities need those types
Speaker 8: of people, they need those figureheads, they need, you know,
Speaker 8: in a way, they're kind of like the heroes of
Speaker 8: the golf industry, and I think that that's going to
Speaker 8: stay healthy. There are plenty of folks who want to
Speaker 8: go down that path still, but then there are also
Speaker 8: people who are like, you know what, that's not for me.
Speaker 8: I don't want to be on property Saturday and Sunday
Speaker 8: and every single holiday. I want to be able to
Speaker 8: keep my own book right. So I'm going to go
Speaker 8: down the teaching path, or I'm going to work in
Speaker 8: New York City for an apparel company like Paulo Ralph.
Speaker 9: Lauren and have a more normal work week.
Speaker 8: So I think you're still going to have plenty of
Speaker 8: folks who go down that traditional path and knock it
Speaker 8: out of the park.
Speaker 4: My name is Jack Davis. I'm the head golf professional
Speaker 4: County Club in Manchester by the Sea, Massachusetts, amazing old Club.
Speaker 4: It's the sixth club in the USGA. Don Ross was
Speaker 4: actually the head pro here over a century ago. It's
Speaker 4: top one hundred club. It's a really really wonderful place,
Speaker 4: a leak golf program, a leave tennis rackets program. I've
Speaker 4: been head pro here now. This is my seventh year,
Speaker 4: and I worked for Jack Drew at Shinnacok for eight years.
Speaker 4: Part of that, two of which were internships when I
Speaker 4: was finishing my time at Penn State through the PGM program.
Speaker 7: Davis also did a few winters in Florida Jupiter Hills
Speaker 7: for three years and worked for Bob Ford at Seminal
Speaker 7: for one season. This is a portion of my conversation
Speaker 7: with Davis. The PGM program that you went to that
Speaker 7: you are now probably getting interns from or PGM programs
Speaker 7: of course, Yeah, how do you think that's that sort
Speaker 7: of the program then and now has evolved.
Speaker 4: The numbers are way down, for sure. I think that.
Speaker 4: And I'm really involved with the alumni, and I talked
Speaker 4: to Brian and Birch and I'm very much like a
Speaker 4: hands on alum. Each of the schools is different, right,
Speaker 4: They're offering different education and different geographic area. But the
Speaker 4: PGA is trying to centralize everything, and I think it's
Speaker 4: really difficult for some of the universities to get done
Speaker 4: what they want to get done. At a bigger school
Speaker 4: like Penn State, where you're fitting into a really large
Speaker 4: ecosystem and PGM is such a small part of that,
Speaker 4: it's hard to get things done. Maybe at a different
Speaker 4: school like a Methodist or a Camel where PGM is
Speaker 4: a bigger portion of your student base, you've got a
Speaker 4: little bit more leverage as to programming, curriculum and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. But I think the PGM programs are really
Speaker 4: trying to get students, and the PGA is trying to
Speaker 4: help the PGM programs work fruit But as this whole
Speaker 4: podcast series is about. The article in Golf Digest is
Speaker 4: about other than golf being in a great place on
Speaker 4: a broad scale. I think it's hard for high school
Speaker 4: students who know what they might be getting into to
Speaker 4: sign up for it, if that makes sense, because the
Speaker 4: idea of loving golf, Like when I was growing I
Speaker 4: grew up in New Jersey, and when I found out
Speaker 4: about PGM, I thought it was someone was lying to me.
Speaker 4: I was like, how can this really be what I
Speaker 4: can go to college for, let alone a place like
Speaker 4: Penn State. And it was an incredible, incredible experience for me.
Speaker 4: And it's still you explained where you went to college
Speaker 4: and what you did, and people are still like, that's
Speaker 4: a major. I'm like, yeah, it's a major.
Speaker 9: It's great.
Speaker 4: I work at all I mean I work at Spyglass,
Speaker 4: a Pebble Beach company. I worked at Plainfield Country Club,
Speaker 4: I work at Chitnaicock. I worked at these great places,
Speaker 4: and I was so driven and the students around me,
Speaker 4: the class above me and the class below me, my
Speaker 4: peers were so driven. And it feels different now. It
Speaker 4: feels like it's almost a a waiting program like people
Speaker 4: do PGGM because they enjoy the game of golf, and
Speaker 4: then they're going to transition to a different major, or
Speaker 4: they're going to quickly transition to a different career path
Speaker 4: or maybe a different career path within golf. It doesn't
Speaker 4: necessarily feel, and not through the fault of the PGM programs,
Speaker 4: like you're creating forty head pros a year. It seems
Speaker 4: like you're creating one head pro year and then other
Speaker 4: people who will have golf as part of their life
Speaker 4: for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 7: What are your thoughts on where we go from here?
