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. 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 6: People are put on earth to make everybody's lives better, right, Like?
Speaker 6: How can he not want to be surrounded by those people?
Speaker 4: Right then? And that's what our PGA professional is.
Speaker 6: You know, it's not perfect, We're not perfect times far
Speaker 6: from perfect.
Speaker 4: We're moving the needle, making a lot.
Speaker 6: Of progress and I hope people are noticing it. But
Speaker 6: that's not the point either, right. The point is leaving
Speaker 6: the room better. And I'm going to keep fighting to
Speaker 6: do that every day.
Speaker 7: Put another log on the fire Nobody here is to
Speaker 7: get the time.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the fire Pit with Matt Janella.
Speaker 8: In part one of this series of podcasts on the
Speaker 8: club pro crisis, we got the background on how and
Speaker 8: why I'm doing this. In short, I said something ignorant.
Speaker 8: I think most would call it stupid, and many did.
Speaker 8: It's hard to be stupid without being ignorant, but I'd
Speaker 8: like to think you can be ignorant without being stupid. Anyway,
Speaker 8: For more context, I hope you've listened to Part one
Speaker 8: to summarize my sincere apologies to club pros and PGA professionals.
Speaker 8: I appreciate you, and many of you I consider friends.
Speaker 8: It's your humility and selflessness that are actually part of
Speaker 8: the problem. As one club pro told me, you're not
Speaker 8: good at promoting yourselves. You're too busy helping others, and
Speaker 8: thus you're often taken for granted. On that note, I
Speaker 8: want to thank some of the sponsors of the Firepit collective.
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Speaker 8: All right, For part two of this series, we start
Speaker 8: with Shane Ryan, author of several golf books, which includes
Speaker 8: Slaying the Tiger, Chasing the Legends, and The Cup They
Speaker 8: Couldn't Lose. Ryan has written for Grantlin, Paste Magazine, and
Speaker 8: The New York Times, and in May of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 8: wrote a story for Golf Dies entitled The Club Pro Crisis.
Speaker 8: Why did you feel compelled or sort of inspired to
Speaker 8: do what you did in telling that the story that
Speaker 8: you've told here?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, like you, Matt, I didn't know a
Speaker 5: lot about this at all. I was not familiar with
Speaker 5: this world. You know, you know your club pro when
Speaker 5: you go practice or play, and you sort of take
Speaker 5: them for granted and you don't realize that, hey, they
Speaker 5: might be working seventy hours a week and they might
Speaker 5: be under incredible stress and you know, not making as
Speaker 5: much money as they want and all that. It actually
Speaker 5: stemmed from a conversation I had. I wrote a book
Speaker 5: about the Ryder Cup, and in the course of it,
Speaker 5: you know, I talked with the number of different people,
Speaker 5: and basically through the crazy paths that sometimes happened, I
Speaker 5: ended up talking with the club pro who said, you know,
Speaker 5: you really need to look at this issue. It's happening everywhere.
Speaker 5: It's a big deal. It's like a basically an epidemic.
Speaker 5: And so that kind of piqued my interest and I
Speaker 5: sort of, you know, put a pin on it. And
Speaker 5: then when I had time, I threw a tweet out
Speaker 5: there just saying, you know, is this something that's happening.
Speaker 5: Do you feel like you're not in control of your time,
Speaker 5: You're being overworked, you're being underpaid, mistreated, whatever. And the
Speaker 5: response was unbelievable, not just people you know, tweeting back
Speaker 5: at me, but tagging everybody in that they knew. I
Speaker 5: got a ton of emails and yeah, then it was
Speaker 5: just off to the races, going wow, I had no idea.
Speaker 5: This was such a phenomenon, and yeah, the story idea
Speaker 5: was born from that.
Speaker 8: More on Shane Ryan's reporting in a minute for now
Speaker 8: back to Chandler Withington, who we heard from throughout part
Speaker 8: one of this series. Withington is formerly of Seminal Marion
Speaker 8: and Hazeltine, which is where he resigned from his post
Speaker 8: as head professional in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: So the summer of twenty one is when my wife
Speaker 2: and I really started having a conversation about is this us?
Speaker 2: And it was really accelerated in our three year old
Speaker 2: now she's two. You know, sometimes you go a week
Speaker 2: fourteen days without seeing your kids awake, and you know,
Speaker 2: two year olds don't have the memory. You know, my
Speaker 2: two year old looked at me one day when I
Speaker 2: was home. She looks at me and she goes, what
Speaker 2: are you doing in mommy's house? She didn't know who
Speaker 2: I was?
Speaker 4: And that was it. That was that was all I.
Speaker 2: Needed, you know, to do, Like, if my daughter doesn't
Speaker 2: know who I am, then what are we really doing here?
Speaker 9: Here?
Speaker 8: From Shane Ryan's reporting and platform, several of these issues
Speaker 8: have been exposed and according to censu's Art of War,
Speaker 8: if you know the enemy in yourself. You need not
Speaker 8: fear the result of one hundred battles. Here's Cody Sinkler,
Speaker 8: director of golf operations at the Park in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Speaker 10: I think golf pros are in a place right now
Speaker 10: where I don't know if fed up is the word,
Speaker 10: but we're a little sensitive in the golf pro crisis.
Speaker 4: Shane's article highlighted what is very common.
Speaker 10: I mean, what's highlighted in that article is are examples
Speaker 10: of the lives of a lot of golf pros, if
Speaker 10: not the majority of golf pros.
