By Vinnie Manginelli, PGA
With the end of the summer golf season comes PGA Jr. League playoff competition, and with over half a million junior golfers taking part nationwide in 2024, Blake Jirges, the PGA of America Director of Player Development at Coto de Caza Golf & Racquet Club in the Southern California PGA Section, was hoping to keep play going after his team fell just short of qualifying for their SCPGA Local Qualifier that was held at Alhambra Golf Course.
Jirges decided to implement a PGA Jr. League All-Star Play Day as a potential alternative method of qualifying for the regional tournament, and by way of their victory in this recent event, the Coto de Caza team earned their ticket to Tucson for the District 12 Regional Tournament! More on that later…
Now in his fourth year at Coto de Caza, Jirges has a successful PGA Jr. League program with participation greater than ever. “It’s been a phenomenal experience so far. They had some instruction and coaching going on when I arrived, but we’ve increased that lesson revenue by more than 300 percent,” Jirges told me in a Golf Range Magazine interview last summer.
Jirges, a four-time Golf Range Association of America (GRAA) Top 100 Growth of the Game Teaching Professional, hosted an in-house PGA Jr. League program in 2024 with 60 junior golfers and put a travel team of 15 skilled golfers in place to compete against four other clubs in the area – Aliso Viejo Country Club, El Niguel Country Club, Mission Viejo Country Club and Tijeras Creek Golf Club.
Looking back, Jirges says he had 36 kids in their first PGA Jr. League season at Coto four years ago and has more than doubled that number to 75 between the in-house regular season and travel leagues. With fall play coming up soon, he’ll have hosted over 100 PGA Jr. League players this year. Yes, in addition to the spring regular season and summer championship season, many clubs are implementing PGA Jr. League programs in the fall as well.
In addition to the many benefits that PGA Jr. League brings to its young participants, there are also financial advantages reaped by the golf professionals and facility as a whole. Between uniforms, instruction, 12 practices, six matches and a season-ending party, the cost per participant is about $400. The fall season agenda is scaled down slightly and is thus a little cheaper than the spring/summer campaign. Additional income is available to the instructors and coaches with private instruction and small group clinics, depending on each club’s player development programming model.
As an added perk to the club, some private facilities that allow PGA Jr. League participation among non-members are seeing families buy into membership as a result of league participation – Jirges cited eight such instances at Coto this year.
As a program that promotes friends, fairways and fun, PGA Jr. League has helped grow the game of golf over more than a decade. However, this magic doesn’t happen without the dedication of PGA of America Golf Professionals like Jirges. His drive to increase participation and create opportunities for his players to meet their goals is inspiring. His is just one story, however. See what PGA Jr. League can do for your junior golfers and your facility.
As for the District 12 Regional Tournament:
“It was a great time in Tucson at Skyline Country Club, and the kids and their families had an absolute blast,” Jirges tells us. “On Friday, our team played a practice round together, getting comfortable and acclimated to the course. On Saturday, we competed in an 18-hole stroke play qualifier to hopefully move on to the match play rounds on Sunday. Unfortunately, we missed the cut by just three strokes.”
Somewhat bummed out, Jirges and his team went out for boba and Korean barbecue afterward. On Sunday, they played in a “just for fun” shootout – a two-person scramble format – and Jirges’ team took the top two spots, winning some cool prizes.
“So even though we didn’t move onto the next round,” he adds, “I said in a speech to the kids that it doesn’t matter how we finish, win or lose. ‘Did you do your best?’ ‘Did you play hard?’ ‘If you can say yes, then we did what we could.’ As I said to them, it’s the memories created with each other, the adventure of traveling as a team to a new city and state that are important. It was an amazing experience for everyone involved!”
