Twenty years ago, Bill White developed an interest in golf and hasn’t looked back since. Residing just outside of Houston in League City, Bill moved to a house on a golf course in 2001 and couldn’t resist the urge to get involved.
“I had a nice foursome with some fine older gentlemen,” White said. “All of them are gone. That sort of ended my active playing days in golf, but they were all fine gentlemen, and I enjoyed the game.”
Bill’s interest in golf eventually led him to become a Course Rating volunteer with the TGA. Since 2010 he has served the Texas golf community by traveling across the state rating courses alongside a team of fellow volunteers.
“Course Rating just sort of fits right into my bag,” White said. “It’s much like going out and playing golf with your buddies. It’s for the good of the game. It’s fun and our team has a really good bunch of people who have a good time together.”
Course Rating is a unique aspect to the sport, one that Bill enjoys exploring. He knows the concept of Course Rating can be confusing even to those who play and know golf well.
“Most regular golfers have no idea what we do,” he said. “Many also have no idea how their handicap is calculated. We typically will invite someone from the course we are rating. We’ll ask the pro if one of their guys would like to come along with us and see what we do.”
The TGA’s Manager of USGA Products Zach Madison handles the Course Rating volunteer team and together they have done a phenomenal job of ensuring all courses have an up-to-date Course Rating. The USGA requires established courses to be re-rated every 10 years and newly constructed courses to be re-rated within five years after the initial rating, so the TGA Course Rating volunteer teams are always in high demand.
White believes he has been part of around 20 ratings per year since 2019. Before that, it was around eight courses a year. The math comes out to around 120 course ratings in total for White. That’s an impressive feat for the 81-year-old.
“It’s been enjoyable,” he said. “The one thing is the more work you get, the better the team gets because it’s a very involved process. There’s a whole lot of things to a rating and every time we go out, we get an opportunity to refine and enhance our method. So, the more work we get, the better it is.”
While traveling to courses all over the state is certainly a perk, White wouldn’t say that’s his favorite thing about volunteering. It’s been the relationships he’s built with his fellow course raters.
“I got started around 2010 with a team of mostly retirees from my previous company that I worked for,” he said. “They were a fine group of men. And then I just sort of eased into the leadership of the team.”
The TGA thanks White for his dedication to supporting the betterment of the game of golf in Texas and assisting in more than 100 course ratings over the past decade.
“Bill has been an invaluable part of our rating department at the TGA,” said Madison. “The thing I most admire about Bill and his team is that they have been rating for a long time, but still continue to evolve and work to become better raters, rather than just settling with being good enough.”
For more on becoming a TGA Volunteer, click here.
