The Rich Conwell Show - October 18, 2025

Randy Cavanaugh, Director of Treasure Coast Golf Association, joins Rich to talk about his movement to re-imagine the PGA.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Rich Komal Golf Show this week. I
am very excited and and to host or to have
joined me Randy Cavanaugh. Randy is has a great, a
great golf career and is really involved in something right
now that is near and dear to me and to

(00:24):
numerous people in this country. But we're going to start
at the beginning, and first off, I'm going to say, Randy,
thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hey, happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
Rich Awesome, awesome. So, Randy, like I do with everybody,
tell me how you got your start in golf.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Well, I was actually born into it. My dad was
a longtime pro and PGA member. I was born in
fifty five, but he moved to Florida from Texas actually
in fifty two, so Florida Florida boy, and grew up,
you know, picking up the range for dad and hoping

(01:02):
to get to go with him on Mondays. He had
a summer job in New York and the Mets section.
At those times, a lot of pros were doing six
months here and six months north, So as a ten
year old on Mondays, I could go watch him play
the Monday events in the Mets section, et cetera, et cetera,
so picked up the game from him. I had some

(01:25):
great instruction. He had a lot of good buddies. Dalve Finsterwald.
George Fazio at Jupiter Hills was my coach when I
was in high school and played on the high school team,
which then if you couldn't average thirty six even par
for nine holes, our math coach. Our coach was a

(01:45):
math teacher, so you played not because he had a preference,
but it was all numeric, so survival was learning how
to shoot a score good enough to represent the team.
And I don't want to bore you with but two
and a half years our team was undefeated in dual matches.

(02:06):
So I was really involved, you know. In high school,
played on scholarship at Western Kentucky Palm Beach Junior College.
But I was ready to turn pro at twenty one,
which I did right after the US AM at bel
Air in nineteen seventy six, and had a great sponsor

(02:29):
who had George Burns the third as also one of
his one of his want to be tour players. Of course,
George got out on the tour pretty quickly and one
about six or eight times. But I spent about five
years spending his money playing many tours like everybody jse

(02:51):
Goosey's played in Asia, played in South America. Nineteen eighty
one got a call from a friend of my dad's,
Tom Miaporti, who was then the pro at Wingfoot, and
he said, do you want to be my teaching assistant?
And I thought about it for about two seconds after
so was there eighty one two, got a call from

(03:13):
some members at a men's club in Upper Connecticut and
took my first head pro job at Connecticut Golf Club
in eighty three. Long story. Left thereafter one year. I
went to Rockaway Hunting Club on the sashore a Long
Island for fifteen years and as luck or small world

(03:34):
my dad had Actually that was his first job on
Long Island and they had a few interesting assistants, including
Dave Mahr. Yes after my dad, so a lot of
talking on my m and I don't want to take
up your no.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
This is good. So I know you worked at Seminal too,
So did you go south when you were at Wingfoot?

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I did? That was my two assistant jobs were Wingfoot
in the summer and Seminole in the winter.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah, boy, that's a hard gig. Huh you know so
so so here's my thing, like there are only there
are only I think. So who was the professional with
Seminal then Jerry Pittman. Yeah, so so Harmon was gone

(04:28):
by that, right, claught harm was gone by.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
That he was you know, I took lessons from him
when I was before, when I was an amateur, I'd
go up to Wingfoot and took a few lessons from it.
My dad suggested that what a what a great story
is is as a club pro and Master's champion. But
I got to know his boys, Billy, I knew his

(04:53):
youngest Billy the best. But Craig was at Oakhill for
a long time. Got to know Craig pretty well. But yeah,
that interesting. In eighty spring of eighty three, I got
the call, excuse me, spring of eighty four, I got
a call from two members at Jupiter Hills and they

(05:14):
knew me through George Fazio, who was a great player
and then designed some really nice golf courses, that being
probably his best known, and Butler National maybe is right
up there with it. But I said, come over, we'd
like to talk to you about taking a job in Connecticut.
And so I go to their condo there at Jupiter

(05:36):
Hills and we're talking for about an hour, and they said, well,
we'd like you to come up and be our pro,
and the deal will be that we'll go up tomorrow
and you'll interview with the board. And one of them
looked at me and said, you don't seem too excited
about that. I said, well, actually, right now, I work

(05:57):
at seminole in the winter and my foot in the summer.
I'm pretty happy.

