Kevin Weeks, PGA,PGA of America Director of Instruction,Cog Hill Golf & Country Club,Lemont, Illinois
The event starts with 2023 PGA of America Teacher & Coach of the Year Kevin Weeks reading player bios out loud on the first tee: one stack written by his PGA Jr. League All-Stars – junior tour player of the year, winner of this, qualifier for that – and one written by the combat Veterans who they are about to play with. The second stack runs heavy with Purple Hearts, Silver Stars and descriptions of multiple tours in the world’s hot spots. That’s when kids almost always stop fidgeting.
Weeks, the PGA of America Director of Instruction at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont, Illinois, calls the unique event Heroes and All-Stars. His All-Stars – participants in Cog Hill’s robust PGA Jr. League program – play a scramble with Veterans from the club’s PGA HOPE chapter. Everybody sits down together to eat pizza afterward, and the whole thing came out of Weeks watching those Veterans on his own lesson tee.
“It started when I got involved with PGA HOPE and started seeing the Veterans’ faces, and how much they enjoyed playing golf,” Weeks says. “I just had the idea, hey, why don’t we play a scramble with the Veterans and our PGA Jr. League stars.”
Weeks ran the concept past the father of one of his students and asked what he would think about his kid playing with Veterans.
“He said it was a great idea and asked what I was thinking,” Weeks recalls. “I told him, and he said, ‘Well, if Cog (Hill) lets me, I will furnish the lunch.’”
The father runs Home Run Inn – the Chicago pizza company now stocked in grocery stores well outside Illinois – and the pizzas have been part of the Heroes and All-Stars day since 2023. Cog Hill donates the tee times.
Weeks came to PGA HOPE through his own personal interests. He is a history buff, and he had been reading about suicide rates among Veterans when the PGA of America’s military program reached Cog Hill.
“What could we do to get them out of the house, because so many of them are dealing with depression, drug addiction and alcoholism because of what they saw when they were defending our freedom” he says. “I just wanted to find a way to help them, and it is truly rewarding.”
Weeks’ advice for coaches who want programming with the same impact is that it does not have to involve Veterans or juniors.
“Keep your eyes open and look for needs,” says the national 2023 PGA of America Teacher & Coach of the Year who has been on Golf Digest’s 50 Best Teachers list since 2012. “Look for where there’s a need where you can think outside the box and bring people together.”
Such an instinct can actually be contrary to how many PGA of America Golf Professionals are built, himself included, Weeks says.
“We’re competitive people. Most of us played some form of competitive golf, and I think a lot of times we lose sight of the fact that very few people actually play to compete,” he explains. “Most play for enjoyment. This is one way to give enjoyment to a certain set of them.”
The other set is the one getting mentored, which is why the junior half of the field matters as much as the Veteran half.
Cog Hill was among the first facilities in the country to run PGA Jr. League roughly 15 years ago, and Weeks has amazingly grown it from 14 kids to more than 350 across the spring, summer and fall seasons, with teams that have reached the national PGA Jr. League Championship eight years running. The All-Stars in the annual Heroes and All-Stars event come out of that.
Even the downtime between nines makes an impression. One of the Veterans has PTSD severe enough that he plays with a service dog, and during a break the handler asked Weeks whether he wanted to meet him.
“He went from a nervous dog to a puppy, rolling around and chasing me for 15 minutes,” Weeks says. “Then the guy said, ‘Bye, friend,’ and it was like a switch flipped and he was a service dog again.”
