L
ike so many of her TGA coworkers, Mary Harrison grew up playing the game with family and has fond memories of those days.
Her father Edmund played professionally in the 1940s and ’50s against the likes of Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead. Later, Mary’s dad transitioned into the club side of pro golf. He was the head professional at Midland Country Club, Baker Park Golf Course and finally at Lake Bracken Country Club in Galesburg, Ill., which was about 45 minutes south of Mary’s hometown of Kewanee, Ill.
“We all played golf, the whole family,” said Mary, the longest-tenured TGA employee among today’s staff. “For several years, we’d go to Galesburg in the summers, and it was awesome. There was the golf course, a lake we could swim in, tennis courts, everything a kid could want. Those were wonderful summers, just happy, happy memories from those days.”
Mary’s brother Mike followed in dad’s footsteps and became a PGA Professional. He’s a Class A1 First Assistant Pro at Wood Ranch Golf Club in Simi Valley, Calif. Mary, of course, works in golf, too. She just took a different path than her dad and brother.
After finishing up her bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, she worked in the insurance industry for 15 years. In the late 1990s, she worked for a year selling memberships at Stonebridge Ranch Country Club in McKinney.
Then Mary took a job with a start-up company called Lifecast.com that was spearheaded in part by former Dallas Mavericks great Mark Aguirre. The online company specialized in building websites for country clubs and other high-end golf facilities.
One of Mary’s clients was the Sports Club at TPC Las Colinas. The pro there wanted to put the members’ handicaps for display on their new website. That led Mary to a chance meeting with Rob Addington, who at the time was a consultant who handled GHIN, which is the USGA’s Handicapping software, for the Texas Golf Association.
A few months later, Lifecast.com went out of business when its venture capitalist backing pulled out. Suddenly Mary was jobless. She called Addington to see if the TGA needed help getting more clubs and courses onto the GHIN platform.
A few months after that, Rob hired Mary to do Membership Sales in 2001. At the time, the TGA had about 18,000 individual members and 20-25 Member Clubs. The TGA had doubled its staff size – to a total of two employees – and she spent her days trying to acquire new members and Member Clubs. She also trained the administration staffs of the clubs who came on board with the TGA on how to install, operate and manage GHIN at their facilities.
Twenty years later, Mary’s largely still doing the same thing. Today, the TGA has nearly 137,000 individual members and more than 550 Member Clubs. Mary’s been busy! Along the way, the TGA has earned several “Best Growth” awards from the USGA.
Mary’s also seen the size of the TGA staff grow over the years. Now there are about 25 full-time employees with offices in Dallas, Houston and Austin.
“It was just Rob and me to start,” Mary said. “Then shortly thereafter, Rob hired Ryan Finn for Championships. It was the three of us, plus an admin to answer phones, but quickly realized we needed to add another person doing GHIN Tech Support, Course Rating, and Communications. A little later we opened the Houston office, and we have someone in Austin now, too. It’s pretty amazing, the growth.”
Mary still signs up new clubs to GHIN and the TGA. With most of the green-grass golf facilities now in the fold, much of her time is spent on attracting Type II and Type III clubs, which are online-based clubs and those without real estate. Educating golfers on the World Handicap System that the USGA, R&A and most of the rest of the world adopted in 2020 is also a big responsibility.
“It’s a little more complicated, and it’s still pretty new,” she said. “The previous USGA Handicap System was more than 100 years old. This is all new, so there is a lot of education with golfers, club staffs and people not understanding the calculations.”
You’d think people like Mary who work in the golf industry would want to get away from the game in their off time. It’s not so, and that’s because golf is a passion for Mary, as it is for so many of her coworkers.
“I love that golf is an outdoors pursuit,” she said. “It’s a way to challenge yourself, spend time with friends and family, and meet new people. Golf is so cool because you can go anywhere and it’s going to be different. It’s not like some sports, where the dimensions of the court are always the same shape. Golf has such an enormous variety of beautiful courses and scenery. It never gets old.”
