As Executive Director of the California Alliance for Golf, and before that for 13 years as the Director of Public Affairs for the Southern California Golf Association, I have worked with a lot of PGA of America Golf Professionals on all kinds of matters where the game and public policy intersect – and that’s a lot of places in California!
They have come to know and understand that what I do and what they do is very different. So, they ask me, what is it that a PGA of America Golf Professional can do to participate in advocating for our game? And my answer is always the same: PGA Professionals are the game’s great confidants, the main points of contact for those who play the game.
Simply put, they touch more golfers than all others combined. And that makes them uniquely suited to influence the factor that most determines golf’s final grade in every legislative session – not just the one in state capitols, but the ones in the cities, counties, special districts and commissions that are often more impactful than state legislatures – certainly more impactful than the really big legislature in Washington D.C.
It’s the factor that Abraham Lincoln emphasized repeatedly: public opinion. Or as he more eloquently put it in his debate with Stephen Douglas in his 1858 losing effort to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate: “In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions.”
What PGA of America Professionals do at their clubs and in their communities, and how they communicate what they do beyond the confines of that facility, are more determinative of how golf fares in legislatures and city halls than all the grand strategies and focused efforts of their ostensible leaders in various commission rooms, city halls, halls of administration, administrative hearing rooms and state legislatures. Indeed, what they do will either limit or expand what their leaders can do.
As I tell many of my counterparts who advocate on behalf of other sectors, I am one lucky guy. While they often have to practice the arts of avoidance, obfuscation and spinning, all I have to do is trumpet the unvarnished truth about what golf does and how it does it, and the game’s stock rises in the estimation of the general public.
“What unvarnished truth?” you may ask. Here is but one recent example from California that is by no means unique. During a California Department of Water Resources (DWR) statewide stakeholder call late last year, a meeting to discuss implementation of the new iteration of the California Model Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance (MWELO), Charles Bohlig, the Conservation Manager for East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD), one of the largest water providers in the state, reported that while EBMUD was disappointed in the performance of Alameda and Contra Costa’s residences and small businesses, the agency was thrilled with the performance of the 155 “Large Landscapes” the agency serves, the majority of which he pointed out were golf courses. While residents and small businesses were falling short of their marks, the golf courses were exceeding them by wide margins. The persons listening to Bohlig’s high praise were water managers, regulators, academics and consultants from all corners of California.
My megaphone can carry that story only so far. But the PGA of America Golf Professional’s megaphone can carry that story not just to the golfers in his or her community, but beyond to the 90 percent of those in every community who don’t play golf but whose opinions about the game mold the public sentiment that President Lincoln informed us reaches “deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces judicial decisions.”
PGA of America Professionals are the game’s grassroots ambassadors. Their work is indispensable to the work of the professional ambassador, otherwise known as the advocate. I never forget that, and neither should the nation’s more than 30,000 PGA of America Golf Professionals.
—Craig Kessler