Speaker 1 (06:01):
I'm pretty happy. Yeah, I'm pretty happy.

Speaker 2 (06:06):
But I did take the job as entry a great
place eighty men, just some men's club up in Fairfield County,
and that was a cool way to start my start
my career as a club pro.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
So okay, so all right, So I gotta ask you,
what was Claude Harmon? Like the old man claud Harmon.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
So the most time I spent with him in a
row was playing eighteen holes at Pine Tree after he
had retired from both his jobs. So when he was
teaching me, I was scared to death and I was
doing everything he told me to do, but I didn't
really get a sense of him. It was more than

(06:53):
this iconic figure in my head of this club pro
that had won the Masters. I mean that would kind
of take your breath away, right, and it did, you know.
So I really don't remember much of what he had
me do. I just remember saying yes, sir a lot.
And yet when we played, we had a lot of

(07:14):
fun playing at Pine Tree. It was probably ten fifteen
years later. I was probably in my early thirties, and
I knew his relationship with mister Hogan, So I got
to meet him through Jay abear Ben Hogan. And that's
a great story.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
But yeah, yeah, I know I need that story. That's
the story. Yeah, I talked to him. I talked to
him on the phone once, but I didn't meet him.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah. Well, so a lot of my joking around with
mister Harmon was so he's playing with a set of
had just come out with the radial iron Ben Hogan Iron,
and the guy riding with us playing with us, Rick Brisky,
was at seminole with me and Jerry Pittman actually assigned

(08:00):
Rick to be kind of man on man coverage from
mister Hogan's own property. Make sure you take care of
everything he needs. So Rick had gotten so close to
him that he would run out by a few packs
of Parliament cigarettes for him when he was running low
on his cigarettes. He also would strap his knee braces
on him in the locker room before he went out

(08:22):
to play. But I joked with with mister Harmon. It
was Rick that said to him. He pulled one of
those irons out of his bag and he said, mister Harmon,
these are new, aren't they? And he said yeah, because
looks like a player improvement club. To me. Harman would
not do not please.

Speaker 1 (08:43):
Yeah, somebody's gonna die.

Speaker 2 (08:46):
Yeah, what a great line? Are you calling me the
average offer? But he was the kind of guy you
want to go to dinner with. I went with my
dad to Minucci Steakhouse on some Monday in New York
City and about ten or twelve pros would be there,
and mister hermanby at the end of the table, as

(09:06):
they called it, holding court and telling story after story.
Everybody's cracking up. And he did the same thing at
Wingfoot in the grill room. There was really pro pro
he's table and some of the members would sit there,
but for the most part it was his little group
and he he held court.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
So did you ever see a strogan had golf balls?

Speaker 2 (09:34):
Okay? So he walks into the shop, the first time
that I had seen him since I met him, and
I was staying at Champions with Jay. We drove up
to his new course, the only course he ever designed
in grape Vine, Texas, up near Dallas, and he came

(09:56):
out and followed us. He was supposed to were, so
we had I'm gonna I'm gonna start the story there
because you'll get a kick out of this. So Jay
says to me at dinner one night, we're going to
take a road trip tomorrow, Randy, and we're driving up
to see Ben and we're going to have lunch at noon,
so we have to leave about six point thirty and
then we're going to play eighteen holes. And I looked

(10:18):
at it and said Ben, and he said, yeah, Ben
Hogan and almost fell out of the chair. So we
get up the next day, we're driving up there, and
I said, it's mister Aber. I've heard these stories about
mister Hogan and I hear he's not a very friendly guy,
that he doesn't talk much in. Jay nods his head
and he said, well, if you ask him a stupid question,

(10:41):
he may never talk to you again. He asked him
a good question, it's hard to get him to shut
up sometimes. So what's my first question going to be?
We walk in, meet him in the parking lot, walk in.
As soon as we sit down, Jay goes Ben, where's
the little boys room? And he leaves me sitting at
the table. It's just the two of us. I'm twenty

(11:03):
one years old, nineteen seventy six. I had been George
Fazio's student, and I knew how passionate he was about
his golf course. And I'm looking out from the clubhouse
kind of an elevated position over this course that Ogan
had done, and I'd say it took about a minute
before I said anything or he said anything, And I said,

(11:26):
mister Hogan, did you have to move a lot of
dirt here to build this course? I didn't have to
say another word. He went into it for fifteen minutes
before Aybert came back, and then he apologized, My back's bad. Guys,
I can't play with you, but I'm going to follow
you for a few holes. Hit a couple of good
hot snap hooks in the first couple of pea shots.

