Dear Fellow PGA of America Golf Professionals:

I hope this message finds you well and you all had a happy and healthy holiday season. I know 2023 was another busy year for all of us. Certainly a little time off will be good for everyone to recharge the batteries and get ready for another busy year in 2024.

Shortly after our Fall Membership Meeting at Philmont Country Club, your Section team traveled to Frisco, Texas, for the PGA of America Annual Meeting at our new headquarters. First, if you have not seen the new facility, you need to. The entire campus is amazing. Trust me on this one, if you get a chance to go, take advantage of it. It was great to see two of PGA of America Members from our Section win sational awards as Johnny Carpineta won the Patriot Award, while Jeff Kiddie was named Golf Professional of the Year, the PGA of America’s highest honor; he is the first ever recipient to hail from the Philadelphia PGA Section. It did not take the many people there very long to start treating “Johnny C” like a rockstar. The guy was getting high fives and handshakes from everyone there after hearing his story. It was fun to experience.

We had a lot of interesting breakout sessions and presentations while in Texas. PGA REACH, PGA LEAD, future projections, and more were discussed. Another very interesting presentation was from the National Golf Foundation, which had a lot of great data on the growth of the game. Specifically, post-pandemic growth. The bottom line is golf grew at significant rates in 2020 and 2021, and although growth has slowed slightly, it is still trending upwards, and all metrics show continued growth expected in 2024.

Our Section Awards Committee met in December to determine our newest winners, and they did a really nice job of picking the recipients. There are so many deserving stories but this year’s winners are as inspiring as ever. For full details on the winners and their stories, click here. We will be honoring our winners on March 17 at our annual awards dinner, which promises to be another fun celebration.

If you got a phone call or email toward the end of the year asking for your help in completing your compensation profile, and you filled it out, thank you! If you did not, there is still time to get your survey completed. It is completely confidential and only takes five or six minutes to complete. Our tiered funding from the PGA of America is directly tied to our completion percentage on this, and honestly, we are not real good in relation to the other 40 Sections for completion percentage on these surveys. We could really use your help on this folks, please take a few minutes to fill this out if you can by clicking here.

The staff at the Section office, as well as our committee members, are working away on schedules and programs for 2024. If you are interested in hosting a Philadelphia PGA Junior Tour event or have an idea for an educational event in 2024, please let us know. In most cases, our best ideas come directly from our member.

The first few months as your president have been busy, but very enjoyable. If you have any questions or ideas, I can always be reached via email at chipr@pga.com or on my phone at (717) 421-0211. I am always available and happy to help in any way I can. Until next time, I hope you all have a wonderful start to 2024, and may we all get to enjoy a little rest and family time over the next few months.

Best Wishes,

Peter G. “Chip” Richter PGA
President
Philadelphia PGA Section