Jacob Cummings started playing golf as a teenager and developed an immediate love for the game.
He became so hooked, in fact, that he wanted to make golf more than a hobby. He wanted it to be his career.
No, not as a playing member of the PGA Tour, but as a future club pro through the PGA of America’s Golf Management University Program, which allows a college student to make concurrent progress toward both an undergraduate degree and PGA certification.
The 19-year-old Cummings, a 2009 graduate of Everett’s Mariner High School, just finished his freshman year at the University of Idaho and is serving a summer internship at Everett’s Legion Memorial Golf Course. If the rest of his schooling unfolds as planned, Cummings will graduate from Idaho with a business marketing degree and have his Class A PGA certification, both within the next few years.
At that point he could take a job as a club pro and, in his words, “start living the dream.”
“I love this game,” he added, “and this is something that I really want to do.”
Cummings was 16 when he got the golf bug, and it led him to give up baseball at Mariner to join the golf team. He was on the varsity as a junior and senior, and by then he was already planning a career in golf.
“I just fell in love with the idea,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘If I could be on a golf course and be having this much fun, and also getting paid for it, it’d be like I just won the lottery.’ It’s like you never work a day if you enjoy it.”
The PGA’s Golf Management University Program is offered at 20 American schools, including four in the western U.S. — Idaho, Nevada-Las Vegas, Arizona State and New Mexico State.
The programs at each school differ slightly, from the admission requirements to the course curriculum to the actual degree bestowed. For instance, Idaho, Nevada-Las Vegas and Arizona State require a minimum handicap of 12 for admission to the program, but at New Mexico State applicants must have a handicap of 8 or better.
At Idaho the degree is a bachelor of science in marketing. At Nevada-Las Vegas students earn a bachelor of science in recreation, while at Arizona State they receive a bachelor of science in agribusiness and at New Mexico State a bachelor of business administration in marketing.
Students spend their summers serving internships at public or private courses — Legion Memorial has another summer intern, Zach Cowan from Soldotna, Alaska, who is nearing completion of his degree from New Mexico State — and there is a final internship of about seven months at the end of the program.
And throughout their college years, students also work on the three levels of course study necessary for PGA certification. Much of that will be completed upon graduation, with the last requirement being a PGA Playing Ability Test. Candidates are required to shoot two rounds with score averages between 75 and 82, depending on the course rating.
Everett’s two public courses, Legion Memorial and Walter E. Hall, have supported the PGA’s Golf Management University Program in recent years with good reason. Rex Fullerton, the general manager of the two courses, is a product of the program himself, having received his degree from Ferris State (Mich.) in the mid-1970s.
The program, Fullerton said, “gives students a real taste of whether they want to do this or not. And if they decide they don’t, they still walk out the door with a business degree. But if they finish the program, they’ve achieved most of what they need to be a PGA golf professional.”
Although many men and women become PGA pros without going to college, “this cuts the time (to PGA certification) almost in half,” Fullerton explained. “They can get their college degree and be ready to go, versus having to start all over with the PGA apprenticeship program (after college). So it’s an outstanding way to do it and that’s one of the reasons it’s grown so much.”
And the program is also good for courses like Legion Memorial because “we’re able to hire somebody who has a career in golf in mind, and they can come in (for a summer internship) and work the busy season for us when we really need help,” Fullerton said.
During his summer internship, Cummings works the counter, cleans golf carts, helps as an instructor for junior camps and clinics, and does other varied and sometimes menial chores. Also, he sets aside time to practice so he can drop his own handicap from around 10 to about 6, which is roughly where it needs to be to pass the PGA’s Playing Ability Test.
And already he is looking forward to his first job in golf as a full-fledged PGA pro.
“It might not be that high-paying, six-figure job that everybody wants,” he said. “But if you have a passion for it, it’s worth it.”
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