Mike & Mike's USGA Holiday Letter
Year end thoughts from new CEO Mike Whan and predecessor Mike Davis
The Quadrilateral’s team of reporters and informants put boots to the ground this holiday season and again secured another Five Family Christmas letter. Their devotion to craft also explains why the editors are saving some Trump-PGA news for Thursday’s News & Notes and instead going with this USGA exclusive.
After successfully obtaining Fred Ridley’s holiday letter and Seth Waugh’s PGA of America Christmas card, The Quad received a tip that the USGA CEO’s joined forces for a 2021 recap. The greeting reportedly came to recipients in a red envelope that also included a USGA Members Program application and a From Many, One decal.
As you’ll see below, the letter opens with current CEO Mike Whan’s thoughts before transitioning to one final contribution from his predecessor, Mike Davis. Enjoy.
Season’s Greetings valued stakeholders!
I waited until Christmas day to write my first update as USGA CEO because I wanted to see what Santa brought me. If you’ve heard one of the 189 podcasts I’ve done since taking over in May, you heard me explain how I want golf’s 5,000 R&D engineers to wake up every morning and say, "I see the rules that he put in place, but I'm going to spend a lot of hours today working on how to get excitement even within that space."
So as we tackle the distance discussion in 2022 with our very decent R&A colleagues, I will also not throw a wet blanket over those thousands upon thousands of engineers spending hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars growing the game. We can’t lose the thing that makes this game truly exciting: spotting that extra-long package under the Christmas tree and knowing you’ve got shop credit coming to buy what you want.
You see, I'm just like everybody else, my golf is dependent on the excitement of ripping open Santa’s gift because I know I’ll be getting the latest AI-infused, ball-speed growing, face-twitch free club in golf. Which reminds me, please send a detailed description of what was under your tree to XMasGifts@usga.org. Our social team will post some of the best affirmations of how this grand act of capitalism energized your game and the golf industry.