March has been a very busy month in the Section – chapter meetings, section meetings, awards ceremony, two tournaments, working with sponsors, onboarding new chapter staff and of course supporting all the education and pro-ams ramping up in the chapters. I’m sure it’s busy for you and as well. As we dive into April, let’s hope the sun shines and gives you a good financial boost to start the year.
The first week of April means The Masters and on Sunday, the National Finals of Drive Chip and Putt will kick off the week. We have six young people enjoying a trip to Augusta who started their quest in our local qualifiers. I hope you will tune in to watch. I’m sure you will be inspired watching these young athletes. Please help us promote the 13 local qualifiers we have in the Section this year! While you are at it, develop a DCP Prep Clinic to help your juniors improve their game and don’t forget to send us the details so we can promote your clinic on our website.
The PGA Junior League playoff schedule is almost complete. If you have not formed your team, do it now and reach out to Branden Thompson to let him know your plans: [email protected].
Last Friday the Grant Committee studied, debated and agonized over how to divide up $24,000 in player development funds between $60,000 in requests! In the end we helped a lot of deserving programs with a wide range of needs. A big thank you to Ben Foreman and Yamaha for supporting the Yamaha Adult Player Development Grant program. Your contributions to the 1% Club helped the Junior Fund pass out a healthy grant program as well. We’ll publish a list of the grant recipients soon.
New this year is our Pacific Northwest Section App. This is our replacement for the Member Handbook. Not only does it offer the opportunity to instantly access and contact members and vendors, it will always be current! The print version was nice but always out of date the day we shipped it. Please revisit the email sent last week on how to access the app and the accompanying web portal. Larry Aspenson of ForeTees deserves a big thank you for working with us to bring this app to you. More features are coming, so stay tuned.
It’s important to continually recognize our sponsors and this month I’m happy to announce the Club Car Skins which will be contested at our five majors. In addition to your normal skins entries, your local Club Car distributors are adding $1,000 to the skins game at each of our majors. That translates to about a 30% increase in YOUR skins payouts. You just have to enter! Our thanks to Rob Rasmussen and all five of our Club Car distributors for making this fun new program possible. We’ve also added two sponsors to the Muckleshoot Casino Washington Open in Haas Jordan and ProTag. Thank you Todd Blackmar and Gordon Schenk.
Entries for the Senior Players Championship at Wine Valley close in a few days. It looks like with a couple more last-minute entries we will once again have a full field. Thank you Ken Allen and Club Glove for once again sponsoring this championship.
Finally, this issue marks the beginning of our process to elect a new Section Secretary. The person you elect will be an officer for the next eight years moving up through the chairs to serve as your President in four years. Be sure you become familiar with Marcus King and Howie Pruitt so you can make an informed vote this fall.
Finally, a big thank you to the staff serving in chapter roles. Dom, Doug, Brian, Jason, Faith, Dave, Aaron, Casey and Scott will all be working hard on your behalf this season. Please support them by using ForeTees and especially updating any changes in Golf Genius BEFORE they start printing score cards on Sunday! You have one team to manage, they have 50…. please help them out.
Jeff Ellison, PGA
CEO, Pacific NW Section PGA