Welcome to the heat of the battle. With this great weather, I hope you are as busy as we are here in the office—and as busy as our people out working in the chapters. Busy is good in this business.
In addition to the daily routine, we are managing an operational audit from National, the conversion by National from MS Office to GSuite, upgrading our computer systems, and working through the usual tax filings and the like. I can assure you, your staff is definitely busy!
I’m sure you read in the last issue that President Morris is headed to Vegas in September. We wish him well in his new endeavors. Your Board is meeting tonight to follow our Section Constitution and be prepared to move forward on September 1. Sean Fredrickson will move up to President, Howie Pruitt will move up to Vice President and, at tonight’s meeting, the board will appoint a temporary Secretary.
The Rosauers Open is full with a wait list, ditto on the Wildhorse Senior Oregon Open Invitational. We must be doing something right to keep interest high in our championships. Thanks for playing!
Our destination pro-ams continue to thrive. Hawaii is sold out already and you should see entries out in early August for the Holcomb-In-One Las Vegas Pro-Am. Contested March 15-19, 2020 at Bali Hai, Chimera and Las Vegas CC this popular event fills quickly—so reach out to your team today.
The PNW PGA Merchandise Show heads to Portland this year, October 15-16 at the Oregon Convention Center. Plan to attend and BUY, BUY, BUY. In one exciting change, the Pro-Vendor moves to Monday night and will be “played” at TopGolf. Contact your favorite rep and enter today. With the planning required, late entries will not be accepted.
The 2019 Rules of Golf process has been interesting. We continue to receive calls in the office and work hard ourselves to not only understanding all the changes, but also at finding them in the new book! I encourage you to keep working the process to get better with the new code. One of the best ways is through a PGA/USGA Rules of Golf Workshop. The 2020 schedule is available at usga.org
Angela and I have conducted 11 Drive Chip and Putt Local Qualifying events so far, with two more on the schedule next week. I hope you sent your juniors out to compete. We’ve seen 1,584 kids registered so far.
Our other big player development effort is PGA Junior League. It looks like we’ll have close to 3,500 kids enrolled this year…another healthy increase. Nice work, captains!
I’ll close with a reminder to be sure you enter your Section Championships. Whether it’s the PGA Professional Championship, the Senior PGA Professional Championship or the Assistant Professional Championship, these are the “must play” events on our schedule. All professionals, all “like” players, all your peers. Enter today.
Have a great July and I hope to see you on the road soon.
Jeff Ellison, PGA
CEO, Pacific NW Section PGA