Speaker 4: It's interesting. I wrote a paper that I presented to
Speaker 4: the executive committee at the club here that was about
Speaker 4: four thousand words that was essentially the state of the
Speaker 4: golf business and particularly how it relates to Essex and
Speaker 4: my life and our team's lives. And that was six
Speaker 4: months before the club pro crisis. Article came out. That
Speaker 4: came out, and the club president here sent that article
Speaker 4: to me and said, you beat them to the punch,
Speaker 4: But I think a lot of us beat them to
Speaker 4: the punch, right. It was an amazing article. It was
Speaker 4: I can't tell you the chatter that that created, But
Speaker 4: now that chatter's gone. Or at least certainly muted compared
Speaker 4: to where it was. I've been listening to your podcast,
Speaker 4: and I think that everyone has really good points. It's
Speaker 4: an odd situation that the PGA of America, while advocating
Speaker 4: for us, isn't our bosses. They're not our bosses, right,
Speaker 4: So any gains that I might get at essex, whether
Speaker 4: it relates to my own situation or my team situation
Speaker 4: or facilities, whatever those might be, that doesn't necessarily help
Speaker 4: the professional next door. Right. There is no union, there's
Speaker 4: no guild there. We have to fight these battles, if
Speaker 4: you will, very quote fight these battles on a million
Speaker 4: different fronts every day. So I think it's the more
Speaker 4: that we talk to one another, the more that our members.
Speaker 4: Again I work at a member on club, so the
Speaker 4: more that our members and the board here are hearing
Speaker 4: these situations, the better. In general, what I've seen is
Speaker 4: that when they are made aware of a problem, they're
Speaker 4: very empathetic and they want act. I think a lot
Speaker 4: of the problems that the golf business is facing, some
Speaker 4: of them are institutional problems, like people play golf on
Speaker 4: the weekends, people play golf on holidays. We've got to
Speaker 4: figure out a way that me the head pro. I
Speaker 4: don't need to be here on every weekend and every holiday.
Speaker 4: But there are some things that are kind of intrinsic
Speaker 4: with the golf business. But I think if we can
Speaker 4: communicate with data and eloquence to the people who are
Speaker 4: making decisions, whether it's a membership and ownership group, aboard,
Speaker 4: whatever it is, they want to help us, they do,
Speaker 4: But for generations, I don't think that they knew what
Speaker 4: the problems were, and I think there was a badge
Speaker 4: of honor how many hours a week could work. So
Speaker 4: if we as golf professionals were saying, my seventy five
Speaker 4: hours weeks be to your seventy, and I must be
Speaker 4: a better head pro. If that was the culture, as
Speaker 4: Chandler as alluded to, how are our bosses going to
Speaker 4: be there to help us if we're bragging about how
Speaker 4: much you work? And now I want to do the
Speaker 4: other way around. I want to be the head process
Speaker 4: I work forty hours a week and then tell my
Speaker 4: friends how I can do that. Now I'm far from that,
Speaker 4: but we've got to fight these battles on every single
Speaker 4: little front, and we've got to be honest with our bosses,
Speaker 4: and we have to be honest with ourselves.
Speaker 7: The next generation, do you see that there might be
Speaker 7: more of you coming and staying and pursuing a position
Speaker 7: like you've You've worked hard to get and are immersed in.
Speaker 4: As we speak, I think my generation as I'm sure
Speaker 4: every previous generation thinks. I think my generation. I'm thirty five.
