New year, new challenges. Pete Bevacqua, has been named Chairman of World Golf Foundation’s Board of Directors for 2015. Bevacqua succeeds Tim Finchem, Commissioner of the PGA TOUR, who served as the 2014 Board Chairman.
Bevacqua became the PGA of America’s third CEO on November 10, 2012. Did you know that he helped to recruit Tom Watson to be the Ryder Cup captain (2014) of the US team? Good intent, but….He also created in 2013, PGA's first CMO position.
Thus became Kevin Ring the first chief marketing officer of PGA of America. Kevin Ring's first 2 big campaigns as the CMO of PGA of USA were the Get Golf Ready program and the Perfect Day campaign to reactivate ex-golfers and expose people to golf.
In 2014 cca. 25 million people played golf. Sounds good, but if I put in the right context it is not so nice. This number shows a shrinkage of 18% vs. 2006, although the population grew by 6%.
This trend could be reversed or at least slow it if our PGA professionals would understand what is their influence on the popularity of golf and their contribution to the revenues of their golf club. So let's teach them how to sell the services of the golf club. Who could be more reliable source of information when we want to buy a new golf equipment?