(11:50):
Oh that looks like me. Oh no, sir, I'm sure
your hooks were better, better than that many showed up again.
I would say left after the third or fourth hole.
Showed up again the last few holes, and I had
a bunker shot on a part of three and he
pulled up right onto the fringe of the green, directly
on the other side of the pen from me, and

(12:13):
I'm looking down at the sly sands kind of wet,
and I can see the headlines.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Kavanaugh Skulls, Hogan, Hogan, Dad, Kevinaugh did it.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
So So anyway, that was kind of my first bout
with him. So now it's a few years later, three
or four years later, and he comes into the pro
shop at someone I knew he was in town, obviously,
we all knew. And he came in and I was
unpacking pol of Vision, the first instant movie camera. Jerry
Pittman had ordered one for us to use teaching, and

(12:49):
he came to the counter. We still had a sack
of golf balls, you know, for the range. He came
to get his bag arrange balls, and he said, what's
that you've got there, And I reminded him that we
had met one with mister Aberry. He didn't go too
much into that, but he was friendly and congenial. Without
saying much, and I handed him and he goes, what's that?

(13:10):
And I said, well, that's a pull of vision, mister Hogan.
It's the first instant movie camera. He goes interesting and
he's halfway out of the shop and he stops and
he goes, do you want to film me with that?
Oh my god, yes, sir, so out I went with
the tripod and fumbling around putting the first cartridge in,
and he said, now I want you to film me,

(13:33):
but I don't want you to start filming me until
I'm warmed up and I haven't been playing, so don't
start that camera until I give you a go ahead. Yes,
sir so. I stood there and watched him looking at
my watch, ten minutes, twenty minutes, hit balls for about
thirty five minutes, never gave me the ghost sign and

(13:54):
that was it, and started walking back to the pro shop.
So I walked along with him. We didn't say not,
and I thought, damn, I missed that opportunity. But I
couldn't film him when he told me not to. Next
day he comes into the shop, same time, about eleven o'clock,
comes in to get balls. He's halfway out, stops and

(14:15):
he goes, do you want to film me today? Yes, sir,
so out I go. He's same as the day before. Don't.
Ten minutes into it, he said, okay, you can turn
that contraption on. So I filmed him for about twenty
five thirty minutes, and then as we're walking in, he said,
do you have any questions? And I said, about a

(14:38):
thousand of them, mister Hogan, but I'd like to start
with this one. I said, I just watched you hit
balls and I saw a cut, a draw and a
straight shot and it was random. And I've heard you
cut every shot. And he takes a hit off his cigarette,
smokes going into the steely and he goes, I do

(15:01):
on the golf course when I'm practicing. I don't like
to get in a rut.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
Oh my god, Oh my god. So as like talking
to God.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
That's what I felt like exactly. And the thing that
kills me is, you know, I wish I had taken
those and the reason why polar Vision ever made it.
That film disintegrates in about a year and a half.
I'd say I watched it a few times, I never
took it and got it transferred to sixteen millimeter or

(15:34):
eight or whatever it's supposed to be. So so those
tapes are gone. They never worked in year two. They
weren't worth transposing. They're transferring. So but that was pretty
cool stuff, Oh kidding.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
All right. So so now like you just read out
of me because I'd go like for five days on
that one. But we're gonna go to commercial break. When
we come back, we're going to talk about after you leave,
like your quote unquote club pro job and kind of
like how you got to where we are now. And
we're going to talk about your PGA of America membership

(16:10):
and how important it is and the fact that you're
you're kind of in a situation now that's a little
bit different than what you envisioned when you were twenty
five thirty years old. So this is the Rich Combo
Golf Show. Welcome back to the Rich Kombo Golf Show.
We are joined by Randy Kavanaugh this week. Randy is

(16:30):
a longtime PG member. His father was a longtime PG member.
So Randy, I know, you know, you kind of went
over your head professional positions and you know, fifteen years
you know, and and different things like that. But but
now you know, in the full disclosure, you know, you're
not a PGA member. You resigned your you resigned your membership,

(16:56):
and I want to ask you before where I get it, Well,
I shall just ask you for that out. Why would
you do that? Why would you do that?

