FORE Magazine

Top Menu

  • About Me
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Home

Main Menu

  • Current Issue
  • Profiles
  • Sustainability
  • Travel
  • 19th Hole
  • Classic Course
  • FORE Her
  • More
    • Know the Rules
    • Handicap Hints
    • SCGA Junior
    • Where Are They Now?
    • News
    • Public Affairs
  • scga.org
Sign in / Join

Login

Welcome! Login in to your account
Lost your password?

Lost Password

Back to login

logo

FORE Magazine

  • Current Issue
  • Profiles
  • Sustainability
  • Travel
  • 19th Hole
  • Classic Course
  • FORE Her
  • More
    • Know the Rules
    • Handicap Hints
    • SCGA Junior
    • Where Are They Now?
    • News
    • Public Affairs
  • scga.org
Public Affairs
Home›Public Affairs›Governmental Affairs: Why We Do What We Do

Governmental Affairs: Why We Do What We Do

By Craig Kessler
January 29, 2020
1591
0
Share:

THE GAME’S CHALLENGES AREN’T GOING AWAY ANYTIME SOON

SCGA GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS was asked by the International Association of Golf Administrators (IAGA) to participate in a 75-minute presentation about the utility of advocacy to the 200 mostly amateur golf association leaders attending the organization’s recent annual meeting. The SCGA was joined by the Metropolitan Golf Association (New York), World Golf Foundation and San Francisco Public Golf Alliance to provide four specific perspectives on the subject — two states on opposite ends of the country to give the state perspectives, the organization charged with conducting National Golf Day in Washington, D.C., to provide the national perspective, and a city-specific organization to provide insight on what it means to advocate for the game at the grass roots.

SCGA was certainly encouraged by the focus given the subject. We’ve been an outlier among the game’s leadership organizations for a long time,
waiting for first adopters to join us in recognizing the utility of adding public/governmental affairs functionality
to their member services. We were beginning to wonder whether we were particularly prescient or just wizened by the realities of doing business and recreation in the state of California.

The conference was evidence that the SCGA was less brilliant than it was just a bit ahead of everyone else. Whether that makes living in California an advantage or a disadvantage is a subject for another day, but adversity does tend to make you sharper. Or it breaks you.

Well, we’re hardly “broken” here in Southern California, and that’s what we proceeded to present to the national assembly. More specifically, we asked and then answered the following three questions: What does the SCGA Governmental Affairs Department do? How does it do it? And why does it do it?

Readers of FORE probably have a pretty firm fix on what our department works on: legislation, regulation, water, taxes, land use, municipal golf, environment, communities. In other words, anything of a public policy nature that affects the game.

READERS OF FORE may also have some insight as to how the SCGA tries to influence these issues, but only “some.” Bismarck’s quip about not taking too close a look at how laws or sausage are made comes to mind as the best explanation for not sharing too much of that detail.

But the most important of the three questions — why the SCGA does what it does — is what most piqued the interest of the 200 golf administrators at the IAGA conference, and it’s probably the question that most piques the interest of SCGA’s 175,000 members. And unlike the “how” question, it is one that SCGA Governmental Affairs can answer definitively for FORE’s readers.

TO SOMEONE WHO labors every day in these fields, the answer to the “why” question rises to the level of self-evident. If not the amateur association, then who? PGA professionals? Superintendents? General managers? Ownership/management groups? The myriad suppliers (e.g., irrigation, machinery, herbicides)? How about the club manufacturers domiciled in Southern California?

Each of them represents a narrow interest — important interests to be sure and interests involved in the California Alliance for Golf on matters of statewide concern — but narrow interests nonetheless. Although all of them can lay claim to being critical stakeholders in the game, none of them has the bandwidth or numbers required to represent every aspect of the game. And what numbers they do have are either very small, as in the case of the professional/occupational organizations, or profit driven, as is the case with ownership/management groups and manufacturer/suppliers.

Small numbers don’t equate to political heft. Profits negate all pretense of disinterest. But an organization with a tagline like SCGA’s “your passion, our purpose” can lay credible claim to both. Some might call it leadership by default; others leadership by best available option. We would call it leadership by assumption of the responsibility that any nonprofit organization of 175,000 devotees of a specific activity must exercise in order to be fully faithful to its mission.

READERS OF FORE PROBABLY HAVE A PRETTY FIRM FIX ON WHAT SCGA GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS WORKS ON: LEGISLATION, REGULATION, WATER, TAXES, LAND USE, MUNICIPAL GOLF, ENVIRONMENT, COMMUNITIES. IN OTHER WORDS, ANYTHING OF A PUBLIC POLICY NATURE THAT AFFECTS THE GAME.”

In this case the specific activity is golf and the mission is to serve the interests of golf and golfers, not just the 175,000 who are members of the SCGA, but the thousands more who just haven’t yet seen the wisdom of joining them in common cause.

