MikeY:
This is a very interesting subject and one I need to be more familiar with. The AJGA is actually hurting our Pennsylvania Golf Association presence with our good state junior players(our State Junior Championship) simply because there's so much competition amongst associations and their competitions these days in the junior golf world. It's getting to be a scheduling problem, in other words there's just too much for these good kids to play in today. The AJGA's huge schedule takes away a good number of our young state golfer's time and resources from what we've been doing for them for years.
Although the AJGA may be a "non-profit" association the fact that they need association or tournament sponsors is a telling thing. If this association, like so many of the state and regional associatons, are amateur associations the fact of the need for "sponsors" or tournament "Title Sponsors" is a bit of a sea-change in amateurism and amateur golf in America.
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Frankly, I just can't decide. All I know is it's a very different thing from the way amateur golf used to work in the past. On the one hand, we need to sustain these associations if we want to offer golf and competitive golf but to do so any of them have to go where the money to sustain them is. If that's sponsorship by some commercial entity, what are you going to do---turn the money down in the name of some purity over the concept of "amateurism"? On the other hand, something like the "Comcast AJGA Pennsylvania Regional Championship" just sounds pretty odd to me as would the "Comcast Pennsylvania Amateur Championship". But don't laugh, we do consider such a thing simply to better sustain these tournaments today.
When I look at some of these AJGA players, though, particularly the older ones, they sure do look to me like little tour pros---they have all their mannerisms and a very similar "aura".
Do most all of these kids play that circuit because they're dreaming of being tour pros someday? You bet your ass they do! Should the AJGA then be sponsored by the PGA of America or even the PGA TOUR?
I would bet that if the AJGA is around in twenty years and doing as well as it is now that over half the players on the PGA TOUR in twenty years would've come up through the AJGA associaton or "system".
You refer to the AJGA as "little league". Maybe the time is quickly coming when it should be more accurately referred to as the "Minor Leagues" for the "BIG SHOW"-----The PGA TOUR!
