Five Questions with American Junior Golf Association Executive Director, Stephen Hamblin

What do you want people to know about the AJGA?

Since 1978, we’ve been in the business of making dreams come true.

As a nonprofit, we have a singular goal: to provide a competitive platform for talented boys and girls, ages 12-19, to showcase their skills in pursuit of a college golf scholarship.

This year we will offer more than 200 annual events, including one-day qualifiers. We’ve had record membership growth for 13 years and serve nearly 7,500 juniors from all 50 states and 60 countries.

Beyond running the best junior golf events possible, it is our mission to develop quality people.

We take this leadership role seriously, initiating programs to reinforce a positive code of conduct, fast pace of play, conscious care for our host facilities, gratitude for the sponsors and volunteers who make our mission possible, and the tools for players to give back to charity. We are more than scores on a scoreboard … we’ve witnessed four decades of sportsmanship, leadership, respect and academic success, on and off the course.

Seeing “golf’s next generation” succeed in college, in business and in life is part of why I’ve loved my job for more than 35 years. I like to say we knew Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth, Ariya Jutanugarn, Mariah Stackhouse, Matt Wolfe and so many others … before they were cool.

How do you see your role in growing the game?

When I took over as Executive Director in 1984, the AJGA had 13 tournaments and only 10 percent of our 1,100 members were girls.

I’m proud of how we’ve grown our schedule – nearly doubling in the past 10 years but keeping our membership and tournament fees flat thanks to support from sponsors. We keep costs low by analyzing data and working to bring more events to the membership. For example, since 2009, we’ve doubled events scheduled in California, our largest membership state. We also offer Performance Based Entry status to more than 2,000 non-AJGA events, which can help members save money on travel and provide experience in other quality competitions.

As we expand our schedule, we also balance key dates in junior golf like state junior championships, USGA events and other major non-AJGA events.

Sometimes we add tournament opportunities into areas where we know junior golf needs our influence. We organized a tournament in Montana in 2018 to better connect junior golfers with a platform to showcase their skills for college golf coaches.  Before our tournament, no spectators could watch on course at junior golf tournaments – including college coaches – and we are proud of being a part of recent changes to Montana high school legislation, in part because of our event.

Golf has also become incredibly popular for girls – nearly 30 percent of the AJGA membership is now female. We scale most tournament fields according to this percentage, and in 2019 will also offer seven girls-only tournaments at the highest level. A few other special opportunities:

• The AJGA’s ANA Junior Inspiration champion earns an exemption into golf’s first major, the ANA Inspiration.
• LPGA Hall of Famer Annika Sorenstam has supported an event since 2009.
• Since 2002, 18 LPGA players have graduated from competing in the biennial PING Junior Solheim Cup to the Solheim Cup.

One of the other decisions we’ve made is to provide a great staff at our tournaments and in our headquarters, which has evolved into growing talented careers for people to work in golf and sports.

The AJGA has created a great entrée into the golf business through its internship program. Each year, we hire nearly 100 interns who work out of our national headquarters north of Atlanta or travel in the spring and summer to put on events. Each experience provides an opportunity to get a hands-on experience working in sports, but more specifically, receive training and perspective in golf.

Around half of our interns are golfers – some played with us as juniors, competed in college or are recreational players – and the others learn everything on the job. As our schedule has grown, our intern numbers have also increased.

Diversity and inclusion are top of mind for all companies. What’s your strategy?

A deeply-talented, diverse intern pool is critical for us to serve customers and building a more inclusive full-time staff: 84% percent of our current team has worked their way up from an internship.

I’m incredibly proud of the fact that our full-time staff has voted to make the AJGA a top workplace in the Atlanta area for seven of the past eight years. I’m also thrilled for people when they move on to their dream jobs … a few intern and full-time alumni examples of thousands:

• A. Roberts, Principal Owner, O.B. Sports
• Steve Ethun, Director of Communications, Augusta National
• Ben Kimball, Director of U.S. Women’s Open and U.S. Amateur, USGA
• Mark Brazil, Tournament Director, Wyndham Championship
• Courtney Jones, Associate Head Coach, Washington University
• Amanda Herrington, Director of Communications, PGA TOUR
• Kendra Hansey, Communications Specialist, United States Olympic Committee
• Kelly Flanagan, CFO, Jacksonville Jaguars

We recruit motivated talent – mostly current and recently-graduated college students – from all around the country to join our team. The final step for summer candidates includes a trip to Atlanta for our Intern Recruitment Weekend (IRW).

The weekend replicates the rigor of the job, examines teamwork and problem-solving skills, and gives the candidates a platform to showcase their skills. We also dive deep into our culture and bring in industry speakers. We pay all expenses to ensure any top prospect can attend.

We’ve worked to grow our intern pool up to more than 1,500 applicants for our 100 positions, but we still need more diverse candidates. To move the needle, we engaged partner KPMG for an analysis on areas of opportunity and weakness in our process.

We’re proud of our efforts so far, which include:

• Writing a diversity statement to articulate our goal. We looked at best practices for Fortune 500 companies and sports organizations to build a framework, and then ultimately collaborated with the staff to get buy-in on this statement: The American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) is committed to creating an engaging, safe, and inclusive environment. We welcome people from all backgrounds and believe by embracing diverse perspectives, we are better equipped to accomplish our mission of developing golf’s next generation.
• Creating public-facing social and digital channels to communicate our efforts and values.
• Setting and tracking measurable outcomes and goals with hiring and other benchmarks.
• Creating strategic relationships to create awareness about our internship program and opportunities in golf.
• Educating our staff on relevant topics, including unconscious bias in hiring.

I see our efforts as part of an ongoing prominent strategic investment we make in our success, rather than a checklist that will ever be completed.

Golf can be an expensive sport. How do you make sure every junior has an opportunity to play?

We consciously help all members by challenging ourselves to fund new programs, cut staff expenses in favor of improving the membership experience, and keeping tournament and membership fees flat while adding value.

Still, costs in golf add up quickly … and nearly 20 years ago, we found a way to help through building the Achieving Competitive Excellence (ACE) Grant program.

Junior golfers apply for the ACE Grant by providing federal tax documentation. Once approved, juniors are reimbursed for membership and tournament expenses as well as qualified travel expenses for AJGA tournaments, USGA Junior Amateur Championships and the state junior championship.

Since 2002, more than 2,000 junior golfers have turned $4 million in reimbursements into $15 million in college golf scholarships.

I love that all our ACE Grant recipients are also enrolled in our Leadership Links program which provides the tools and platform for them to pay forward the generosity of sponsors and donors by raising money to help others themselves.

You’re doing a lot of great things. How do you measure your overall success?

The AJGA is a dynamic, creative organization with a growth mindset. Two of our recent accomplishments really speak to growing the mission:

With the help of partners, we offset expenses to offer a complimentary membership to more than 1,100 college golf coaches. All programs, can now access critical information on players, including swing videos and results to maximize their recruiting budgets. This small change offers a big return to players.

We run two events dedicated to helping unsigned high school seniors find an opportunity to play at the next level. One event is held in December, in conjunction with the coaches’ annual meeting, where 60% of the field has reported receiving an offer directly from the exposure at this tournament. Scholarship offers are often extended during the event.

Of all the things we do, big and small, at the AJGA … serving our mission and purpose will always come first.