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Powell, OH – Six years ago, Birdie Bash began with a simple question:
What could happen if a group of PGA Professionals decided to use the game they love as a force for something bigger than themselves?
Six years later, the answer can be measured in many ways.
In dollars raised, certainly. In the birdies made and the stories that come from playing dawn to dusk. In the growth from one event in Columbus to all the Birdie Bashes now held across the country.
But the real answer lives somewhere deeper than that.
It’s in the culture that has formed around this day and how a community built on camaraderie and purpose can leave the world better than it found it.
Every year, that culture reveals a new and exciting iteration. The laughter and energy before sunrise is familiar. So too is the collective exhaustion late in the afternoon when one more birdie still matters. What was new this year is best represented by Aiden, our Patient Champion from Nationwide Children’s. Taller by the year, when Aiden stepped up to hit the same ceremonial opening tee shot he’s hit a number of times before, he walked onto the tee not simply as a guest of Birdie Bash but part of its heartbeat.
If culture creates traditions and traditions lead to legacy, that moment becomes proof of what can happen when something as simple as a fundraiser turns into real, tangible shared purpose.
On Monday at Kinsale Golf and Fitness Club, that purpose carried the Southern Ohio PGA and PGA REACH Southern Ohio to another milestone moment.
The 2026 Play Yellow Birdie Bash raised $203,897 in support of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Dayton Children’s Hospital and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, pushing the event beyond $1.3 million raised since its inception in 2021.
And under perhaps the best weather conditions the event has ever seen, the golf reflected it.
Every team played well. Multiple groups established personal bests for birdies made during Birdie Bash, while the event finished with its second-highest ever total birdies made at 877. In our history, 4,452 birdies have been made across the six Birdie Bashes.
Leading the way was “The Lefty’s” team of Kyle Sanders, PGA, and Andrew Muhich, PGA, who finished with 57 birdies, the most during the marathon 72-hole day. Our hosts, Team Kinsale, finished second with 56. Team Scioto and Team Kenwood tied for third place with 52 birdies each.
Off the golf course, the giving reached another level as well.
A special matching campaign supported by the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday helped push the event beyond its $200,000 fundraising goal. Beginning the weekend prior to Birdie Bash, all donations were matched dollar-for-dollar up to $20,000, creating a final wave of momentum that carried throughout the event.
Scioto Country Club professionals Joe Falardeau, PGA, and Chris Yoder, PGA, led all teams in fundraising, generating more than $47,000 in support. Team Muirfield Village’s Peter Dornisch, PGA, and Chad Middaugh, PGA, followed with more than $36,000 raised, while Columbus Country Club’s Chase Wilson, PGA, and Evan Hartnett, PGA, contributed more than $15,000.
Proceeds from Birdie Bash directly support Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals while also funding the efforts of PGA REACH Southern Ohio. Together, those efforts continue to connect the game of golf to more care, more hope and more moments for children and families facing difficult circumstances.
What we built together matters.
And we’re just getting started.
Founded in 1946, the Southern Ohio Section of the PGA is home to nearly 530 golf professionals. The section's mission is to promote golf, maintain professional standards and improve the well-being of its members. Learn more at www.thesouthernohiopga.com
A nonprofit established in 2010, the PGA REACH Southern Ohio Foundation supports community initiatives and the growth of golf through Youth, Military and Diversity & Inclusion programs. Its offerings include the SOPGA Junior Tour, PGA Jr. League, PGA HOPE, scholarships and more.
Since its founding, Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals has raised over $7 billion for 170 hospitals across the U.S. and Canada. Funds stay local to support urgent needs like research, patient care, training for medical professionals and family support. Learn more atwww.childrensmiraclenetworkhospitals.org
Newton Square, PA - At Aronimink Golf Club, on a golf course built to expose uncertainty, Ben Kern played with the freedom of a man who no longer spends his life chasing validation. He shot one of the rounds of the day at the PGA Championship and, for a while, led the championship field in birdies.
