The PGA of America announced Wednesday that Derek Sprague will step down as the association\u2019s chief executive officer.<\/p>\n
Sprague, who took over as the PGA\u2019s top executive in December 2024, informed the association\u2019s board of directors in early December of \u201chis immediate need to be with his family.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAt my daughter\u2019s wedding last month in upstate New York, it became clear that my family needs me nearby to assist with the care of my mother and mother\u2011in\u2011law,\u201d Sprague said in a statement. \u201cFocusing on family has become my priority, and the best decision for me is to step away from my role as CEO and return home to be with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sprague was the first club professional to lead the PGA of America in nearly 20 years and he was also the first CEO to have served as the association\u2019s president.<\/p>\n
In a statement, the PGA \u201cexpects to name a new CEO in the coming weeks,\u201d and Sprague will continue to advise the board and new CEO.<\/p>\n
Sprague\u2019s short tenure as CEO will be defined by last year\u2019s Ryder Cup, which was mired by an assortment of issues including poor fan behavior, high ticket prices and questions about selecting Keegan Bradley to captain the U.S. team. To be fair, the decisions to hold the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage, to name Bradley captain and to set tickets prices were all made before Sprague took over as CEO.<\/p>\n
Sprague followed Seth Waugh, the former Deutsche Bank Americas CEO who took over as the PGA\u2019s top executive in 2018, as the association\u2019s CEO. Kerry Haigh, the PGA\u2019s chief championships officer, served as interim CEO following Waugh\u2019s retirement in June 2024 and the selection of Sprague as the association\u2019s chief executive in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The PGA of America announced Wednesday that Derek Sprague will step down as the association\u2019s chief executive officer.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-394425","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}