Speaker 8: And here's Connor Evers, who graduated from the PGM program
Speaker 8: at Methodist University in Fayetteville, North Carolina. He did internships
Speaker 8: in Massachusetts, Jackson Hole, Detroit, and his last one was
Speaker 8: at Adare Manor in Ireland. At twenty five years old,
Speaker 8: he's been to thirty countries, which serves him well at
Speaker 8: his current role of expedition planning manager for Haversham and Baker,
Speaker 8: a company that describes themselves as quote the country club
Speaker 8: of international golf travel. Here's Evers on the impact of
Speaker 8: Shane Ryan's.
Speaker 4: Story when that article came out.
Speaker 11: I mean my social media and text blew up. I
Speaker 11: mean that morning when that drop, everyone was talking about it.
Speaker 11: I mean everyone that I'm connected with or in the
Speaker 11: golf industry. That's just kind of how my life is.
Speaker 4: But it was great.
Speaker 11: It definitely got you know, talking points, and I know
Speaker 11: a few of my friends their members came up and
Speaker 11: was I mean, they're there every single day, but I
Speaker 11: guess that was reading that article. A lot of people
Speaker 11: as members were like, oh, I guess I should be
Speaker 11: a little bit more thankful for what you guys do
Speaker 11: for me. And that happened actually quite a few times,
Speaker 11: tough out a couple of my people that I know.
Speaker 11: So yeah, it was pretty interesting. That was very lightning,
Speaker 11: and I definitely think that was kind of the spark
Speaker 11: that kind of let the fire, if you will. With
Speaker 11: the whole conversation a lot.
Speaker 5: More Back to Shane Ryan, one thing I would say
Speaker 5: is that the people I spoke to that are working
Speaker 5: on this are not necessarily you know, these idealists or anything.
Speaker 5: And what the message they gave me, and I think
Speaker 5: it's an important message, is that for clubs, if you
Speaker 5: don't make these changes, you're not going to get the
Speaker 5: people you want. Your product is going to suffer. People
Speaker 5: are not going to want to come play there, They're
Speaker 5: going to go elsewhere, and you're eventually going to go
Speaker 5: out of business.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: This is not some kind of charity thing you need
Speaker 5: to do. This is like a life and death thing
Speaker 5: that all golf clubs need to look at because it
Speaker 5: is crucial to their survival.
Speaker 8: One of the things that needs looking at. One of
Speaker 8: the battles is work life balance or imbalance. Here's robins Manly,
Speaker 8: who became a class A pro twenty years ago. He
Speaker 8: was an assistant pro at Breckenridge Golf Club for both decades.
Speaker 8: After getting married at the age of forty six, he
Speaker 8: left the golf industry and although he still has his
Speaker 8: PGA membership and teaches on occasion, his current focus is
Speaker 8: real estate.
Speaker 3: I don't have the answer, but I think it definitely
Speaker 3: comes from a misunderstanding of what that PGA logo really
Speaker 3: means and what the value that we bring and us
Speaker 3: as we have a hard time tooting our own horn,
Speaker 3: I think as PGA professionals of really going to our
Speaker 3: employer and saying, look this is these are the I
Speaker 3: taught and these are the number of golfers that I
Speaker 3: brought to the game that are now avid golfers that
Speaker 3: are now buying clubs and now joining Ladies League and
Speaker 3: Men's League. And we've got to do a better job
Speaker 3: ourselves of promoting that and letting our employer know our value.
Speaker 3: But it is there's not a perfect answer, for sure,
Speaker 3: because golf is a sign up to sundown business and
Speaker 3: if you're not there, it's rowned upon.
Speaker 4: And so.
Speaker 3: I don't have the answer. And I and I've been
Speaker 3: out of the business for a couple of years, so
Speaker 3: I'm not actively in the grind. But the reason I
Speaker 3: left was I wanted to get married and I knew
Speaker 3: that that was not going to that wasn't going to
Speaker 3: work eighty hours and not being with my new bride
Speaker 3: wasn't and financially wasn't going to work. But I use
Speaker 3: my golf connections to now move into the real estate world,
Speaker 3: which has been awesome. So it was a great, great
Speaker 3: glad to still be a PGA member. I'll be a
Speaker 3: life member here pretty soon. And but yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: have the perfect answer, but it is absolutely The problem
Speaker 3: is the amount of pay for the amount of work.
Speaker 4: Doesn't mesh for.
Speaker 8: A deeper dive in context back to Chandler Wington.
Speaker 2: If you rewind and you got to talk to Seth.
Speaker 2: February twenty twenty. Seth invited me and Kerry Cosby and
Speaker 2: a few others down to Florida. He wanted to have
Speaker 2: kind of like a side council. You know, He's like,
Speaker 2: tell me, tell me what's really going on. You know
Speaker 2: that the board is going to tell me what's going on,
Speaker 2: but what's really going on?
Speaker 4: And how can I help?
Speaker 2: Went around the table at the reef, which I'm sure
Speaker 2: you've been to. You know, Bob Ford, you know, was retiring.