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Well? When I left really the club business in three
so I joined the PGA in eighty two three, I
left where Hudson National in New York, where I was
a GM slash director of golf, and I felt this
huge weight come off my shoulders. Hudson wasn't my best

(17:28):
experience in the golf industry, although it's an unbelievable club
for some great members. But we had a transition of
really getting rid of a management company that had founded
the club, and I was involved from the member's side
trying to make what was to me a bad situation

(17:50):
better for the members. They were being robbed, So long story.
They started at a sixty thousand dollars equity share. When
I left, it was three one hundred and forty two
thousand to join, and again that's three before the appagees
had a million dollars came about, So it was big
money and it was a lot of hot shot Wall

(18:12):
Street guys up there. Some are great guys, some are
you know, terrible. You wouldn't want to go to dinner
with them, let's put it that way. So when I
walked out of there, I was happy the members got
the club. I ended up on the wrong side of
the couple of the elected members that got on the
board that were original investors. But when I left, like,

(18:36):
what do I want to do now? And it was
not the back in the golf business. I did interview
for a couple of jobs, not a good fit, didn't
really want them to begin with. It was just it
had been my life until that point in time, so
I was still attached to it, I guess somewhat emotionally,

(18:58):
but internally I was looking what else can I do?
And I became really a consultant with a we call
it a boutique investment banking firm in Atlanta about two
years after I left Hudson. I'm living in Atlanta and
I'm working in there, assigning me to projects where entrepreneurs

(19:23):
are looking to raise money for new companies. And our
investors were angel level investors, not vcs, So it was
a lot of entertaining both from client side to get
them to retain us to help them put together their
pitch for their fundraising or to do their fundraising for them,

(19:45):
to connect them to investors, et cetera. And from that
I got some jobs as a consultant business development for
IST high definition golf simulators. Reopened in Atlanta showroom for them,
so I'm still involved with the PGA. There. I joined
the Georgia section, played in their Senior Club Pro Championship qualifier,

(20:11):
got to know a few of the guys, and yet
it wasn't home. It wasn't the Mets section, it wasn't
the people that I'd grown up with, so I never
really felt that bonded with them. But I got a
call one day from a fella and knew from our
showroom and said, we've got a project that we think
you're a perfect fit for. And I said, what's that.

(20:33):
He goes my two friends who started something called League
Golf Junior League Golf, and they've been trying to get
the PGA to buy it, and now this is the
third year that they've run it and they're expanding and
PGA still isn't going to buy it from them, and
they don't want this. This is not a lifestyle thing
for them. They did a lot with Little League when

(20:57):
it formed. They're older, they have all the fulfillment, they do,
all the T shirts, hats, blah blah blah, but they're
not golf pros, nor do they want to run junior
league golf nationally. So they had run some trial seasons
like sixteen teams within a confined geographic area. Anyway, he said,

(21:19):
we'd like you to raise money and find investors to
buy the league off from us, because the PGA isn't
pulling the trigger. And I thought that strange. So I
called some guys that I knew and that we're still
active with the PGA and with HQ to find out
what was going on. They said, that's not unusual. Sometimes

(21:39):
it takes these guys three, four or five years to well.
At the time, had my investors bought it that day,
it would have been about twenty percent of what PGA
bought it for a couple of years later. But it's
when I first realized none of the licensing guys directors

(22:00):
are on any kind of performance compensation at PGA. They're
all pure salary, and I think that's part of fib
A one C six compliance that you can't have performance
agreements with your staff. I haven't verified that, but that's
what I've heard, So that to me would be one

(22:22):
reason that PGA would move so slowly. These guys weren't
weren't living and dying by what they did as licensing
agents for the PGA, And so I don't know how
many other projects they passed on or they lost because
they didn't have incentives or didn't move quickly, but it

(22:44):
changed my opinion of the PGA. I had been on
the nominating committee in the MET section and chaired it
for about I don't know, eight years. Probably remember how
many good pros, good PG game members, good players, teachers,
good jobs wouldn't serve the section on the board. And

(23:07):
that was they had a new wife, they had a
new job, they were trying to play tournaments. They had
no time to get involved with section business. But at
the same time, Charlie Robson, the executive director of the
Met PGA, was kind of like an uncle to me.
I met him when I was a junior in high school.

