People warned me. A few told me that the toughest part about doing a blog is keeping up with it. I kind of brushed that aside, but they were exactly right. I haven't posted since the Deutsche Bank Championship week in late-August and here it is early-November and I'm just checking back in. It was a busy finish to the MGA season, but I'd say that we had a good year. The championship season finished on a soggy note with the first day of the Senior Amateur being washed out. Eastward Ho! is a beautiful course in Chatham that the players were looking forward to playing so I was disappointed for them that we couldn't get both days in.
We making final preparations to the 2009 schedule now. The championship sites are just about set, and we're trying to finalize the qualifying sites which hopefully will be done towards the end of the month.
I must confess that as I write I am in Destin, FL attending the annual IAGA conference. The IAGA is the International Association of Golf Administrators which comprises staff members from most of the state and regional golf associations from the U.S. There are also the provincial golf associations from Canada that make up the group, hence the "international". Once a year we meet to network, share ideas and participate in various educational sessions.
We have about 160 people attending the conference from associations all around the country. All six New England Associations are represented. Most of the attendees arrived Saturday and we had a full day of educational sessions yesterday (Sunday). There were breakout sessions for executive directors along with other department meetings - rules & competitions, handicap & course rating, communications and junior golf. Attending from the MGA besides myself are Scott Whitcomb, Director of Field Operations, and Scott Guild, Director of Handicapping. Scott Whitcomb actually was one of the presenters in the Course Rating breakout. I ducked into the meeting for awhile to listen to some of the lively discussions on rough & recoverability, trees, effective playing length, rating teams. Scott did a nice job. I used to do a fair amount of course rating so I was actually able to keep up.
Yesterday afternoon we heard from some of the senior staff at the USGA, Pete Bevaqua, Chief Business Officer; Alex Withers, Managing Director of Digital Media; and Kevin O'Connor, Senior Director of Handicapping & Regional Affairs. They gave us a lot of good information and it's quite apparent that the USGA is going to get more and more involved in utlizing their internet presence over the coming months and years to communincate with golfers and state associations. Since the hiring of Alex Withers from espn.com, the USGA's website has undergone a complete overhaul. There will be another complete overhaul in early 2009 http://www.usga.org/.
The USGA folks also talked about their updated museum in Far Hills, NJ. I think the number is about $20 million that they spent to upgrade the museum which was unveiled just before this year's US Open. Most of the people convened here have not seen the new museum so there was the requisite slide show and presentation. I was fortunate to visit the museum about a month ago. I would encourage anyone to go - it's fantastic. The museum even has its own new dedicated site, http://www.usgamuseum.com/.
I am part of the IAGA Program Committee this year so part of my duties were setting up some of the sessions. I invited David Chag, General Maager at The Country Club in Brookline. He graciously accepted and gave a great PowerPoint presentation this morning about club managers working with the other professional staffs at their clubs and working with golf associations. David is a great public speaker and a class act. His talk was very well received.
Today (Monday) and tomorrow we have several more educational sessions before the conference wraps up late Tuesday. Destin is in the pan handle of Florida, and believe it or not, it is so far west that it's in the beginning of the central time zone. Bet most people aren't aware that Florida crosses time zones. I know it's cold back home and I don't mean to rub it in, so I'll leave you with just the facts: sunny and 74 degrees.
0 comments:
Post a Comment