Speaker 2: He said, look, Seth, you're a financial guy. I think
Speaker 2: you know pension program be really impactful. And that's where
Speaker 2: you know, Seth started a deferred compensation program which is
Speaker 2: really impactful. And that's what that conversation started from. Went
Speaker 2: around the table and it got to me and I said, look, Bob,
Speaker 2: I said, pension's impactful, no doubt, right, But I tell
Speaker 2: you right now, like the twenty five year old kid's
Speaker 2: going to look at that laugh because they're getting out
Speaker 2: because of something else. I said, I think the biggest
Speaker 2: threat to our industry is the expectation of our time,
Speaker 2: and we are the Titanic heading towards the Iceberg. And
Speaker 2: if we can't reset expectations with the club managers and
Speaker 2: the club leaders and the boards, we're going to hit
Speaker 2: the Iceberger and it's going to think this. And I
Speaker 2: looked right over Bob. I said, Bob, don't even say it,
Speaker 2: because I know what you're thinking. Like, I mean, here's
Speaker 2: a guy who worked Oakmont and Seminal right said you
Speaker 2: busted your ass. And I'm not trying to call younger
Speaker 2: generation or even me lazy, but things have changed, is
Speaker 2: all I'm telling you. Is like the job that you
Speaker 2: did for so long is not the way it is anymore.
Speaker 2: And Bob goes, I am laughing parts I hear it,
Speaker 2: and I see it as it said. It's going to
Speaker 2: feel like global warming. It's like one of those things
Speaker 2: where it's like we should look at this and we
Speaker 2: should start taking measures now, because you can't just reverse
Speaker 2: the cycle. You know, when you get there right, it
Speaker 2: takes years to reverse it. I said, look at the
Speaker 2: size of Peach and programs are going like this, the
Speaker 2: amount of you know, young kids coming in or going
Speaker 2: like this, The supply is going like this.
Speaker 4: Ever since COVID.
Speaker 2: So if the supply is going like this and the
Speaker 2: game is going like this, where are we in five years?
Speaker 4: Pretty scary?
Speaker 8: Connor evers again on how and why he left.
Speaker 11: I guess the big thing was just the the hours.
Speaker 11: You know, eventually, I guess that I'm twenty five, I
Speaker 11: eventually want to have a family and kids. You know,
Speaker 11: it's not the same everywhere, but it is, you know,
Speaker 11: long hours, and I just wanted, I guess, more structure.
Speaker 11: I guess that's that was kind of the biggest thing
Speaker 11: for me, Just wanting more structure, you know, the classic
Speaker 11: cliche nine to five. I know people don't like that,
Speaker 11: but I do like I like structure like that. So
Speaker 11: I guess the main thing was for me was the hours.
Speaker 11: I mean, I definitely do miss a lot. I mean,
Speaker 11: I don't play as much golf, to be honest with you,
Speaker 11: as as I did. That's the one thing that I
Speaker 11: do miss. I guess I'm kind of seeing it, you know,
Speaker 11: from from two things, from two sides of it now,
Speaker 11: But just the hours, I would say, to answer that question.
Speaker 8: There here's Brad Snow of Raleigh, North Carolina. We heard
Speaker 8: from him in part one. He's twenty nine, he graduated
Speaker 8: from Mencia State and Golf Management. His internships were at
Speaker 8: TPC Potomac, Durrell and Sleepy Hollow. He worked at Philly
Speaker 8: Cricket Club for two summer seasons and a winter at
Speaker 8: John's Island in Florida. He spent time as a head
Speaker 8: fitter at Liberty National, and although he's still a Class
Speaker 8: A professional, he's been out of the greengrass aspect of
Speaker 8: the industry since twenty nineteen. He's now an online club retailer.
Speaker 8: His thoughts on a thirty to forty thousand dollars annual
Speaker 8: salary and a work life imbalance.
Speaker 4: So through the internships.
Speaker 12: The PGA requires that all internships are paid through PGM,
Speaker 12: which is awesome.
Speaker 4: We're very lucky.
Speaker 12: It kind of spans quite a spectrum though, once you
Speaker 12: get into it, because I was lucky enough to have
Speaker 12: a couple internships that had housing kind of built in.
Speaker 12: I lived at the gatehouse right as he first go
Speaker 12: on property at Sleepy Holl. Me and two others or
Speaker 12: another intern in an assistant lived right in the gatehouse there,
Speaker 12: which was incredible.
Speaker 4: I mean I could I woke our. The short game
Speaker 4: area was in my backyard.
Speaker 12: So you know, we hang out there, kind of true
Speaker 12: bagger vance style, turn someone's headlights on, or you know,
Speaker 12: take a lantern out after work, whatever, chips and balls
Speaker 12: or whatever.
Speaker 4: So positions like that. You're lucky so you can kind
Speaker 4: of save a little more.
Speaker 12: But I mean, yeah, once you're out looking at that
Speaker 12: thirty to forty number, is is a nice number. You
Speaker 12: hear a lot of numbers lower than that, But it's
Speaker 12: really not what you think about when you're getting into that.
Speaker 12: It's you might have your kind of site set a
Speaker 12: little further down the road. You know, you got to
Speaker 12: put in the time grind it out if you want
Speaker 12: to make money in green Grass.
Speaker 4: You're not doing it as an assistant.
Speaker 12: So yeah, it's definitely you're looking at that thirty to
Speaker 12: forty if you really want to grind it out and teach.
Speaker 4: I wasn't much of.
Speaker 12: An instructor myself, never really leaned into that side of
Speaker 12: the game too much. But there are opportunities if you
Speaker 12: want to really press it and grind you can make
Speaker 12: a little extra. But it's always tight, that's for sure.
