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Golf hits the Hill

Scott Hollister

Members of GCSAA’s Government Relations Committee meet with representatives of Reed Smith, the association’s lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., prior to their meetings with legislators on Capitol Hill during National Golf Day. Photo by Scott Hollister

“Golf” and “Washington, D.C.” usually elicit thoughts of such storied layouts as Congressional and Burning Tree, not trips to Capitol Hill.

But the leading associations in the game, including GCSAA, are hoping to change that. The first step in that transformation took place in mid-April when National Golf Day brought golf leaders to the nation’s capital to deliver the message of the game’s positive economic, environmental and personal impact on America.

“It was exciting to be a part of the first-ever National Golf Day,” GCSAA president David S. Downing II, CGCS, said. “This type of cooperation between all of the major associations in golf was great to see and needs to be sustained for the benefit of the game, the facilities and all two million people employed in the golf industry.

“This was a big first step and one that we are proud to be a part of on behalf of our members and the facilities that employ them.”

The idea of a National Golf Day was born out of the dark days following Hurricane Katrina. Golf courses along the Gulf Coast that were damaged by the storm turned to the federal government for assistance, but were flatly rejected, lumped in with fringe outfits like tattoo and massage parlors as non-essential businesses.

Determined to change that perception and quantify the industry’s economic standing, the game came together to conduct a comprehensive economic impact study, the 2005 Golf Economy Report. The final results were significant: golf generates $76 billion in direct economic impact, creating an industry larger than the motion picture and video industries. Additionally, the game is responsible for $3.5 billion in charitable contributions each year.

Those revelations were prime fodder for discussions during the day’s formal events — a congressional breakfast sponsored by The First Tee, an afternoon news conference at the National Press Club and an evening reception in the Capitol building — and formed two of the three legs that would serve as the day’s foundation.

For the golf course management side of the industry, it was that third leg that provided the most notable headlines from National Golf Day. Backed by the results from the first two stages of GCSAA’s Golf Course Environmental Profile project, golf finally had some facts to back the industry’s long-standing opinion that the game and its managers are good stewards of the environment, and GCSAA representatives carried that message to every corner of the nation’s capital.

Represented in formal settings by both Downing and former CEO Steve Mona, who now serves in that same role with the World Golf Foundation, the association’s role in gathering solid data on the game’s environmental impact — golf course irrigation accounting for just one half of one percent of the 408 billion gallons of water consumed in this country each day, for example — was widely acknowledged by both legislators and the other allied associations gathered in Washington for the day’s events.

But GCSAA’s involvement didn’t end there. The association’s Government Relations Committee held its annual meeting in D.C. the day before National Golf Day, and spent an afternoon on Capitol Hill in meetings with the committee members’ various senators and representatives, talking labor (the H-2B guest worker visa debate dominated discussions), environment and economy.

Scott Hollister is the editor of GCM.

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