usual thinking. As the official retailer of Women’s Golf Day, PGATSS is a longtime supporter of growing the game and has a companywide program for young women called “Girls Got Drive.” For PGATSS growing the game is not just a nice sounding phrase and hasn’t been for a number of years. Each store offers weekly no cost clinics to juniors, plus there is additional support to organizations introducing women into our sport such as “She Who Golfs,” “Fore the Ladies” and “Women on Course.” For the third-year general managers, in conjunction with local First Tee chapters, will teach a Leadership Series for teens. Upon completion of the Series, 40 students will be tapped to attend a First Tee Summit at PGATSS owner Arthur Blank’s West Creek Ranch in Montana. Four scholarships of much smaller scale and serves to foster socialization around the golf experience in a group activity.” The program becomes one more step to involve new people in the game potentially converting them to oncourse play and purchase of apparel and equipment. Spiegel also noted that pickleball racquet and ball sales are “exploding” reflecting the enormous increase in those playing and overall general interest in the game. This was apparent at the PGA Show where pickleball courts drew a constant crowd of attendees watching exhibition matches that included Tiger Woods’ former golf instructor Hank Haney. Jill Spiegel steps into Dick Sullivan’s role as leader of an aggressively growing company that is the recognized leader in golf retailing and committed to programs making the game more inviting to women and juniors and turning nonplayers into players. $20,000 will be awarded at the Summit. Plus, this year for the first time, in addition to the 40 students selected for participation in the Montana Summit, 48 students will be selected to participate in the week-long inaugural Atlanta Leadership Academy to be held in June. An example of PGATSS’s progressive thinking was a trial instituted at the new Milwaukee store, offering memberships to the nine simulator hitting bays. Seating behind the bays encourages friends and family to watch and play games on the simulators together. Spiegel said, “This was not unlike a Topgolf entertainment center, but on a Michigan Golf Journal
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