(23:28):
So now twenty years later, I'm sitting in a boardroom
with him and I'm supposed to be bringing in the
best members and he would tell me, you know, here's
ten guys. You should be able to get a slate
of three from these ten. And I call him back, Charlie,
I can only get one guy to serve, and he goes, yeah,
it's a tough job, isn't it. So I spent most

(23:50):
of my time making sure the board kept compensating Charlie
because there are a lot of companies that could have
stolen him. And he really made the METS what it is.
Best tournament persons, the best sponsors, the best clubs for
our events. I mean, it's really and I assume it's
continued that way since he retired. But anyway, I knew

(24:15):
Charlie's issue and what he opened my eyes to one
time was Bobby Hinz and I had worked together at
Wingfoot and it's a few years after we both left
to take head jobs and we're going to the National
Club prom Palm Springs, and Charlie says, guys, I'm going
to tell you kind of an inside deal that's going on.
National's going to give up at the time. PGA Club

(24:36):
Pros got forty spots in the PGA Championship, right, National's
going to trade twenty of those to the PGA Tour
might trade them for what well, they're going to contribute
to the educational programs of all the sections, and I said, well, okay,
so that's a good cause. But I just thought the

(24:59):
chance to play in a PGA Championship for a club pro,
to me, was one of the mixed benefits the PGA offered.
And the ramification of a junior program run by a
pro who was playing in the PGA Championship and their kids,
the parents involved, the members at your club, it's a

(25:21):
real feather in your hat, and to me, lends a
lot of credibility to the club pro in general, even
if you're not one of those forty. So you couldn't
put a price on what I felt the value was
of that. But they did, and they sold first fifteen
of them and now they're down to twenty of them.

(25:43):
But we had a player's meeting. We had about three hundred,
you know, and used them three courses. I think there
was three or four hundred contestants, and Bobby and I
called a meeting. We had a couple hundred guys show
up and found out these other sections, the players that
were there representing this didn't feel nearly as strongly as
we did about the importance and they said, well, you know,

(26:06):
thirty eight club pros missed the cut every year, and
so it is detrimental to the marketing value of the PGA.
And I said to whom, because the twenty guys that
now are going to get to play get nothing out
of it because there aren't those spots anymore. So how

(26:28):
do you measure one against the other? Well, the marketers won,
I would say, the PGA marketers won, and it quote
improves their inflow of funds from the tour to pay
for education in certain sections. But it cut out twenty
good players from the PGA being in the PGA Championship.

(26:50):
That's where I had my first real I would say
concern about the direction of the PGA. I always felt
because I grew up. When I joined in eighty two,
I think we had eight thousand members. They were the
best players and teachers in a geographic area that fell
into a section. But you know, I didn't know, or

(27:14):
wasn't well aware of how many guys weren't in the
met PGA, you know, that were grinding it out, picking
up the range, not out there at night practicing. You know,
their owners had a totally different business model. And they
had different comp packages, and the METS sections kind of
blessed with all the wealthy businessmen and businesses, so I

(27:37):
saw reasons for both. But my heart has always been
that DGA were the best players and teachers. Well, for
twenty years we've watched Golf Digest become a middleman determined
who the best teachers are, not their students, but the
magazine staff. You know, when Ping could no longer have

(27:59):
prow only equipment, they became the subject of the Scherman
anti trust lawsuit that broke up pro only pricing and
let discount stores compete equally with a pro who had
three hundred customers. They could put a Dick's Sporting Goods
or whatever in a mall and have a million opportunities

(28:22):
to sell a set of clubs. So definitely, the industry
and the way pros got comped and so forth changed dramatically.
But the PGA never allowed there to be a playing
division or a teaching and coaching division. The LPGA has one.
So the amount of education PGA gave its members to