Speaker 8: From a couple of twenty somethings to Butch Harmon, whose
Speaker 8: family has been entrenched in this industry for nearly a
Speaker 8: century and can always be counted on for a frank
Speaker 8: and informed perspective. People are leaving the industry at a
Speaker 8: rapid rate. Schools are closing, you know. Clubs are pinching budgets,
Speaker 8: and when they do, they tend to like pinch from
Speaker 8: the people component. You know, it's not going to be
Speaker 8: on the quality of golf course itself. They look around
Speaker 8: and they go, oh, well, we'll just we'll just only
Speaker 8: keep one pro or one assistant, or just two assistants
Speaker 8: instead of three. I mean, and younger people coming up
Speaker 8: in this industry are saying, I got to work that
Speaker 8: long for that and be required to do all of that,
Speaker 8: why would I?
Speaker 4: I'm out, I don't disagree with it.
Speaker 1: And now you have at the university level you have
Speaker 1: the PGM programs, which is run by the PGA. A
Speaker 1: lot of good programs around the country, have a very
Speaker 1: good one here at UNLV where I live in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: I try and do a lot of work with them,
Speaker 1: but they're taught from a manual. They have a manual,
Speaker 1: a teaching manual, a business manual, this and that, And
Speaker 1: they get upset with me because I always speak either
Speaker 1: at their graduations or I get them out to my
Speaker 1: places that once a year and talk to them and
Speaker 1: I say, Tom, look the first thing you need to
Speaker 1: do when you graduate from this course and I hold
Speaker 1: their manual UF I said, this is what you're tested on.
Speaker 4: This manual right here. Throw that in the garbage because.
Speaker 1: You're never going to use it again because everything in
Speaker 1: here is cookie cut. You're you're going to be a
Speaker 1: club pro. You're going to be if you choose to
Speaker 1: go here. You're going to do a lot more than
Speaker 1: this test you just took from this book that tells
Speaker 1: you how to do stuff, because you're going to have
Speaker 1: to know how to deal with your members. You're going
Speaker 1: to have to know how to deal with your ladies,
Speaker 1: golf Association, your junior clinics, all these stuff. You're going
Speaker 1: to have to know that. And you hit the nail
Speaker 1: on the head when you said that. In this day
Speaker 1: and age, the club pro is asked to do a lot,
Speaker 1: but is not compensated for all that he does, because
Speaker 1: a good club can't function without a good head pro
Speaker 1: and then his staff that he brings on. The bigger
Speaker 1: the club, the bigger the staff, I mean I was
Speaker 1: just at wing Foot a few weeks ago playing and
Speaker 1: a member guests there, and I think Mike Gilmo must
Speaker 1: have six or seven guys on his staff to take
Speaker 1: care of all the stuff that take That's a big club.
Speaker 1: It's thirty six holls, a lot of members. But even
Speaker 1: on a smaller version of that, like you said a
Speaker 1: minute ago, you know they don't want to because they're
Speaker 1: paying Everybody used to be in the old days that
Speaker 1: pay anything. You made all your money from me. First
Speaker 1: of all, you started the year and get your club
Speaker 1: storage money.
Speaker 4: That helped you not.
Speaker 1: Have to go to the bank and buy a lot
Speaker 1: of money to do your merchandising and so on so forth.
Speaker 1: You had your range programs, so that helped you had
Speaker 1: to guarantee income. You don't have any of that anymore.
Speaker 1: You have whatever they're paying you. And the question I
Speaker 1: would ask you and all the people that are watching that,
Speaker 1: is that an incentive to do a good job. Maybe not,
Speaker 1: It's an incentive to exist, But.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 8: Back to Cody Sinkler, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Our PGM enrollment is down significantly. PGM programs are closing
Speaker 4: clemsons I think closed. Florida State's closed. There are less
Speaker 4: people that want to do this. It's because of the
Speaker 4: work life balance we've gone so far this way and
Speaker 4: the pay. I mean there are there are still jobs
Speaker 4: paying twelve thirteen dollars an hour for atink golf profession
Speaker 4: who we want to be in the PGM program, which
Speaker 4: by the way, costs about ten grand to finish, and
Speaker 4: we want them to have a bachelor's degree.
Speaker 10: And there are jobs advertising twelve thirteen fourteen dollars an hour.
Speaker 8: So it's not just a work life balance. It's never
Speaker 8: not about the money, and the numbers across the board
Speaker 8: are indeed dire. Here's Brad Sniper.
Speaker 12: Going into the program, we were told I'm not sure
Speaker 12: if this is still one hundred percent true or even
Speaker 12: if it was at the time, but going into the program,
Speaker 12: we were told that within five years of gaining certification,
Speaker 12: within five years fifty percent of PGA pros out of
Speaker 12: the business.
Speaker 8: And keeping a running tab of issues. It's work life balance, money,
Speaker 8: and then there's the free access to information or instruction.
Speaker 8: We've already heard from Kieran Kenwar of Mombai, India. She's
Speaker 8: been in the US since two thousand and five. She
Speaker 8: has a PhD in kinesiology. She's an LPGA Master instructor
Speaker 8: and she's the chair of the golf department at Stanton
Speaker 8: Universe Stein, Orange County, California. She's been teaching the game
Speaker 8: for thirty three years.
Speaker 9: Yeah, they're underappreciated.
Speaker 13: There's no value, and now in this day and age,
Speaker 13: they don't make what they whatever they deserve because the
Speaker 13: most popular teacher on this planet is YouTube, and the
Speaker 13: attitude is, hey, I've been messed up by so many pros,
Speaker 13: or why should I spend money when it's on YouTube?
Speaker 9: Nobody realized.
