With the USGA celebrating 50 years of its membership program, its members reflect on the organization's wide impact in the game of golf.
What is the USGA?
The United States Golf Association has many perceptions among golfers and golf fans. The most common one is likely “the organization I pay to get my handicap.” Maybe it’s, “those people in charge of making the U.S. Open really hard.” Or perhaps, “the group that writes the rules I sometimes wish I didn’t have to follow.”
All of those are true, but did you know the USGA is also a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that invests all of its revenue back into the game of golf? Or that the USGA is the largest funder of turf research in the nation? Or that the USGA has a development program that will help pay for underprivileged players to compete in junior golf?
America’s governing body of golf is so much more than simply that — a governing body. But it couldn’t be without the help of its members, and 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of the USGA Membership Program.
The USGA’s origin story spans more than a century. In 1894, five different golf clubs — Newport Country Club, Chicago Country Club, Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, Saint Andrew’s Golf Club in Yonkers, New York and The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts — all declared their respective club champions as the “national amateur champion.”
Of course, there can only be one national amateur champion, so delegates from each club gathered to organize the first ever U.S. Amateur. On Dec. 22, 1894, the Amateur Golf Association of the United States was born. It didn’t take long for it to be renamed the United States Golf Association.
Fast forward 80 years, the USGA had grown from those five original clubs to nearly 5,000 member clubs and it was now staging nine different national championship events per year. The executive committee realized the organization had become too reliant on the U.S. Open as its primary source of revenue.
The USGA needed to diversify. In 1975, it began offering memberships to individuals. In exchange for a small fee, any golfer could become a member of the USGA, complete with a bag tag and a rule book.
“The membership program was, I would say, a very progressive thing for the USGA to do at the time,” said Charlie Pagnam, the USGA’s Chief Philanthropy Officer.
That entry level membership still exists today, but when Pagnam arrived at the USGA in 2019, the vision became much bigger.
“When I came in, the USGA Philanthropy Program had really not changed from 50 years ago. It was still just the members program. We didn't take the steps that most nonprofits had taken during that 50-year period.”
Pagnam and his team implemented new ways of raising funds and the organization’s philanthropic footprint began to grow rapidly.
“We’re now getting out and presenting the USGA to the golfer in a manner that we've never done before, and I think that's probably the biggest change we've made. We are out there talking to individuals one-on-one or in small groups about what the USGA does.”
So what exactly does the USGA do?
“Most people we go and speak with end up saying just that: ‘I don’t know the USGA did that,’ and then fill in whatever blank that is,” Pagnam said.
Take the USGA Green Section, for example, which is constantly working to find new, innovative ways to minimize golf’s impact on the environment.
Part of the Green Section is the Mike Davis Program for Advancing Golf Course Management, or, in short, the “Davis Grants,” which are comprised of $2 million handed out annually to fund projects at universities and research facilities across the country geared toward making golf’s use of water, pesticides and other resources more efficient.
The organization’s dedication to sustainability is something that hits home for Jason Nagel — a data engineer from upstate New York who’s been a USGA member since 2009.
“When we say, ‘I’m not hitting my driver as straight as I want to.’ Those are first world problems, right? We are truly blessed as individuals to live in the age we do, in the country we do with the abundance of wealth and things to do. We're certainly not worried about eating.
“We're complaining about this game we're playing that, you have to admit, is a little bit obnoxious when you look at the amount of land it takes up and the amount of water and fertilizer, all those things. The USGA is always looking for ways to minimize the long-term impact, the potential negative impact that can have over time and they're in front of it. I think that's wonderful.”
The USGA is working to raise $50 million to fully endow the Davis Grants for the next 25 years, but while they do that, their commitment to young people and underserved populations in golf is stronger than ever, too.
In 2023, the USGA realized golf needed to catch up to other Olympic sports in terms of developing young talent. There was no unified pathway to get underprivileged players the resources they needed to pursue golf as a passion or even a career.
So, the U.S. National Player Development Program was born, and has since helped fund the endeavors of more than 100 golfers ages 13-17.
“The USNDP is one that donors have been very supportive of in a very short period of time considering the program is only really finishing its second full year,” Pagnam said. “We're helping kids who don't have the financial wherewithal to continue their junior golf journey. They don't have enough money to get good teaching, they can't get adequate time at a practice facility, they don't have money to travel.”
The program exists to not only afford junior golfers an opportunity to push themselves and learn the life lessons golf has to offer, but also to find and develop the next generation of great American champions.
After all, the U.S. Open must go on so Jim and Michelle Alvare can take their “annual vacation.”
The Alvares have volunteered at every U.S. Open since 2013, sans this year’s event at Oakmont that interfered with a trip overseas. Michelle first worked a U.S. Open at Baltusrol in 1980, where she got to see Jack Nicklaus win the 16th of his 18 major championships.
The very next year, the U.S. Open was set to be held at Merion Golf Club near Philadelphia.
“I got a job offer to move to Lower Merion Township and be the assistant director for recreation. I accepted that job like a week after I went to Baltusrol for the U.S. Open with the caveat that they had to let me have days off so I could volunteer for the U.S. Open at Merion. They said, ‘Don't worry you're going to be very involved with the U.S. Open at Merion because some of our parks are going to be parking lots.’”
That birthed a passion for volunteering that was reignited when the U.S. Open returned to Merion in 2013. The Alvares started in the merchandise tent, but soon found their calling with the disability services committee.
“The goal of the disability access team is to make sure people have access to wherever they can get to on the course,” Jim said. “We help them get in and out of the grand stands and manage those spaces that are set up for people with disabilities, whether they're permanent or temporary disabilities. It doesn't matter.”
Michelle herself is disabled, having had four hip replacements, and says she’s used her firsthand experience to help the USGA improve and streamline its disability access at championship events.
The USGA’s commitment to including people with disabilities doesn’t stop there. It spends $3 million every year to host the U.S. Adaptive Open, which debuted in 2022 and provides talented golfers with disabilities the opportunity to compete for a national championship across eight different divisions, including limb impairment, intellectual impairment and seated players.
The U.S. Adaptive Open became the 14th annual championship organized by the USGA, 10 of which are exclusively reserved for amateurs, including the Walker Cup and Curtis Cup. It recently celebrated a $25 million endowment for both of those international matchplay competitions as part of its Keepers of the Cup donation campaign.
But still, despite all the progress the USGA has made in diversifying its revenue streams, Pagnam says the organization still relies heavily on the men’s U.S. Open as its main source of financial support, and even then, more than 70 percent of that money goes back into putting on more championships.
In order to continue growing events like the U.S. Adaptive Open and initiatives like the Davis Grants or the USNPD — the organization needs more support from the golf community.
“If someone says ‘You've got plenty of money,’ in terms of nonprofits in general, we don't have that much money,” Pagnam said. “When you think about what our budget is on an annual basis, what you want to have on account in case something happens. And, as we saw from the pandemic, things do happen, so we want to make sure that we're prepared to continue to offer the program we offer and not be so dependent upon the U.S. Open.
“Philanthropy is a way for us to do that.”
And being a USGA member is a way for golfers to give back to the game.
“The way I always looked at it was, I love golf, and by being a member of the USGA, it makes me feel like I'm more a part of the game that I love,” Nagel said. “I'm investing in preserving that game and maintaining that game and forwarding that game, so it's something I feel good doing every year.”
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: USGA celebrates 50th anniversary of its membership program
Category: General Sports
