Tom Prohaska
John Burkholder, 9MGA Communications
MGA9’s vice president, Tom Prohaska, is not the new golf genius in town, but he’s responsible for getting Wildhorse Golf Club’s new USGA Golf Genius tournament pairing software to perform like an eagle compared to the old GHIN Tournament Pairing Program’s double bogey routine. That was a little golf humor people, in case it went right over your eyeballs.
Tom, a 10-year Robson Ranch resident from Wilkes-Barre, PA balances his time among four passions: golf, Corvettes (he’s the local Corvette Club Ambassador to the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY), the Catholic Church (he’s a member of the Stewardship Advisory Committee for the Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth) and his wife Joey (one loving and sharing wife… she’d have to be to put up with Tom’s other passions!), obviously not in that order. Tom took up golfing on a regular basis about five years ago, bought a golf cart and away he drove (a little more golf humor) to his current 25 handicap. Tom is so committed to this maddening game that he spends more time on Wildhorse than he does in church, which may or may not be a bad thing (he’ll eventually find out!).
Tom’s mother lives close by in Crowley, a nice family benefit as at 93 she is treasured and much loved. Speaking of love, those of us who know Tom well, including his wife Joey, confess (a little Catholic humor there) his long term love affair with Corvettes, so much so that the floor of his garage is cushioned tiled, spotlessly clean and regularly buffed to a bright sheen. Too bad he can’t say the same for his golf game.
After a very short time test driving Golf Genius (auto humor there) compared to the old, Tom’s convinced we’ve chosen a winner! First, we now have a web based system so it’s gotta be great, right? Well, at this point in the changeover process Tom, along with his pairing cronies Rich Hall, Gary Geiser, Dan Shoemaker and Wes Gaige, aren’t exactly sure. One immediately obvious time saving feature of Golf Genius is that it will automatically send emails to all 9MGA members (those with email addresses) requesting a “playing” or “not playing” response for a specific upcoming play-day, i.e. one-stop check-in. And based on everything we’ve heard this is just the beginning of Golf Genius’ many features and capabilities still to be explored and utilized. Once Golf Genius’ pairings process is completed on Saturday afternoons, (since the switch to Golf Genius necessitates a response to play, no more late or Monday morning additions!) the pairing scorecards will be printed and available for distribution immediately after Pro Shop check-in on Mondays by 8:30. This will get the players on the course in a much more timely fashion than our current process accommodates.
That’s it for now. I’ll cover more of Golf Genius’ features and benefits in a future 9MGA article. Suffice it to say compared to our current process, Tom will be driving the Corvette of golf tournament pairing software (a little auto humor here… very little)!