Speaker 13: It's like even in medicine, where a doctor is such
Speaker 13: a highly trained person, people a lot.
Speaker 9: I mean, I'm one of them as well.
Speaker 13: I look up some whatever I feel I have and
Speaker 13: look it up on Internet and maybe self medicaid if
Speaker 13: I can. So the value of somebody that's good is
Speaker 13: also being lost because YouTube is the biggest instructor for
Speaker 13: anything you want to know.
Speaker 8: Which brings us to yet another battle back to Robin's
Speaker 8: manly of Breckinridge, then Karen and then Butch. Is it
Speaker 8: quite simply an awareness issue, Robins?
Speaker 3: I think that if I had to put one, that
Speaker 3: was probably one. But one A is still the money.
Speaker 3: Where's the money going to come from? When you run the.
Speaker 4: Budget of the golf course?
Speaker 3: Where's the money going to come from to pay all
Speaker 3: your assistants one hundred grand? And the assistant superintendent's you know,
Speaker 3: at the top guys, the head pros and gms, depending
Speaker 3: on how the course is set up, tend to be okay.
Speaker 3: It's that second level that that I'm passionate about because
Speaker 3: I was in that position so long. That has the
Speaker 3: hardest time. And then so new people aren't coming in
Speaker 3: as much applying for jobs because that's where they have
Speaker 3: to start, and they know they've seen their buddies do it,
Speaker 3: or they've been around it enough to know that, well,
Speaker 3: I'm going to have to work eighty hours for forty
Speaker 3: five thousand dollars a year. And you know in this
Speaker 3: day and age that that's a hard You know, it's
Speaker 3: a single guy that's living with roommates. You can pull
Speaker 3: that off, but how honors.
Speaker 14: Are going to last?
Speaker 13: There are many club pros who are not getting what
Speaker 13: they deserve and they work long hours.
Speaker 9: I mean, there's no denying that, whether they're good or not.
Speaker 13: And they also a lot of clubs have the silly
Speaker 13: thing that you bundle up a good teacher with selling.
Speaker 13: You know, hey, sir, this red shirt looks great. You
Speaker 13: should get six of them, you know that kind of thing.
Speaker 13: I mean, why, why is the one person doing everything
Speaker 13: if he or she is a good instructor. The clubs
Speaker 13: don't realize the value of a good instructor and promote them.
Speaker 13: There are some big corporations that now say you will
Speaker 13: get fifty percent of what you.
Speaker 9: Charge.
Speaker 13: So I would have to go back if I worked
Speaker 13: for a private club to what I charged in two
Speaker 13: thousand and six when I first came to the US.
Speaker 9: You know, how does that make sense?
Speaker 13: And consider for the club that it's a pittance of
Speaker 13: what compared to what they are making.
Speaker 9: How does it help them to charge the poor pro
Speaker 9: so much?
Speaker 13: And how do they benefit versus If you have a
Speaker 13: happy pro, he or she is getting people to dine
Speaker 13: at the club and play other sports at the club,
Speaker 13: hang out, do events, do other stuff.
Speaker 9: You know. So it is it is true that club
Speaker 9: pro's good.
Speaker 13: If they're good, be the life and soul of a
Speaker 13: golf course, and really, you know, bump up the popularity
Speaker 13: of a golf club. But I don't think any management
Speaker 13: companies realize that, so then you have to be an
Speaker 13: independent contractor, and then you have this whole other thing
Speaker 13: called marketing, which becomes really like in many cases like
Speaker 13: a salesman type of job, which not everybody's good at.
Speaker 8: Where I'm at right now and having this conversation with you,
Speaker 8: if you ask me what I what I what my
Speaker 8: feedback is, and what I'm hearing, it's an awareness issue
Speaker 8: on that very thing, which it's the very thing. It's
Speaker 8: club to club, course to course, taking for granted the
Speaker 8: person or people who are out their selflessly making an
Speaker 8: effort to make their lives better. And there's only so
Speaker 8: much time in a day, and there's only so many
Speaker 8: days in a week that one person or a team
Speaker 8: of small people or whatever the number is that can
Speaker 8: execute on a day to.
Speaker 1: Day basis absolutely absolutely, And you know, how do you
Speaker 1: change that? How do you change the whole personality of
Speaker 1: the business now compared to the personality of the business
Speaker 1: I grew up in. I'm not saying they need to
Speaker 1: go back to the way it was thirty fifty sixty
Speaker 1: years ago. Time march is on, but this is where
Speaker 1: we are, This is where we have arrived at this
Speaker 1: position now. And there are so many golf pros in
Speaker 1: the country today. Head pros. They can't break eighty. They
Speaker 1: don't really know how to teach. Their job is to
Speaker 1: sell shirts and hats and stuff and clubs and the
Speaker 1: pro shops so the club can make money on it.
Speaker 1: And they're paid a salary to do that or maybe
Speaker 1: a small percent of it.
Speaker 4: Well, that to me is not a golf pro. That's
Speaker 4: a clerk.
Speaker 1: That's a golf pro is a guy that handles all
Speaker 1: the teaching and clinics and everything the Men's associating Women's Association.
Speaker 4: The clubs have taken all that over.