Speaker 4: I think we're kind of the flex point because a
Speaker 4: lot of my peers and friends, people within a few
Speaker 4: years of me. We were able to learn from the greats,
Speaker 4: the Jack Druges, the Tony Pancakes, the Scott and Ies,
Speaker 4: the Bob Fords. We saw what the classic great American
Speaker 4: golf pro looked like. And now we're seeing the interns
Speaker 4: that I'm hiring, who are eighteen to twenty two, and
Speaker 4: my young assistant's fresh out of school. We're seeing the
Speaker 4: golf business through their perspective. But we were trained in
Speaker 4: a much different perspective. So I think what I'm trying
Speaker 4: to do is be the connection from those greats, if
Speaker 4: we can call them that, those greats, and translate and
Speaker 4: modernize the golf business to make it attractive for someone
Speaker 4: who's twenty two, make it attractive for me, because I
Speaker 4: don't want again at thirty five, I hopefully have a
Speaker 4: long career ahead of me. But sustainability is important because
Speaker 4: I would say the work life balance that I have now,
Speaker 4: I can't do this for twenty five more years. So
Speaker 4: but I've taken the viewpoint of I'm going to try
Speaker 4: and make get better. I'm going to try to be
Speaker 4: part of the change, even if it's in my own
Speaker 4: little world, in my facility, and make the younger interns
Speaker 4: and assistants feel like there is hope and change and
Speaker 4: progress happening, because I I'd rather give myself and my family.
Speaker 4: My wife's a golf professional who works here with us.
Speaker 4: I'd rather give us a chance here than say it's
Speaker 4: never going to change and bail if that makes sense,
Speaker 4: totally yeah, And I consider myself one of them, very lucky.
Speaker 4: I work at a great club, very comfortable. I'm one
Speaker 4: of the lucky ones. And we say to ourselves all
Speaker 4: the time, how how could this be possible if you
Speaker 4: weren't in some of the positions we're in.
Speaker 7: Do you and your wife have kids?
Speaker 4: No? And that's yeah. We own the golf shop here together,
Speaker 4: which is a great benefit for us. But my dog's
Speaker 4: in the golf shop. My whole life is here, and
Speaker 4: as we think about the next step in our lives,
Speaker 4: there's certainly that how does that happen? And unfortunately I
Speaker 4: haven't worked for many people that have kids or have
Speaker 4: I need better examples I would say on how to
Speaker 4: handle that because I can't be an absent father. I
Speaker 4: don't think that having kids because that's what you're supposed
Speaker 4: to do is fair to people.
Speaker 9: You hopeful.
Speaker 4: I am hopeful because A I have a partner in
Speaker 4: this in my wife. That makes me feel even more
Speaker 4: invested and more support. I'm also hopeful because of where
Speaker 4: I specifically work, because I do have a wonderful membership
Speaker 4: and in general a lot of empathy. How far can
Speaker 4: I push what this position is? I don't know. But
Speaker 4: the same way that I presented a paper to the
Speaker 4: board a few years ago it said we can't continue
Speaker 4: down this road. We made progress from that. We really
Speaker 4: did my staff salaries, the size of my team has grown.
Speaker 4: We are making progress. But this can't be at the
Speaker 4: club or any club can't think that what they did
Speaker 4: the last two years to make it better is it
Speaker 4: as I'm sure every industry needs to think about it.
Speaker 4: I'm hopeful. I'm not jumping for joy overly optimistic, but
Speaker 4: I'm hopeful, and it's worth it. It's worth fighting for it.
Speaker 7: There might be a day where twenty years from now,
Speaker 7: you are that head pro that's been at your club
Speaker 7: for thirty five years or whatever, and you had an
Speaker 7: impact on making sure that that twenty two year old
Speaker 7: intern that you have now as a path to having
Speaker 7: that same type of Bob Ford Jack druga Tony pancake situation. Right,
Speaker 7: That's possible.
Speaker 4: That's the hope. I mean, there's nothing. I had an
Speaker 4: assistant pro, Alex Hoyos, who became a head pro in
Speaker 4: Essex County Country Club, Funny Nothing, Jersey. Those are the
Speaker 4: proudest days really in a head pro's life is when
Speaker 4: an assistant who works for them becomes a head pro
Speaker 4: on their own. That's a really proud day. And you
Speaker 4: hope to have a roster of those. But you've got
Speaker 4: to be there a long time and you've got to
Speaker 4: be at a great facility to make that happen. So again, hopeful,
Speaker 4: certainly hopeful, But seven years in, I don't know if
Speaker 4: I've got another thirty years At this rate of work
Speaker 4: and life, work life balance because as you mentioned, you say,
Speaker 4: you know that those people are known for making great
Speaker 4: assistant professionals into head professionals. Those people are also known
Speaker 4: for being great husbands and fathers and active in their
Speaker 4: community and coaching their kids' sports leagues. And that's got
Speaker 4: to be just as important us because being completely devoted
Speaker 4: to your craft and devoted to your club, while great
Speaker 4: for the club, might not be the most healthy thing
Speaker 4: for the individual.
