History of PGA

Current status of the PGAB

The PGA of Botswana currently has 12 active and paid up members, 1 honorary life member, now retired to the UK, of which 9 are PGA Qualified Class A or better. 1 Tour member is active on Sunshine Tour, since 2012, with 2 other tour players on smaller events.

The PGA of Botswana was initially founded in 2005, but properly constituted in 2011. So this is officially our 8th year as a properly constituted organization, and slowly we are being recognized as the head of Professional Golf and development going forward,even though our Golf Union.

Funding from private enterprise, even parastatal bodies, and affiliates is still limited, even more so in the past 2 years with the recession of 2008 rearing its head now in Botswana.

How has Association has developed over time

The PGA of Botswana was first formed in 2005 by a group of individuals as a Business name, and these individuals purported to represent the Professionals at that time as an organization to promote professional golf in Botswana. No real association was formalized then as a PGAB and they played on a few local tours.

In 2010, the current Chairman invested in building a training facility for Golf development in Gaborone, World of Golf Botswana, and at the same time decided to do the PGA education qualification through the PGA of South Africa, qualifying in 2012. Only in 2011, the current Education Board member formed the PGA Botswana as a society with a proper constitution and regulations, which were adopted, and the PGAB was properly constituted then. At the same time several Professionals with the help of the PGA of South Africa and the R&A, were given access to funding and to start their 3 year education qualification. This finally culminated in November 2015 with a total of 7 new Professionals being qualified Class A.

Key activities the PGAB has been working on in the past 1 to 2 years

The PGAB has been finding its feet, having achieved most of its objective initially of getting all its teaching members appropriately qualified The PGAB then focused more on developing and implementing its strategic plan. One of its priorities was to engage the Botswana Golf Union on becoming the implementing partners of the Union’s Junior Development programme. This has culminated in the union acceding to this request early in 2018. In addition to the above, the PGAB has started implementing school holiday Junior tournaments, Junior development camps and a Junior Handicap card which does not require Juniors to be members of a club in the short term. In addition, the PGAB continue to develop a player development campaign, called “LEKAGolf” or “TryGolf” We are finalizing the programme with the plan to Launch it this year. We have also recently launched our association website “www.pga.co.bw” which we update periodically.

Future of the PGAB

Our vision – to aptly capture the future we want for the PGAB, that is,”to lead golf’s future in Botswana through more people engaging more often with the game”. We believe to achieve this, the PGA need to have highly skilled and knowledgeable members engaging with golf clubs in the country. The PGAB and its members should be leaders in the business, teaching and playing of the game in Botswana, having both the national and regional influence on golf matters. For us to be able to do this we should be commercially and financial sustainable.

Future of golf in Botswana

The 2008 financial crisis has had a negative effect on golf in Botswana. Prior to this, the growth of the game was more an organic and natural process, without any deliberate intervention. Many people have mythical and abstract perceptions about the game, as “an expensive and rich people sport”. It is our view that our initiatives will help shape positive perceptions about the sport and create a more realistic version for those who try the game. The urgent matter faced by golf clubs is declining membership and the PGAB should be leading the revival and turnaround in terms of membership engagement, and club developments.