Speaker 1: Committees run all those things now, But yet the club
Speaker 1: expects their golf pros and their assistant pros to make
Speaker 1: sure everything's perfect. Everything has to be run right. We
Speaker 1: need this is what we need to do. You go
Speaker 1: to apply for a job today and you sit down
Speaker 1: with a committee that's doing the interview and they're telling you,
Speaker 1: this is what we need you to do. This is
Speaker 1: the pro we want, this is what we want from
Speaker 1: our pro time. What are you going to pay me, Well,
Speaker 1: this is what we're paying to go. Really, you want
Speaker 1: all that for this and that sounds cruel, but that's reality.
Speaker 1: And I know I'm going to take a lot of
Speaker 1: flak because I just said that. But I've been around
Speaker 1: this business my whole life. I'm seventy nine years old.
Speaker 1: I grew up in golf. I don't know anything else,
Speaker 1: but God, I don't know how to do anything else.
Speaker 1: I mean, if ever made GOFE legal, I'd have to
Speaker 1: rob at seven to eleven to make a living do that.
Speaker 1: Maybe I could be a used car salesman or something.
Speaker 1: But this, I've been around this business my whole life.
Speaker 1: I've watched it the way it has evolved and the
Speaker 1: way it is kind of how we got to the
Speaker 1: high point and then how everything started to go down.
Speaker 1: And like I say it, please you pros. It works
Speaker 1: so hard at your clubs. I'm not downgrading you. I
Speaker 1: just want a better existence for you.
Speaker 8: Here's Cody Sinkler. Is that what you would say first
Speaker 8: and foremost is is this is an awareness issue.
Speaker 4: It's it's an awareness issue. It's an issue where.
Speaker 10: We've sort of taken this path of working all this
Speaker 10: overtime and you know, eventually knowing it's going to pay off,
Speaker 10: and it's just gone too far, and we've gotten to
Speaker 10: the point where.
Speaker 4: It's the norm. It's expected. It's expected for an assistant.
Speaker 10: Golf professional to make thirty thousand dollars a year and
Speaker 10: work I would say fifty hours is probably a conservative
Speaker 10: average for this person. And they're expected to have a
Speaker 10: college degree. They're expected to be either finish that PGM
Speaker 10: program that you mentioned or working on that. It's just
Speaker 10: coming from. It's hard when you look at there's so
Speaker 10: many different facilities, right You have driving ranges, you have
Speaker 10: public golf courses, you have your top golfs, golf techs,
Speaker 10: and you have your high end private clubs.
Speaker 4: They all have their different challenges.
Speaker 10: You know, coming from a family owned public golf course
Speaker 10: up in the Midwest where golf season's only six months
Speaker 10: out of the year, they have revenue challenges. It's hard
Speaker 10: for them to afford to pay an assistant pro fifty
Speaker 10: thousand dollars a year. They might have to pay an
Speaker 10: assistant pro ten dollars an hour because there just isn't
Speaker 10: revenue the golf club. The golf course is probably not
Speaker 10: making more than five six, seven hundred thousand dollars and
Speaker 10: they have to maintain the whole golf course with that
Speaker 10: in the private world, I definitely think it's an awareness
Speaker 10: issue because there is more money, but I don't know
Speaker 10: that decision makers quite realize what the golf pros are
Speaker 10: doing on a week in, a week out basis or
Speaker 10: a day in a day out basis.
Speaker 4: So yeah, question, Yes, I think Shane's article.
Speaker 10: Was a game changer for us, and I think it's
Speaker 10: really started this conversation.
Speaker 8: Shane Ryan. As you got going in the reporting and
Speaker 8: you started talking to all these different people, some on
Speaker 8: the record, some off the record with you know, and
Speaker 8: for obvious reasons they wanted to they wanted to keep
Speaker 8: their jobs that they did have. What's kind of some
Speaker 8: of the major takeaways for you, you know now, even
Speaker 8: to this day and probably the feedback that you've received,
Speaker 8: what sticks in your mind, and whether it's a stat
Speaker 8: or a fact or a figure or a quote or
Speaker 8: a comment.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great question. I think the pessimistic thing
Speaker 5: that sticks in my mind is that it felt like
Speaker 5: I was learning, on one hand about an industry that
Speaker 5: is fundamentally broken in terms of the working conditions that
Speaker 5: club pros exist under, that there is so much demanded
Speaker 5: of them that there is a system in place where
Speaker 5: this was you know, I won't say it was fine
Speaker 5: with people, but it was standard and it was expected.
Speaker 5: And all of a sudden, a new generation is coming
Speaker 5: up saying we don't want to work like this, and so,
Speaker 5: you know, places are losing their pros. But they're faced
Speaker 5: with a reality where to meet the to meet the
Speaker 5: standards of what people how they want to work now
Speaker 5: saying okay, maybe you know, you get a weekend off
Speaker 5: once in a while, maybe only work fifty hours a
Speaker 5: week instead of seventy or eighty. It would mean hiring
Speaker 5: more people, and that's something that they don't want to
Speaker 5: do for obvious reasons, right because that affects their budget
Speaker 5: and their bottom line. But the reality is the clubs
Speaker 5: who are not doing that are falling behind because either
Speaker 5: they can't fill positions or when they do fill positions,
Speaker 5: they're not filling them with the best people. And so
Speaker 5: you have this unbelievable sort of schism between what is expected,
Speaker 5: whether you're you know, the board at a club or
Speaker 5: or the manager of a club versus what is the
Speaker 5: reality of what club pros want to do with their jobs,
Speaker 5: and so were the gap between it is so wide,
Speaker 5: and it got worse during the pandemic, and it's hard
Speaker 5: to see sometimes how it gets better.