Speaker 7: Safe to say, Essex County Club, his staff, and the
Speaker 7: industry in general are lucky to have Jack Davis, not
Speaker 7: to mention his wife, Amanda Davis, who graduated from the
Speaker 7: PGM program at Mississippi State in twenty thirteen, worked for
Speaker 7: Peter Malar and was an assistant at Friar's Head on
Speaker 7: Long Island. Amanda has been at Essex for six years
Speaker 7: and has agreed to be part of episode seven, a
Speaker 7: wrap up, which will include several more voices based on
Speaker 7: everything they've heard throughout this series. But for now, it's
Speaker 7: back to doctor Bryan Soulet. Rick Riley actually said, look,
Speaker 7: professional golfers tend to be takers. Club pros, PGA pros
Speaker 7: are givers. What are your thoughts on that? Kind of
Speaker 7: summary of the two separate sort of paths of the
Speaker 7: professional game of golf.
Speaker 8: Yeah, nothing's black or white, right. You know, you watch
Speaker 8: anything about the top level players, they're trying to get
Speaker 8: back in any way they can. But I think if
Speaker 8: you're going to be again a traditional golf professional working
Speaker 8: at a public course or at a resort or at
Speaker 8: a private club, you have to care about other people.
Speaker 8: Your job is to make people happy every day, and
Speaker 8: so you and your staff better be ready and better
Speaker 8: have everything in place to deliver great programming to make
Speaker 8: sure that when people show up, like when you go
Speaker 8: to Abandon Dune's right, I know that's your happy place.
Speaker 8: It's not just the golf courses, right, it's seeing Shoo
Speaker 8: when you arrive, and it's spending time in the golf
Speaker 8: shops talking with the golf professionals and then spending all
Speaker 8: those hours with the caddies. I mean, that's what the
Speaker 8: profession is all about, is making it so that this
Speaker 8: trip that you've been looking forward to for two years,
Speaker 8: that you've been saving for for ten years, is everything
Speaker 8: that you wanted it to be. And a lot of
Speaker 8: times it comes down to the people. Because the golf
Speaker 8: course is going to be great no matter what. So yeah,
Speaker 8: I think I think golf professionals, the really good ones,
Speaker 8: have a great way with people, a great way of
Speaker 8: making them feel special, whether it's in the golf shop
Speaker 8: or on the lesson tee or going out and playing
Speaker 8: some golf with them. And that's you know, that's what
Speaker 8: we try to nurture, is help people kind of learn
Speaker 8: some interpersonal skills so that when they get into the
Speaker 8: industry they can make somebody's day.
Speaker 7: This work life balance that may have been an issue
Speaker 7: pre COVID certainly became an issue during COVID. And now
Speaker 7: that golf is you know, continues to stay popular, and
Speaker 7: we've got this rise in energy around not only green
Speaker 7: grass facilities, but you know sort of non traditional golf facilities, women, kids.
Speaker 7: You know, everything is going in the right direction. Meanwhile,
Speaker 7: the club pro or the PGA pro, you know, it
Speaker 7: was sort of like run over. I mean they were
Speaker 7: just just or held held underwater. I talk about like
Speaker 7: sort of like paddling out, you know, in a Hawaiian
Speaker 7: surf break, and it's like it just feels like the
Speaker 7: club pros just can't get past the break to breathe again.
Speaker 7: Where are we at in your mind here as you
Speaker 7: sit you know, you know eight essentially April twenty twenty three.
Speaker 8: I think that article was big right last year, the
Speaker 8: club pro crisis. I think that put a spotline on
Speaker 8: the challenges of the industry. I think club owners, boards
Speaker 8: of directors, PGA of America leadership, USGA leadership. I think
Speaker 8: they all saw that and took it to heart because
Speaker 8: there was a pretty good good outcry and social media
Speaker 8: outcry after that. What I've seen in the past five
Speaker 8: years or so, and I think this came obviously pre pandemic.
Speaker 8: It was kind of status quo pandemic. It was every
Speaker 8: man for yourself, try to survive. And then I think
Speaker 8: post pandemic, what we're starting to see is golf facilities
Speaker 8: and golf professionals who realized that they were getting burnout,
Speaker 8: they were getting people dropping out of the industry and
Speaker 8: going into different professions. They had to make some changes.
