from the ceo
Brian Thorburn
Stephen Pitt
CEO – Golf Australia
CEO – PGA of Australia
F
L
ast month I had the opportunity to
travel to Coober Pedy with a group of
PGA Members from the Performance
Golf group. Whilst seemingly a strange place
for a golf-related business trip, the visit was
part of the Remote Golf program, which has
been taking our game to the far corners of
Australia. It’s always a positive experience
to see the ways in which our members and
those within the wider community help
to grow participation, particularly in nontraditional golf areas, and this was yet
another opportunity to realise the potential
our game has at the grassroots level. I
commend everyone involved with this
program and look forward to it developing
into the future with the continued support of
the PGA and PGA Members.
The PGA Tour of Australasia is now
back underway for the second half of the
2014 season with two tournaments to be
contested in August, the Fiji International and
the Isuzu QLD Open, and events to follow in
each of the remaining months of the year.
Again, the schedule traverses most Australian
states and we encourage golf fans to get out
and support our local Tour when it comes to
town. As we’ve seen in recent years the Tour
continues to produce some of Australia’s next
top talents, and we’re extremely proud of the
standard of golf being delivered. The full PGA
Tour of Australasia schedule can be found at
www.pga.org.au.
Whilst on our website, the PGA is in
the process of launching a new look
www.pga.org.au which will boast significant
or many years, club membership has
been the cornerstone of Australian golf
and for most of the last decade our
national membership has ranged between
450,000 and 400,000. Like many other similar
golfing countries, membership in Australia has
faced a small annual decline in recent years and
clubs have been forced to find a greater level of
non-member revenue to ensure their viability.
new features for golf fans including new
and improved scoring functionality, player
profiles and broader content across all areas
of the game. If you haven’t visited the site
recently I encourage you to do so. I hope
you’ll be pleasantly surprised with the
improved features, particularly heading into
the summer of golf.
Finally I’d like to pay a mention to one of our
Tournament Members Jarrod Lyle, who by
the time this goes to print will have made his
return to the Web.com Tour and will now be
preparing to tee it up on the PGA TOUR. Jarrod’s
journey over the last few years has been heavily
publicised and as Jarrod has said on numerous
occasions, the support he has received has
been incredible. As he now takes his final steps
to returning to where his life left off two years
ago, on behalf of everyone at the PGA I wish
Jarrod his wife Briony and daughter Lusi all
the very best for the next stage of their life.
Jarrod’s story has been incredibly humbling
and inspiring for so many and I wish him well
for the next stage of his career and life.
Hide the Red Dot.
Putt Like a
Major Champion.
SeeMore offers a simple system for you to improve your putting. Line up the 2 white
lines. Hide the Red Dot behind the 2-tone shaft. That gets your head and hands in perfect
position and squares you to the target. It sets you up for a perfect stroke. Same way every
time. You’ll make more putts. Invest in the most important part of your game. Scoring.
You’ll love your SeeMore Putter. Forever. Made in the USA. Custom built to your desire.
You’ll own a deadly accurate putting system. Check out the story online. SeeMore is the
#1 Performance Putter in Golf. Winning Putter. 2007 Masters. 1999 US Open. Many more.
Putt like a Major Champion with SeeMore RifleScope Technology (RST).
Available exclusively at selected On Course Golf stockists.
SeeMorePutters.com.au
Your local experts
On Course Qtr Pg Ad.indd 1
14
August 2014 | www.insidegolf.com.au
14/06/12 5:04 PM
A key area for clubs to attract and maintain
members is to ensure the product they are
offering is enticing to potential members and
cannot be sourced from other sources. This is
why it is so critical for clubs to look carefully
at what they offer to their members and
to be aware of new ideas that