“It’s wild,” Kern said afterward, almost laughing at the idea. “Pretty wild. Very cool.”
Eight years ago, Kern’s first PGA Championship represented possibility. In 2026, it represented proof.
“It shows me and proves to myself that I can hang with these guys when I’m playing solid,” said Kern, the general manager at Hickory Hills Golf Club in Grove City. “I hung my head high yesterday, and I had a goal today and I surpassed it.”
The remarkable thing is not simply that Kern made the cut at the PGA Championship. It’s that he did it living the life so many PGA of America Golf Professionals understand intimately. He runs a club. He manages people. He sneaks in practice when he can. He tries to play once a week with members. That dream didn’t disappear; it just learned how to coexist with responsibility.
“I spent a good amount of time five, six years after college chasing it. Q-School, mini-tours,” said Kern. “Then I got married and got in the business. Once I did that, I’m pretty happy with it.
“I’m not one to practice all the time so the week in, week out grind doesn’t really appeal to me anymore.”
And yet, there he was Friday threading shots through a chilly Pennsylvania wind like he never left the competitive stage at all.
“This is my third [PGA Championship] and I put a lot of pressure on myself that first year,” said Kern following his opening round on Thursday. “It’s hard to have that bar set there but now, I’m more comfortable.
“Score doesn’t matter.”
Eight years ago, it mattered desperately.
Back then, the PGA Championship felt like a measuring stick. A referendum. The kind of week young players believe can change everything.
But somewhere between Q-School and marriage, between mini-tour miles and running a golf club in Ohio, Kern stopped asking the game to validate him. And maybe that’s why Friday looked the way it did.
Free.
That’s what makes PGA Professionals different. Nobody clears the calendar for them. Their “team” is made up of family members, assistants and staff willing to help hold things together while they chase something for a few days. They borrow time where they can find it. They build careers around service and then do enough to keep their own games alive in the margins.
Regardless of score, they represent their clubs, Sections and members long before they represent themselves.
Then every once in a while, one of them walks onto a major championship stage and reminds everybody the player never really left.
There are golf clubs that host championships. And then there are golf clubs that become part of the game’s history.
For nearly a century, Moraine Country Club has quietly occupied that second category, thanks to a membership steadfastly present in stewardship of the game and a legendary PGA Professional whose legacy continues to impact PGA Professionals to this day.
Long before modern championship infrastructure and corporate hospitality became synonymous with professional golf, Moraine established itself as one of the game’s great proving grounds. A place where architecture, competition and quiet leadership all seemed to meet naturally among the glacier-carved hills south of Dayton.
That reputation reached a defining moment in 1945.
Just months removed from the conclusion of World War II in Europe and while much of the country was still navigating the realities of wartime sacrifice, Moraine welcomed the PGA Championship to Southern Ohio. The event drew the largest field in championship history to that point and became another milestone in Byron Nelson’s legendary 1945 season, where he captured the ninth victory in what would become an unprecedented streak of 11 consecutive wins.
But the story of Moraine’s place in golf history extends beyond Nelson.
Much of the credit belongs to longtime head professional Tommy Bryant, whose influence helped establish Moraine as one of the most respected clubs in the region during the 1940s. Bryant’s relentless fundraising for the event resulted in an unprecedented donation of more than $51,000 to the War Veterans’ Rehabilitation Fund.
Bryant’s leadership took on a new challenge a year later. On January 11, 1946, Tommy Bryant helped establish the Southern Ohio PGA Section and served as its first president. The legacy of that leadership still touches all Section professionals today. The SOPGA Section Championship trophy is named in his honor as well.
As the Southern Ohio PGA returns once again to Moraine at the SOPGA Legacy Championship, it serves a poignant way to honor Bryant’s leadership at both the club he helped put on the world stage and the PGA Professionals who continue to impact the game nine decades later.