Speaker 8: So we're starting to see different models. So there's one
Speaker 8: model that Jim Smith at Philly Cricket Club has and
Speaker 8: that is all of his part time employees are for
Speaker 8: ten to twelve hour shifts per week. You get three
Speaker 8: days off per week, but they're still putting in fifty hours, right,
Speaker 8: I'd call that balance, you know, when you're talking about
Speaker 8: the industry. So it's a pretty cool model. And there's
Speaker 8: other clubs that have upped their budget for personnel and
Speaker 8: they've got more assistant golf profession now than they ever
Speaker 8: have before with the goal.
Speaker 9: Of it being a more normal work week.
Speaker 8: Because I think the new generation and the students who
Speaker 8: were teaching everybody here at Penn State and all the
Speaker 8: other universities, they're seeing the industry and they're saying, all right,
Speaker 8: you know, do I want to be there fifty sixty
Speaker 8: seventy hours a week and remember guest week you're going
Speaker 8: to be that's just inevitable. But are there some facilities
Speaker 8: that are going to offer something a little bit more
Speaker 8: more balanced. Yeah, And if those facilities are doing that,
Speaker 8: that's where the students are going to go. And if
Speaker 8: you're not doing that, eventually you're going to be left
Speaker 8: in the dust. So I'm pretty excited about it because
Speaker 8: I think I think there's no way golf facilities can't
Speaker 8: adapt at this point, especially with all those leaders making
Speaker 8: some changes.
Speaker 7: To this point. In my reporting, which started in October
Speaker 7: of last year, I've interviewed fourteen people for this podcast series.
Speaker 7: I've heard from at least fifty more who are or
Speaker 7: were PGA pros. I'd estimate half of that sample set
Speaker 7: have left their post as pros or assistant pros for
Speaker 7: an alternate industry.
Speaker 8: This is the tragedy of when this happens in the
Speaker 8: golf business, right. We see people who go into the
Speaker 8: industry and they have such promise and such charisma and
Speaker 8: such skill, and they get into that whitewater. They can't
Speaker 8: get past the break, as you say, and they get
Speaker 8: out of the industry. And these are the people who
Speaker 8: we were most excited about being leaders, and they just
Speaker 8: get They have a moment where they sit down with
Speaker 8: their spouse and they say, is this worth it? Is
Speaker 8: there another option for us now? And that's where if
Speaker 8: we don't see a change in the industry, I think
Speaker 8: we're going to have more of these casualties. And I
Speaker 8: hope the hell it doesn't happen, you know. I hope
Speaker 8: that that these you know, the young talent is able
Speaker 8: to find the balance that they need to be really
Speaker 8: good at what they do, get all the fulfillment, but
Speaker 8: then be able to go home at night and throw
Speaker 8: the ball with their kid, you know, and not miss
Speaker 8: every dance recital in every game. And I think that
Speaker 8: there's a path now for that, and I'm, like I
Speaker 8: said earlier, I'm optimistic about it.
Speaker 9: I really am.
Speaker 7: So essentially it was it was an awareness issue, and
Speaker 7: by virtue of a Shane Ryan article social media, you know,
Speaker 7: idiots like me saying what I said and how I
Speaker 7: said it, which then causes another wave of kind of
Speaker 7: of education, you know, I mean seriously, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 7: you know, I here here. I've been in the golf
Speaker 7: industry for decades, you know, and I just I just
Speaker 7: wasn't aware of just you know, the how bad it
Speaker 7: had gotten. And that to me was exactly like so
Speaker 7: that to me was an exclamation point on the idea
Speaker 7: that this literally wasn't awarenesses awareness issue. You have selfless,
Speaker 7: humble givers of the game that aren't good at promoting
Speaker 7: themselves or pounding their chest. You know, look at guys
Speaker 7: like Bob Ford or Rick Riley or some of these
Speaker 7: other names that you've talked about. They're not going around, like,
Speaker 7: you know, honking their own horns.
Speaker 9: It's just not happening.