(28:44):
become better teachers or players shrunk. It was no longer
really The agenda became how to manage a club etc.
And got further. I thought the National Golf Course Owners
had a great avenue for people that wanted to become owners.
I think the Club Managers Association does a great job

(29:06):
for club managers. But PGA also all of a sudden
wanted to compete with both of those associations, and it's
been deleted over Really, I'll go back to when we
went from forty to twenty spots. Well, you could go further.
It's when the Tournament Player's Division left the PGA and

(29:27):
became the PGA Tour that the PGA's direction hasn't been
the one that I always envisioned. So go fast forward
back to when I quit was a round twenty seventeen.
I had a consulting job with owners, I was going
to marketing conventions. I wasn't going to PGA. I didn't

(29:51):
go to the show for a few years. I didn't
attend PGA meetings. I quit paying my dues. I could
get master's tickets from some of my former members and
go in and probably get paid to go and have
a free ticket. So my biggest benefit from the PGA
was that master's ticket when I needed it. But I

(30:12):
didn't need it anymore. And I just felt totally I
divorced from the new agenda of the PGA, so I
didn't worry about it. Then when I left the PGA,
one time I tried to get reinstated, I was in
the Carolinas. I excuse me, I was in I was

(30:36):
in it. I was in Atlanta, and to get reinstated,
excuse me, I was in North Carolina, but I wasn't
in the mountains. For me to go, I had a
seven hour drive to get to the meetings to get
recertified or back into PGA membership. And I looked at
paying all the dues back dues for four years or

(31:00):
whatever it was, and the ridiculous amount of time to
go get credits sitting in a meeting. And I've been
a member for thirty five years now, going to go
sit in a meeting to get credits in western North
Carolina mountains. So I just said, no, it's not worth
it to me, So I let it go. But that's

(31:22):
kind of up to where I was not involved. And
now you're watching the last couple of years, we've started
a group. I see the opportunity with a community platform
to do a lot of things for pros that the
PGA can't do because of their tax status, which is

(31:45):
to leverage their expertise, connect them with students, let them
make money teaching those students, with a lot of it
being blended learning, so a lot of it online, not
all on a clinic lesson te So I started this

(32:05):
group on Lighting Networks, the community platform, and then a
few two years ago, let's say, the reponderance of pros
that were I would say disenchanted with the PGA's direction
has grown. So I had about one hundred and about
two hundred members on that platform, and thirty or forty

(32:30):
of them were PGA members, and they were all upset.
And the more of my friends I talked to that
are still PGA members for various reasons. They were disenchanted,
whether it was the club pro purse shrinking not growing,
whether it's the DEI spending that the PGA was doing.

(32:51):
They never created a teaching division. So now there are
all these other ways to become an accredited teacher. Off
Teachers Federation somehow has the same credibility as the PGA
for who somebody might want to take a lesson from.
I said, guys, we've got to rebuild this. There's too

(33:12):
much expertise the PGA has allowed it to get watered down.
So I think it was Coach Wooden that said, don't
let what you can't do today keep you from doing
what you can.

Speaker 1 (33:27):
There you go. So now we're going to tell you
commercial break and we come back. We're going to talk
about exactly where where we're going with this reimagined PGA.
This is the Rich Kom Will Go Show. Welcome back
to Rich Komwell Go Show. We're joined by Randy Kevin
on this week, and we just walked into where Randy
has started the platform and the I guess I would

(33:51):
call it a movement is trying to you know, the
name of the movement is re imagine PGA but kind
of reinvent the PGA or re introduced the PGA's original
PGA of America's original purpose, which was to grow the
game and to create teachers and to create people that
can run golf operations and run golf clubs and and

(34:13):
and just be just be the face of golf at
places instead of being watered down and kind of a nameless,
faceless group that has real no real, no real cohesion
or energy or I mean, I'll say it purpose other
than two you know, have your have your initials put

(34:34):
somewhere on a wall. So do I get that about right, Randy?

