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Way back in 1894, two golf clubs, Newport in Rhode Island and Saint Andrew’s in New York, each claimed to have crowned the country’s top amateur player. Such confusion and dissent would not abide among the game’s founders in America, so officials from five prominent clubs gathered in New York City to bring reason and order to the chaos. They formed an organization to administer the Rules of Golf and conduct national championships. They called it the Amateur Golf Association.
The moniker didn’t stick – the group soon renamed itself the United States Golf Association – but the idea did. The following year, the newly minted body oversaw the first U.S. Amateur Championship and tossed in a one-day affair called the U.S. Open, as well as the first U.S. Women’s Amateur a month later. Now, 129 years, 123 U.S. Opens and more than 9,700 Member Clubs later, the USGA plays a leading role in a virtual Campbell’s Soup can of golf organizations, ranging from A to, um, W (i.e., ANGC, Augusta National Golf Club, to WGHOF, World Golf Hall of Fame – see Decoding Golf’s Alphabet Soup.
Among the onslaught of uppercase initialisms, a familiar but faded one has reentered the chat: AGA. The USGA’s original name now stands for Allied Golf Associations, a new handle that arrived in 2018 for the longtime partners to the main organization who act as a conduit to the country’s 30 million golfers.
“There are basically two types of golfers,” said Tony Greco, the USGA’s managing director of field operations. “Those who keep a handicap and know something about their AGA because they interact with it, and those who don’t and probably don’t know much about their AGA even though it might directly impact their golf experience more than any other organization.”
Hard Cuts and Hurt Feelings
Let’s restart at the beginning. After that momentous December 1894 launch, the game took flight, and so did the USGA’s mission. To meet the needs of the nation’s golfers, someone had to keep the Rules, run national championships – up to 15 these days – and eventually, run the qualifiers for those events, as well as provide Handicap Indexes and Course Ratings.
The USGA could not satisfy all these requirements on its own. Instead, it enlisted the help of a variety of state and regional golf associations (SRGAs) that had sprung up. Through a series of handshake deals, these outfits agreed to be the USGA’s local emissaries.
Over time, new state and regional golf associations emerged and some existing ones subdivided until there were roughly 150 such organizations. Again, chaos. “The SRGA arrangement was unwieldy and inconsistent,” says Jake Miller, the USGA’s regional affairs director for the Midwest. “We needed a more efficient way to deliver services to golfers.”
In 2017, officials at the USGA made a play to restore order, undertaking a process of evaluation and consolidation that culled the herd to a more manageable 58. “We held a series of Town Hall meetings to explain the decision,” says Joe Sprague, director of strategic initiatives. “There were some hurt feelings, but once everyone understood the reasons for it, they accepted it, and everyone has come together.”
Their USGA union more firmly entrenched, the 58 AGAs continue to play a massive role in the game and the lives of golfers, even if many players aren’t aware of it. “The USGA has 300 staffers, and the country is so big,” Greco says. “We couldn’t do our job without the AGAs, and they couldn’t do theirs without us.”
The Mission, Part 1
The new order came with a new way of doing business. “The AGAs are a microcosm of the USGA on a local level,” says Greco. As such, the USGA sought to strengthen and formalize the relationship.
The USGA realigned the country into five regions, each with a regional director who stays in close touch with the executive directors of the AGAs in their region. They help to guide all aspects of USGA administration in their jurisdiction.
The handshake agreements gave way to actual contracts that spell out what each party gives and gets as part of the relationship. “It’s essentially an exclusive right for the USGA to issue a Handicap Index within a given territory,” says Miller. “Along with The R&A, the USGA owns the intellectual property of the World Handicap System and licenses it to the AGAs.”
When a golfer signs up for a Handicap Index, part of the fee goes to his or her AGA, accounting for a large portion of their revenue. In return, the AGAs deliver all core services on behalf of the USGA. These include running qualifiers for USGA championships – from the U.S. Open to U.S. Amateur Four-Balls – providing volunteers for championships and Course Rating, recruiting Rules officials, and interfacing with clubs, courses and golfers.
“The USGA empowers the AGAs to be the face of golf on the local level, and it would be impossible to govern without those boots on the ground,” says USGA Committee Member Lawrence Festa, of Fort Wayne, Ind. “Almost everything you do on a course is impacted and influenced by the work of your AGA.”
Connecting the Dots
The USGA supports the work of the AGAs by providing training support for tournament directors, officials and course raters. It also pays for 150 interns who help staff the AGAs through the P.J. Boatwright Jr. Internship Program, which pays short and long-term benefits – about one third of current AGA executive directors and their staffs were interns. The USGA is also in Year 2 of a five-year plan to help the AGAs double their memberships.
“Millions more people have come into the game, but now we’re trying to get them interested on a formal level,” says Sprague. “Of all golfers, only 3 million are members of AGAs; we’d like to get to 6 million.”
To reach that goal, the USGA – a national entity that commands a large audience through its high-profile championships – seeks to funnel golfers to AGAs. A web locater on usga.org connects golfers to their local association, and any time a golfer signs up for a Handicap Index, they’re rerouted to the appropriate AGA.
That means anyone who maintains a handicap is a member of an AGA, but not automatically a USGA member – that requires a separate process. (USGA membership dues go to the USGA Foundation’s general fund and support programs ranging from agronomic and environmental research to adaptive and junior golf to Museum initiatives.)
To ensure that it’s “giving the AGAs what they need,” the USGA regularly surveys interns and staff members from associations, according to Greco. There’s also a 12-member AGA council that negotiates terms and provides feedback.