Speaker 8: For a deeper dive in context. Back to Chandler Withington.
Speaker 2: So here, if you had to ask me, like, Okay,
Speaker 2: what is at the heart of it, what is the
Speaker 2: issue and what can be.
Speaker 4: Done about it?
Speaker 2: You know, I've spent probably three years having this conversation.
Speaker 2: I spent an afternoon on PGM row at the show
Speaker 2: on twenty asking the PGM leaders before COVID, like what's
Speaker 2: going on with PGMs? Like what are the kids doing?
Speaker 2: And how many understanding? If they're getting out?
Speaker 4: Why?
Speaker 2: And I think maybe you got quoted in the story.
Speaker 2: I think Bobby Bruns from Methodists, said Chandler of The
Speaker 2: reality is Google told these kids that this job sucks.
Speaker 2: You know, the Internet came along and told them, like,
Speaker 2: you know, you can go work for Google, Amazon, work
Speaker 2: nine to five, have weekends off, have benefits, out of school,
Speaker 2: get paid double, probably play more golf.
Speaker 4: Not have to move every six months.
Speaker 2: And you know, until then, you know, people like myself,
Speaker 2: I mean, I was like, well, this is the job,
Speaker 2: this isn't so bad. I can do this, Like heck,
Speaker 2: this is great. But like the Internet told them that
Speaker 2: this job sucks. So younger kids will look at this
Speaker 2: and be like, this job sucks, so they've gone somewhere else.
Speaker 2: In the PGM enrollment again is is beens steadily decreasing.
Speaker 2: And I think the issue is the time expectation. So
Speaker 2: who has the time expectation? Where is that coming from?
Speaker 2: Every generation wants to hand down what their experience was,
Speaker 2: So you know, if I had to work all these hours,
Speaker 2: you're going to have to work all these hours, right,
Speaker 2: And we've got to break that cycle. There's there's fixed mindset.
Speaker 2: Fixed mindset is the way things have been or the
Speaker 2: way things will always be, in the way that they
Speaker 2: should be. So let's just maintain growth. Mindset is, well,
Speaker 2: that's the way it was, but that's not the way
Speaker 2: it'll always be. Let's find a smarter way to do things.
Speaker 8: Here's Rick Riley, another voice from the first episode. Riley
Speaker 8: is the director of golf at Wiltshire Country Club in
Speaker 8: Los Angeles, where he has worked for over thirty years.
Speaker 8: He's the son of Pat Riley, a former marine, and
Speaker 8: in addition to being the pro at Annandale Golf Club
Speaker 8: in Pasadena for thirty years, Pat was the legendary past
Speaker 8: president of the PGA of America who competed in a
Speaker 8: US Open PGA Championship and in nineteen ninety prior to
Speaker 8: the PGA Championship at Shoal Creek, Riley used the timing
Speaker 8: and leverage to make sure that all pg of America
Speaker 8: championship venues had open membership policies. Pat Riley was inducted
Speaker 8: into the PGA Hall of Fame in two thousand and five.
Speaker 8: What's your advice to sort of young aspiring club pros?
Speaker 8: What do you what do you tell him to look
Speaker 8: out for? What do you tell him to do? What
Speaker 8: do you tell them about the about the future of
Speaker 8: the of this industry?
Speaker 14: Well, I mean the golf industry. There's there's more people
Speaker 14: playing golf than ever right now. You know the issue
Speaker 14: right now I see with with in my situation, and
Speaker 14: this is kind of across the board at all. You know,
Speaker 14: when when COVID hit, you know, they're giving away free
Speaker 14: money and I couldn't I couldn't hire guys, couldn't find
Speaker 14: guys to hire. I mean, we're now, I'm don't wage
Speaker 14: in California four years ago, it was twelve dollars it's
Speaker 14: it's going to be eighteen or nineteen dollars. So I'm
Speaker 14: looking at now I'm competing finding my my staff, competing
Speaker 14: against Walmart. He's going to be paying twenty two, twenty
Speaker 14: four bucks an hour. You know, the all the fast
Speaker 14: food in California, it's going to be twenty two dollars
Speaker 14: next year to work at a fast food restaurant. So
Speaker 14: that just that just raises a bar for everyone. So,
Speaker 14: you know, golf clubs, private clubs, public courses, daily fees,
Speaker 14: they all have to be aware of that if they're
Speaker 14: if they're looking for quality people, they're gonna have to
Speaker 14: start paying a quality wage. And the guys are working
Speaker 14: for me, they all like to play golf, they like
Speaker 14: to teach, they like they like working in the business.
Speaker 14: But you know, it's tough. I mean, there's there's some
Speaker 14: there's there are some tough days the last couple of
Speaker 14: years when you're short of staff and you're working sixty
Speaker 14: hour weeks and everybody's on the golf course, everyone wants
Speaker 14: to play and you're just i mean, you're just worn out.
Speaker 14: At the end of the day, you got to kind
Speaker 14: of say, okay, let me let me look at it.
Speaker 14: I look at I'm hanging out here, this one hundred
Speaker 14: acre property here in the middle of l A and
Speaker 14: there's cars. That's like in a little ow east. So
Speaker 14: you got to you got to look at all the
Speaker 14: all the benefits of being in the business. It's not
Speaker 14: necessarily going to make You're not going to make You're
Speaker 14: not going to be a millionaire, but you're gonna you're
Speaker 14: gonna have a good comfortable life. Put in the hours.