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, I think you use some of the proper terms.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
So so tell me what the goal of the reimagine
PGA is.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
Well, you know, it's funny, we're in America free speech.
One common issue among pros, whether they're happy with the
PGA or not, is they're afraid to talk about it. Right. See,
you've got first First Amendment right, free speech, blah blah blah.
But there's a kind of a silent handshake that seems

(35:15):
to go on in the PGA. And the extent of
disenchantment I think is reflected in the PGA's annual survey.
So supposedly there's thirty two thirty three thousand members. Now
the numbers go from twenty three thousand to thirty three thousand,

(35:35):
but last year only about six thousand of them did
the annual survey, which is a check to see if
you're satisfied with what HQ is doing where they're leading
the association. And I saw that number, and then I
saw the subset within that seven thousand. I think it
was that we're quote approving of or satisfied with the PGA.

(36:01):
And when you get to I think it was sixty percent.
So you've had about five thousand of thirty three thousand
members that we're happy with the PGA. Well, how could
that be? How could an association that is supposedly member driven,
member run be so disconnected from its membership. And then

(36:27):
you take a look at the governance document that we've
operated under since nineteen sixteen and say, this is an
archaic system. We have this huge total of members but
only one hundred and twenty actual authorized delegate voters. So
coming up in a few weeks the PGA's annual meeting

(36:50):
where we're kind of all the big business gets done
interacting with the members, is only one hundred and twenty
voters out of thirty two thousand. Now there's a district
director for those thirty one thousand, eight hundred that aren't
there at the meeting, but they cover three sections each

(37:16):
and I think the message from members doesn't get through
the district director, and if it does, it doesn't get
from them to the boardroom in a way that changes anything.
So we have this I'd call it archaic and ineffective governance.
System room. My experience with trying to get PGA members

(37:43):
to volunteer for the Section board ties into that. So
the people that do may not necessarily be the most qualified,
or they may not have a good representation when they
go through the Section board. Certainly into the district director position.
That's a certain animal that carries a briefcase and that

(38:07):
likes sitting through these boring meetings and spends so much
time on our cane discussions about member by laws versus
the bigger picture stuff, and that seems to be left
to the paid staff. You would think the CEO would
be like the PGA Tour commissioner and could hammers fitt

(38:29):
down and say we're going to do this next. But
apparently the board has control and to a point, and
that board changes every two years with the different district
directors coming in or the officers are there for six
but there's just a two year term, so there's no
continuity to the member representation. The member representation themselves, I

(38:54):
don't think are reflective of the general member, the grassroots
pro who's out there in a living or actually growing
the game face to face with their students. So my
sense is that the number of respondents to the annual
survey reflects. Okay, there's the satisfied group. The number of

(39:17):
pros that don't receive or complete or return their survey
is the group that reimagine PGA is catering to and
from all their input. The very first thing on the
docket is not the governance document, it's the business model.

(39:37):
We're a five oh one C six, which you can
interpret it a lot of different ways, the things you
can and can't or aren't allowed to do within IRS
compliance for the actual members, but a lot of it's subjective.
So now I'm trying to put that all together for you.

(39:58):
If you've got leadership that's not reflective of the general membership,
and they're in a position behind closed doors about fifteen guys,
three officers and one CEO and the directors the paid
staff of these different departments. They're making decisions that I
think are totally different, and their cover for it as well.

(40:21):
We're not for profit. We don't have to show you
our numbers because we're a not for profit. We're following
IRS compliance. You can't have private in urement. So members
are I think shortchanged. Across the board. We've got a
number of quote red flags that we've discovered just looking

(40:42):
at the public facing documents that are required to be
filed by the IRS, and thank goodness, instead of reading
a few hundred pages word for word, AI is able
to assess where they see compliance issues, and that seems
to have congealed, converged a big group of members that

(41:06):
all had different personal issues with the PGA into ah,
that's what's going on. The reason my program PGA Hope
got cut six million dollars last year, despite the President
of the PGA saying how important the program is, is
because in the back room they needed to trim money

(41:28):
out of the budget. We've got officers that have a
travel allowance first class travel, international travel with other PGA
dignitaries that cost about four million dollars. Corporations don't do that,
that have less or more revenue than we do, so

(41:49):
it looks excessive. So now you've got the same guys
that vote on approving those budgets that are benefiting from it.
That's actually in yearman. So really, the reimagined PGA has
two goals. One to get members aware of how their

(42:12):
governance is acting and whether that is or isn't compliant
with the I R s and two what are the solutions?
Do we voluntarily give up our five oh one P
six status and become a for profit? If we do,

(42:32):
is that a pure corporate Do members get a share
become shareholders instead of instead of forgotten members? Or is
it a cooperative or is it an eesop? A lot
of opportunities, all the private in uarment goes away. It

(42:52):
can become performance based. The guys who are actually growing
the game can get camp for the programs right now
doing for free. So I don't know if that was
tight enough description. Oh yeah we're doing oh.

