CBS 58's Hometown Athlete: Wisconsin PGA Junior Foundation helps grow golf boom
WISCONSIN (CBS 58) -- Golf is in another boom since 2020, with the record for most rounds played broken in three of the last five years. And the Wisconsin PGA Junior Golf Foundation is making sure the game is prepared for the future. We caught up with them at the Wisconsin PGA Junior Championship at Brown Deer Golf Course.
It's taking golf to a whole new level.
"Learning how to play. Learning to play tournaments like this one. I mean, this is the biggest junior tournament in the state," Director of Junior Golf at Wisconsin PGA Section Andy Landenberger says. "We have 400 kids from all over the state playing in this, so it's huge."
The Wisconsin PGA Junior Foundation runs 163 tournaments this year.
"It's a who's who. Absolutely the best of the best are here," Landenberger says. "You look at. I was just talking to one of our rules officials this morning. Hunter Eichhorn was a kid from Upper Michigan. He's on the Korn Ferry tour. Playing very well. Two-time player of the year. He played here. Like, that's the kind of player level that you're talking when you're looking at this leaderboard."
"I'm just grateful that they have all the tournaments that they put on, because it gives me an opportunity to showcase myself," golfer Payton Haugen says. "Especially helps me with recruiting, stuff like that, and you know, they have this tournament that qualifies to a national one so I'm just grateful that you know, I'm able to play in these and to help me get better."
During the pandemic, golf exploded, and now people play more rounds than ever.
"We're outdoors," Landenberger says. "Like it just worked for us and that's really when it started to explode. Kids couldn't play baseball. They couldn't play hockey. They had so many things they had to cancel, and you know what? I'll play golf."
And now this state organization grows the game for the future.
"We look to give the best tournament experience we can," Landenberger says. "Right? So from, you know, we're starting kids. We're scoring kids. We're doing live scoring for this event. For a lot of our 36-hole events. But we wanna give them, you know, what they -- some of these kids haven't seen that. You're playing not against your group, maybe from your conference, but you're playing with that best player from, you know, Eau Claire. And maybe you've never played them before. Or you've never met them before, which is even awesome, and a lot of these kids make, you know, lifelong friends by kids they played with in our events, which is really cool."