“Common cause” is a phrase redolent of the American Revolutionary War and generally applied to “causes” that are much higher-minded than a game, but a phrase applicable here in its own small way. It’s applicable in this limited sense to any organization that brings together persons with a common interest, whether that interest is clean beaches, urban parks, safe neighborhoods, bicycling, youth sports, wetlands, senior services or any of the hundreds of other interests that fire folks’ passions.

WE DON’T KNOW WHETHER we persuaded the golf administrators at November’s IAGA conference that their mission requires more of them than Handicap Indexes, Course Ratings and a robust championship calendar, but we do know that this was the first time the IAGA had devoted a lengthy general session to the subject of the role of the golf association in advocating for the game.

We know that the public policy issues that we and our fellow presenters highlighted were issues of deep concern to them. We know that many in that room had already begun to contemplate how they too might add advocacy to their organizations’ quivers of member services. We know that here in California our allied associations and organizations appreciate and support our assertion of leadership.

And we trust that this foray into why we do what we do at the SCGA leads you to conclude that we serve your interests, your club’s interests, and the interests of the game. The game’s public policy challenges aren’t going away anytime soon.

Previous Article

Handicap Hints: Golf’s United World

Next Article

Travelin’ Joe: Making a Splash in Los ...

0
Shares
  • 0
  • +
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Craig Kessler

Craig came to the SCGA via the merger with the Public Links Golf Association (PLGA), where he served as Executive Director for 11 years and pioneered the development of the nation’s most active and accomplished advocacy component. He has been tasked with doing the same for the SCGA as its first Director of Governmental Affairs, albeit on a much larger stage. In addition to his current and previous job responsibilities, Craig has served as a USGA Committeemen continuously for 15 years, Chair of the Los Angeles Golf Advisory Commission, Chair of the Los Angeles County Golf Advisory Committee, Member of the City of Los Angeles’ Griffith Park Master Plan Board, Member of the Ventura Golf Advisory Group, Member of the Los Angeles County Junior Golf Foundation Board of Directors and Chair of the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce First Tee of Los Angeles Advisory Committee. In 2008 Craig was inducted into the Long Beach Golf Hall of Fame.

Related articles More from author

  • Fall 2017Public Affairs

    The Era of Recycled Water May Be Drawing to a Close

    October 23, 2017
    By Craig Kessler
  • Public AffairsWinter 2021

    Dark Clouds on Muni Golf’s Horizon

    January 15, 2021
    By Craig Kessler
  • water-golf-course
    Public Affairs

    Sprouted of Drought: The Golf Industry’s “Water Task Forces” Take the Lead in Conservation and Wise Environmental Stewardship

    April 1, 2014
    By Judd Spicer
  • Fall 2019Public Affairs

    Local Spotlight: El Cariso Golf Course

    October 17, 2019
    By Craig Kessler
  • FeaturedPublic AffairsSpring 2022

    Golf’s Wakeup Call: Facts Matter… Perceptions Matter More

    April 20, 2022
    By Craig Kessler
  • industry
    Public Affairs

    The Industry at Mid-Decade: The Good News is that the Bad News isn’t All That Bad

    January 1, 2015
    By Craig Kessler

Leave a reply Cancel reply

Recent Posts

  • FeaturedSpring 2022Sustainability

    Jewel in the Middle of Nowhere: Death Valley’s Furnace Creek GC Ramps Up Sustainability Efforts

  • FeaturedSpring 2022Travel

    The Pubs of St Andrews

  • FeaturedGolf GroupsSpring 2022

    Wednesday Special: San Diego’s Hookers And Slicers Celebrate 50 Years

  • FeaturedFirst CutSpring 2022

    Nine is Fine (and here’s why): Get Creative when you Play and Find your New BFF

  • FeaturedPublic AffairsSpring 2022

    Golf’s Wakeup Call: Facts Matter… Perceptions Matter More

FeaturedSpring 2022Travel

The Pubs of St Andrews

The challenge seemed daunting at first. On an eight-day trip to St Andrews, my job was to rate the pubs in this lively college town where golf began six centuries ...
  • Scotland Must-Plays & Hidden Gems: 10 Terrific Tracks that Prove the Old Course Isn’t the Only Game Around

    By Joe Passov
    April 21, 2022
  • Bob Does Hollywood: The Hardest Working Man on Instagram Finds Gold in Golf

    By Adam Hawk
    April 21, 2022
  • Not Your Father’s Game: With Two Facilities Newly Open and Callaway at the Helm, the Topgolf Explosion Comes to the Southland

    By Scott Kauffman
    April 21, 2022
  • The Provisional Ball: What? How? When?

    By Jimmy Becker
    April 21, 2022
© 2016 FORE Magazine About Us | Contact Us | Advertise