Speaker 1 (43:07):
Yeah, so so so then so then okay, so see,
I see, I believe, I truly believe in this because
you know, I've been on the board of Tri State Section.
I'm actually up for election. I'll find out in a
week or so or ten days or so. But I
just don't it just it blows my mind that that

(43:27):
that that the PGA of America has become such a
and I I do not have the My father was
not a PGA professional, but yours was. And I do
not have the length of history that you do with
pg of America, but I do know this. There was
a time when our initials were everything and you could

(43:51):
walk into a room and you were the you are
the verbally confirmed or non verbally confirmed expert in everything gone.
And now we've become this this thing, this this this
association that nobody understands and doesn't really work for the
people that pay the dues for it. Totally agree and

(44:15):
like my thing is is, like you know, I said
to another PG professional today on the way down here
to do this show. You're like, if if the the
Pittsburgh Penguins have a young defenseman who's really really, really
good and and and he and he comes into a
situation where he starts to drink too much, or he
he runs into trouble with you know, some some sort

(44:35):
of issue. He can go to his association, the players Association,
and I know we're not a union, but they will
actually sit down with them, say okay, let's see how
we can help you. If I have and I'm a
recovering alcoholic, and I and I and I say it
out loud, but if I fell off the wagon and
I and I just went off the deep end and
started drinking like crazy again, and I and I walked
into the section's office and said, you know, I need help.

(44:57):
My executive director will looking at me. I don't want
to help you. I don't know what to do for
you because because you're a member of the association, but
we're really not a member protecting or promoting or helping association.

Speaker 2 (45:14):
Agreed. I mean it really it's interesting. So a two
time section president who I've spent a lot of time
talking to recently is a member of the group. His
father played in the NFL and he actually started the
NFL Players Union, and he was worried that the Steeler
organization might not re sign him because that wasn't a

(45:37):
popular thing that the owners that their team members now
were unionized. But I think we're there with the PGA.
There is no support organization. And you mentioned in your opening,
which you mentioned that the the PGA was founded to

(45:58):
grow the game. And I'm pretty sure if you look
at the original mission statement, the first thing was to
improve the profession, Yes, to support its members, and the
third part was to grow the game, you know, in
not those exact words, but it was like third on

(46:19):
the list. It now seems to be the only thing,
and they're doing it in a commercial way. You know,
let's have fifty thousand people at the Rider Cup and
all the corporate fluff and oh yeah, we'll let the
members come for free. But you know, there shouldn't have
only probably been twenty five thousand people at the Ryder Cup.

(46:41):
You couldn't see was the common phrase that everybody's using.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
But then you turn onto okay, you know what, Yeah,
we're we're going to bring in two hundred hundred ninety
two million dollars in Wisconsin four years ago, and and
then you say, okay, you can go for free. But
by the way, we're going to cut PGA Hope, which
is for terrans, by six million dollars. Something doesn't make
sense that we are not involved in this for we're

(47:08):
you know, if you want to grow bureaucracy, you know
there's a people watching DC. They can give you a
masterclass in it. I don't need that.

Speaker 2 (47:14):
How many employees does the PGA have I have no idea,
and it's over three hundred, so that's not including section offices.
So what are all those people doing doing and how
much do they all make? I don't get it. Why
aren't our sections more involved, almost like a state government,

(47:37):
and why aren't we reporting to them? Versus to National
for our programming.

Speaker 1 (47:43):
There we go. All right, Randy, I can't tell how
much I appreciate it. I'm going to get back to
you probably early April next year, and we're going to
revisit where we stand with this.

Speaker 2 (47:54):
Happy to do it. I've got some other stories for you.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
That's absolutely awesome. This has been the rich Combwoll Golf Show.