Golf Academy of America ®

Nov 26, 2008

There are a lot of professional golf careers to choose from, including playing the sport, marketing it, or being a cook or maintenance worker, but they all contribute to the success of the gigantic golf industry.

There are an estimated 2 million jobs available in the golf industry. A wide variety of professional golf careers are out there, you just have to find them. Most don't involve being a pro player, who makes millions of dollars a year through endorsement deals and the like. It helps to get a background in management, travel, publishing, or even the food and beverage business if you want to explore opportunities for a career in the golf world.

One possible job is to run a marketing campaign for a golf course. With as many as 18,000 courses in the United States alone, each one needs its own advertising. You see ads in magazines, billboards, and even on TV. This involves obtaining some sort of business training, but if you are in marketing, there is a chance you will not only be able to market the golf course, but major events that will take place there. Opportunities might arise to design products that are based on it, such as t-shirts, hats, and mugs.

With events such as the PGA, LPGA, and Nationwide Tours as popular as they are, the number of people exposed to the sport creates a competitive environment. Several universities around the country offer a Professional Golf Management (PGM) degree. So, with the right education, a career in this industry is very possible. Jobs as common as construction and landscaping are important to the sport, since courses require a lot of planning to build, cover a huge area of ground, and once built require an intense amount of maintenance. Acres and acres of grass, sand pits, trees and flowers require attention year round. Thankfully, most are located in warm or semi-warm climates and can stay open year round.

Jobs available in this industry not only relate to the construction, operations, and maintenance of a resort. The sportsmen, as well as the workers that do all the up keep, need to eat and have places to stay. Aside from managing the banquet hall or snack shop, cooks are needed to prepare the delicacies that are served at these sports centers. Cooks and dishwashers are needed, as are cleaning personnel. Huge events are often planned and high profile functions often require executive chefs, wait staff, bartenders, and concierge services.

Additional positions include those for computer technicians. Every successful business owner today knows that it is not a choice, but a requirement, to have a website. Large businesses often employ their own computer technicians to maintain and update their site constantly for fresh content. For a computer savvy person designing or administering the courses website can be very rewarding.

Writing is also an important component of the industry. Writers are needed, not even just for the website, but to provide articles, marketing material, press releases, facility notices, and news. For these, it is a necessity to have a background in the sport and business. Golf career guides are commonplace. There are also numerous books that continue to be written about the sport, and the stars that make it famous, and vice versa. If you are interested in the sport and are an avid writer, then capitalize on this large industry.

A solid background also helps if you are interested in writing about it in an instructive manner. Teaching it is no different. With the many retreats, training programs, schools, and degree programs offered in the United States, there are opportunities to teach at any number of these places.

So, if you're still deciding about which of the many professional golf careers are for you, just remember, your options are wide open. Each and every one is important to making the sport as popular and successful as it is, so whatever you do will contribute to that success.