PGA Headquarters Tour

Video details

• Instructor: Golf Life
• Category: Profiles
• Topic: Short Game

Transcript

On today's episode, we head to Frisco, Texas, the new home of the P G A of America, where we attend a P G A Buying and Education Summit to show you some cool new gear for your game. Later, we take you to Las Vegas for the fun of America's Golf Festival, but first, we were given a tour of the new P G A of America headquarters just north of Dallas, Texas. Daz, how are You? Great. Nice to see you. Thank you for hosting us here. This is an amazing experience that you guys have here in Frisco. Describe the entire complex that you've brought together. Well, an experience is the right word for this. Yeah. We worked real hard leading up to this to make sure that this campus offered everything that we could imagine for our 28,000 men and women professionals. Right. Uh, especially for what we do in education, what we do, and in the initiatives to grow the game of golf and all of that means for our headquarters and how that we, you know, we work to deliver on the expectations that everybody has for us. I found it very easy to fly into Dallas. You've got two airports come up here. The Frisco area offered a lot for centralization and access, I would imagine for all of you members. Well, we can all remember what South Florida was like to get to. This has been a blessing. It's very easy to get in here. It's very convenient. It saves people time, it saves people money for the most part. And, um, while this area is growing, it's just so central to all of our members. It just has been fantastic adjustment. Well, Let's look at what you have to offer. I'm so excited. This is, this is humongous. Yeah, I thank you. We're excited too. It's Awesome. This is a little overwhelming. Yeah. This isn't the typical training lab that you might see walking into a building for sure. This is incredible. Well, you have a a, a super giant of our game, so I guess this is gotta be a giant place for learning, right? Yeah. So it's so innovative. We, we thought carefully about how we were going to incorporate technology, but as we stand in this room and you look at what's to offer, the environment had to be set too. And you know, what building provides an opportunity like this where we have the ability to improve somebody's short game and teach the teacher about short game than a bunker complex like this. So How do you bring knowledge from this central place out to the pro professionals? I, I would imagine you have some fantastic teachers that use, I notice you have a putting lab with a lot of technology from some of the top putting companies. How do you teach the teacher? Yeah. This is an immersive type experience that they get. Everything's hands-on. So we describe with the best of class instructors how all this works from technology to application and what it really means to the people that they serve, namely the students. They're trying to get better. Right. And as they improve their performance, we know that they continue to play more and more. And when they play more, it's good for all of us in the business. For sure. Right. Well, Doss, I know you're a P g A master professional, that that was took time and it it describe the steps for, you know, the aspirational steps, if you will, for a young p g A professional to get to your level. Yeah. Well, first and foremost, you have to be a P G A member. So you have to go through our exciting training program to establish yourself in the industry and what this great career can provide. Once that happens, we hope that people provide a, a true career, not a job, but a career in golf. And as they work through that journey, they're gonna accumulate a lot of experiences and create some wisdom for themselves. The mass professional program helps encourage them to reinvest what they've learned so they can help other people. But you have to be a member for 10 years in a very deliberate, uh, career track of, of their choice in order to even apply. Let's look at a few more things I wanna ask you a little bit more about continuing to grow the game and how we're doing that. Sure. Excellent. This continues with just an amazing area where you can hit outside, you can hit inside, you've got simulators, you've got hey, PGA professionals. You might want to come see this, huh? Yeah, it's, it's remarkable. Um, our c e o often says this is Silicon Valley for golf, with all the technology and all the solutions available to them. This is like a kid going into Dave and Busters or some toy store. They get to come in here and play with the technology that maybe they've heard about but hadn't had a chance to get their hands on. Yeah. They get to here, one Of the things you said to me, all the vendors that are here, whether you know a lot of apparel vendors here and some of the hard equipment vendors probably would be in Vegas. This gives us a chance to bring the game together, which is really cool to, to tie the fact that the game really is bed in the p g a professional in his instruction and, and that that kind of is nice, isn't it? Yeah, That's very well said. How often do you have an opportunity to have a headquarters in a physical plant right in the center part of the country where everybody aspires to come right together? Especially around a show like we put on over this last week. It's been fantastic. The traffic in here from the members and their curiosity. Um, yeah, you, it's a good thing we can give it to 'em for free kind of thing. Well, and it was Cool last night with the district, which is really kind of a, a play on the off course thing that's happened, right? With Topgolf and a lot of the indoor stuff with simulators and whatnot. Folks who are out there playing a par three, getting to play around on a, on a putting green at at night. How, how does that help with getting people out on the course Now we want 'em on the course. They want 'em to have a relationship with their p g A professional. We've always said that golf has something for everybody young and old. Right. If you got a lot of time or you don't have much time at all, I think the experience that people had when they came here this week Yeah. Is they got to see that firsthand. Right. If you wanna play 18 holes or 36 holes, you can do that. But if you want to just get in front of some technology on a simulator with the cool technologies available to us today, you can also do that. And my goodness, if you want to play night golf with a par three or even just put on the putting green with your friends, it's fantastic. They've really had a lot of good things to say. Well, I met you many years ago and we were talking about growing the game. I think you have really succeeded, sir. And, uh, this is phenomenal. Our game is, is good. Well, thank you. We appreciate it. It's been a lot of, it's been a great journey and a lot of fun.