Speaker 14: You're you're playing a game that's fun to play. People
Speaker 14: are you know, people are rushing to get out of
Speaker 14: work to go around, run around and play teen holes
Speaker 14: and we're there all day long and it's it's uh,
Speaker 14: it's a great place to be. But you know, once again,
Speaker 14: you've got to put in the hours. You got to
Speaker 14: have a love for it. I mean, my dad always said,
Speaker 14: there's to be a good PGA professional you get five points,
Speaker 14: you got to be a player. You got to be
Speaker 14: a teacher, you got to be an administrator, you got
Speaker 14: to be a rules expert. Probably most important, you have
Speaker 14: to be a people person. You cannot survive on my
Speaker 14: side of the business if you don't interact with people well
Speaker 14: and take care of people.
Speaker 8: So to recap the issues or battles being fought here,
Speaker 8: it's work life balance, it's money, it's the Internet, it's awareness.
Speaker 8: And if you don't love the game or have the
Speaker 8: right skills to help others learn and love the game,
Speaker 8: it's not for you. And then along came a global
Speaker 8: pandemic which exacerbated all of the above. I asked Shane
Speaker 8: Ryan to compare and contrast the idea that throughout COVID
Speaker 8: club pros and PGA professionals can be compared to say, nurses. Now,
Speaker 8: I get it, it's not the same. I'm not going
Speaker 8: to make that mistake again. But in the sense that
Speaker 8: both professions are at the core made up of selfless
Speaker 8: and underappreciated individuals who, throughout the worst of COVID provided
Speaker 8: a thankless task on the front lines of trying to
Speaker 8: help the greater good, it seemed worth comparing and contrasting.
Speaker 5: I think it is fair to say, you know, the
Speaker 5: nurse thing, though, presents an interesting contrast because it doesn't
Speaker 5: take a huge leap for you or I to imagine
Speaker 5: what being a nurse at a hospital packed with COVID patients,
Speaker 5: with all the stress and the hour and you know,
Speaker 5: how damaging that would be. Right, that's simple to reach
Speaker 5: that conclusion. I think what makes it harder for the
Speaker 5: general public with club pros is that the initial instinct
Speaker 5: is a little different. It's to say, Oh, these guys
Speaker 5: get to work at a golf course, right, how great
Speaker 5: is that? And so it's harder for us to imagine
Speaker 5: that they are existing in conditions of similar stress where
Speaker 5: they're in a service job essentially. Right, So they're dealing
Speaker 5: with all these members and in the pandemic. Now there's
Speaker 5: more members than ever or more participants than ever, They
Speaker 5: have to work longer hours than ever, and it's not
Speaker 5: as easy to understand the stress that they're under. But
Speaker 5: we said, it got worse and it exposed a problem
Speaker 5: that's been existing for a long time, but it magnified
Speaker 5: it and exposed it. And I think, you know, things
Speaker 5: like I wrote, and I'm certainly not the only one.
Speaker 5: People are being far more outspoken on this now. And so, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's come to the forefront of attention. And yeah, like
Speaker 5: I said before, it gets to the question of now,
Speaker 5: what do you do now? How do you fix it?
Speaker 5: If you can fix it?
Speaker 8: In the next episode of this series on the Club
Speaker 8: pro crisis, we talk about possible solutions.
Speaker 2: That's That's what I kind of see, is like there's
Speaker 2: this generational gap. And I'm told Seth and Peprah twenty,
Speaker 2: I said, you've got to get the leaders of CMAA,
Speaker 2: the Club Managers Association, the same room with PGA, and
Speaker 2: we need to understand each other better. You know, how
Speaker 2: are things changing, who are we where now, what are
Speaker 2: we going and what is crucial art to our success
Speaker 2: and what will ultimately cripple us if we don't address it.
Speaker 8: And later in the series, we hear from Brian Soulet
Speaker 8: of Penn State's PGM program, Seth Waw, the pg of
Speaker 8: America CEO, and Susie Whaley, the pg of America's first
Speaker 8: female president.
Speaker 15: Most of us really want to give back to our communities.
Speaker 9: That's why we do what we do.
Speaker 15: And we felt really strongly that we were doing that
Speaker 15: in an unbelievable way. And I think we went home
Speaker 15: feeling really good about ourselves, Like we.
Speaker 4: Got to see people every day, which I.
Speaker 15: Think was a gift for us and for our mental health.
Speaker 15: But we also got to see people getting outside and
Speaker 15: enjoying it. And maybe if we gave a little, a
Speaker 15: little bit of joy in their day during this incredibly
Speaker 15: scary time. We were doing the right thing. But what
Speaker 15: that turned into was a perception that we were able
Speaker 15: to keep those hours going, that we could work very
Speaker 15: long hours, seven days a week, with smaller teams and
Speaker 15: with the same amount of club participants, if not more
Speaker 15: than we had had prior. And so it turned into
Speaker 15: this really enormous balance that was getting out of balance crisis.
Speaker 15: I would say no, but it's taken us still. And
Speaker 15: I say that loosely, us being PGA professionals and leadership,
Speaker 15: to educate boards, to educate facilities, to educate municipalities, to
Speaker 15: educate consumers as to what's going on. And while revenues
Speaker 15: are increasing at facilities because of Golf's participation dramatically, many
Speaker 15: facilities are using those revenue increases for capital expensuor scriptures.
Speaker 15: And I happen to believe that your human capital is
Speaker 15: your best capital.
Speaker 7: Put another logoal the fire. Nobody here is given time
Speaker 4: Cat