Speaker 7: So so that awareness is you had in your mind
Speaker 7: is being addressed and that's why you feel so positive
Speaker 7: and excite quote excited about it.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 8: And I'll say one other thing, and this may upset
Speaker 8: some folks, but that's okay. Fifty five percent of PGA
Speaker 8: professionals are fifty five years or older. So there's an
Speaker 8: old school mentality that I think was perpetuated forever in
Speaker 8: this industry. And I'm hoping that that that the changing
Speaker 8: of the guard allows for the younger generation of PG
Speaker 8: professionals to say, you know what, the way we've always
Speaker 8: done it isn't right. We need to change it. And
Speaker 8: I'm excited for that. I think that that you're seeing
Speaker 8: some young minds come into the industry that are that
Speaker 8: are fighting for, you know, for some more balance.
Speaker 9: I think that's a really good thing.
Speaker 7: Seth waw, what are your thoughts on him? His involvement,
Speaker 7: his impact and uh and and sort of you know
Speaker 7: how he's how he's addressed, you know, trying to address
Speaker 7: a quality of life issue for his membership.
Speaker 8: I've been through I think at this point it's three
Speaker 8: or four CEOs the PGA of America. Seth has been
Speaker 8: one of the more exciting ones that seems to seems
Speaker 8: to have the better interest of PG professionals at front
Speaker 8: of mind rather than the bottom line of the PGA
Speaker 8: of America. And I've I've really enjoyed his leadership. I
Speaker 8: think the thing that's that's interesting about the setup of
Speaker 8: the PGA, Right, You've got your your executives, but then
Speaker 8: you also have your board of directors who are the
Speaker 8: PGA members, right, And so it's an interesting balance between
Speaker 8: leading the ship of this massive organization PJ of America,
Speaker 8: but then also working with your board of directors, you know,
Speaker 8: and and the individuals who are in charge of that.
Speaker 8: So John Linder, Don Rey, Nathan Charns, those are the
Speaker 8: three who are in charge right now. And that's kind
Speaker 8: of with each president. There's something new that I think
Speaker 8: each president's going to fight for. I think Seth Wills
Speaker 8: done a really good job of balancing his different roles.
Speaker 8: It's been it's been great under his leadership.
Speaker 7: Susie Whyley, I was what a game changer? Game changer?
Speaker 9: Yeah, a force of nature.
Speaker 7: M I've always been a fan, you know, I've crossed
Speaker 7: paths with her from time to time, interviewed her and
Speaker 7: she just jumps off the screen. I mean she is like,
Speaker 7: she is relentlessly motivated to make changes in pathways for females, girls,
Speaker 7: for the game in general. I was like, what can
Speaker 7: I do to support whatever it is that you're doing.
Speaker 7: I mean, what unbelievable, right, And to see like the
Speaker 7: change of perception once she was president of the PJ
Speaker 7: of America of the role that women play in the
Speaker 7: game of golf and the opportunities for women in golf.
Speaker 7: We see it at the university, right, because we get
Speaker 7: women who come through our program and I receive calls
Speaker 7: and emails weekly saying we need a really strong woman
Speaker 7: to join our program for X, Y or Z. Right,
Speaker 7: there's such a demand for women in this industry to
Speaker 7: take roles that that have opportunities to just explode and
Speaker 7: just you know, create such a great career. Susie was
Speaker 7: was such an advocate, always will be an advocate for
Speaker 7: women in the game of golf, for different individuals from
Speaker 7: different backgrounds and minorities. And I think because of her
Speaker 7: presidency and because of her leadership, we're starting to see
Speaker 7: an uptick in international students, students from different backgrounds women.
Speaker 9: Thank God for her.
Speaker 7: Next up, Susie.
Speaker 10: Wayley, you know men are still the employers at most
Speaker 10: clubs back and people typically hire who they look like, right,
Speaker 10: And we need more women promoted, We need more women elevated,
Speaker 10: and we need more clubs to think about women running
Speaker 10: their facilities, not just as general managers, but in head
Speaker 10: golf offs positions and directors of golf.
Speaker 4: That's not a lot.
Speaker 10: We have some, you know, we have some directors and
Speaker 10: instructions at high end clubs. Joanna cos at Marion, Kathy
Speaker 10: Kim's at Baltimore. I mean we were, you know, little
Speaker 10: by little, you're starting to see those opportunities happen. We
Speaker 10: have gms that are females, but it's it's woefully, woefully
Speaker 10: and painfully behind.
Speaker 6: Put another log on the fire. Nobody here is gift
Speaker 6: and tie