News

A monthly column from NYSGA Executive Director Bill Moore

Of all the competitions we conduct at the NYSGA, the Amateur Series has probably evolved the most in my time with the Association.  A few other states were having some success with a series of “fun but competitive” events, so we figured we might as well give it a shot!

In 2004, our Club Services Director and his counterpart in Vermont cooked up something called a NYSGA “Border Day”, a joint venture to get some golfers together in the North Country and Vermont.  That event was held at Westport GC on July 29, 2005.  At that time, the NYSGA only ran Championships, and while a couple of them had a net component to them, we didn’t have a single event for the average golfer.

In 2006 we ran a couple more of these events, changing their name to “State Days” since the goal was to hold them all over the state.  In 2008 we ran seven, and by 2010 we ran more than 10.  Events were starting to sell out as we moved them to mostly private facilities, giving our members the opportunity to play a club they could not otherwise access.

In 2012 we added a Championship for event winners, and in 2014 we changed the name to the “NYSGA Amateur Series”, and created a points list (which was WAY too complicated) to come up with whom we would invite to the Championship event.  The Amateur Series was well on its way to where it is today.

Despite taking 2020 off for COVID, our Amateur Series is more popular than ever.  This season we are running 22 events, plus our Series Championship event to be held at Teugega.  Despite having 96 slots to fill in each event, our most popular day sold out in less than 3 minutes and we are turning away a lot of interested golfers.  This off-season we will be looking at options to get some new players involved - it could be a lottery system, different formats, or maybe an event or two for “new” players, etc.  If you have any ideas or recommendations, please feel free to pass them along!