And when it comes to helping AGAs operate at maximum efficiency, the USGA flips the script, setting out a series of key performance indicators, or KPIs. “They’re both qualitative and quantitative measures, and at the end of the year we assemble a report that we share with the group,” Greco says.
Any trouble spots are identified and addressed, and best practices are shared. “We might see that the Arizona Golf Association has done well with its junior program, and we know that Georgia has a lot of young golfers, so we’ll get the details of that program to Georgia,” Greco adds.
Alternately, the Southern California Golf Association in celebrity-chocked Los Angeles and vicinity has had success with an influencer program, so staff members assembled a playbook on how it worked and shared it with the group. “Not everything is going to work everywhere,” says Sprague, “but it helps for everyone to know what’s going on in other parts of the country to see if they can apply it.”
The Mission, Part II
For all that, the AGAs’ obligation to the USGA represents about one-third of their operations. “Only about 10 to 15 percent of players are AGA members, but all golfers benefit from their work,” Miller says. “They all have individual takes on the things they do, and they all have their own flavor based on what’s important in their region.”
Those regions range from large areas – like the Carolinas Golf Association, which encompasses both North and South Carolina – to particularly precise ones, such as the Rochester (N.Y.) District Golf Association. All have professional staffs, although Texas checks in with 35 full-timers while Montana and several others boast just two.
The Chicago District Golf Association employs two full-time agronomists, who monitor conditions and consult with greenkeepers in the region. These services improve playing conditions and keep prices down for everyone, even non-members.
Out west, the Southern California Golf Association has two public affairs staffers who advocate for golf in the statehouse. They have become a resource for the other associations, answering questions and giving advice as similar situations arise around the country.
“The AGAs are underrecognized for their role in advocacy,” Miller says. “They’re in capitols and in front of legislative bodies fighting for the game – whether it’s daylight savings, water issues, protecting public courses… the AGAs put in the hours to keep courses open and
protect the game.”
Their effectiveness might have been clearest during COVID-19 lockdowns, when AGAs’ efforts in legislatures played a key role in golf courses reopening long before other businesses.
Beyond that, they “run the game at its most basic level, where it matters,” says Festa. That includes organizing state and regional championships and providing officials for everything from amateur events to high school matches. They also issue tournament operations software to clubs as well as training on how to use it. They help encourage juniors, seniors and other newcomers to try the game, and they even use their clout with outfitters and equipment companies to arrange travel packages and deals on gear.
“We just took a group to Ireland,” says Stacy Dennis, executive director of the Texas Golf Association. Dennis’ organization has a grant program for local facilities and funds caddie scholarships and internships. “We also publish a lot of content about the game and fun stuff for golfers to do in Texas,” she says.
The challenge, in her view, is the scope, especially since the association in the Lone Star State comprises 165,000 members and nearly 600 courses. “My job is to make sure our association has programming for all kinds of golfers at all kinds of facilities,” Dennis says.
That means going beyond tournament golf to incorporate “play days,” a staple of AGAs. “We organize fun, casual events where members can meet new people, play new courses and have a good meal, too,” says Dennis.
The Texas Golf Association runs more than 150 events a year, among the most in the country, but whether they run five or 50, all AGAs share a common outlook: They wish they could do more.
“I’d like to do another 150,” says Dennis. “It’s a question of scale, facilities, staff. We’ll do it, but I would like to get there faster.”
Volunteer View
Dennis’ lament touches on an important point: AGAs, and the work they do, rely on people. “On any given day, how many golf events, from member-guests to college tournaments, are taking place? It’s a significant number, and it would be impossible without representation on the local level,” says Festa, the USGA committee member. “The need to recruit and retain volunteers is a challenge.”
A part-owner of Sycamore Hills Golf Club in Fort Wayne, Ind., Festa has experienced the AGA system from multiple vantage points. He interacted with the Indiana Golf Association on behalf of his club, then became a volunteer board member more than a decade ago.
Before that, around 2006, he began caddieing for his club’s pro at local events. Although he did it for fun, the gig inspired him to dig deep on the Rules of Golf, so the following winter he attended a seminar at Golf House, where he tested high enough to qualify as a Rules official. With a little preparation, he returned the following year and got his expert-level credential. “I’m a lawyer by training, so it sort of clicked for me,” Festa says.
Back home, the Indiana Golf Association put him to work officiating high school, college and state tournaments. “Once I had the credential, it was easy to get experience,” he says.
A few years later, Festa was chosen for the U.S. Senior Amateur Committee, and in 2010 he worked that USGA championship at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club in Orlando, Fla. That completed the typical circuit for Rules officials, from USGA instruction to AGA stalwart to USGA championship role.
Festa has since officiated at several U.S. Amateurs, U.S. Women’s Amateurs and a U.S. Senior Open, but the national work – including giving Vijay Singh a ruling with galleries and cameras bearing down on him – hasn’t kept him from continuing to help out on the home front.
“The total number of events AGAs provide is staggering,” says Festa, “and the further down you go, the more they need people. When you drive by a course on a Saturday morning and someone is running a tournament for 10-year-olds, that’s an AGA volunteer.”
Considering the golf boom of recent years, the AGAs figure to play an even larger role in an expanding universe. “Golf came out of COVID healthier than it went in,” Festa says. “That’s fantastic, but it places a greater demand on services.”
In other words, more chaos. And more opportunity for three letters to stand out in the soup bowl: AGA.