There are two ways to take the road in becoming a PGA Professional. If you have been interested in golf for most of your life and find yourself enjoying the integrity and competition of playing at the high school level, I would encourage you to at least learn about what it takes to make golf a possible career choice.
The newest form of gaining your PGA membership is to attend an accredited university that offers the PGM program. This program takes approximately five years to complete, but when you are finished you will have a bachelor's degree along with your PGA membership. Internships and playing tests are required before you can graduate and gain PGA membership.
The second way of gaining membership is to take self-study courses through the PGA of America. You must employed at a golf facility with a recognized PGA professional for six months before you can sign up. Once you sign up, you must pass a pre-entry test that covers the basics of playing along with the business of golf. After this test is passed, you will then begin your journey toward PGA membership. There are three levels that you must pass. Each level has book work that must be completed, submitted and approved. Once this bookwork is completed and approved, you travel to the PGA National Education headquarters in Florida for a week worth of seminars. After attending the seminars, you are able to take an online test that must be passed before continuing to the next level. These steps are repeated until all three levels are passed. Outside of these three levels, you must also pass a playability test (same one required for those who attend a PGM program at a university). To pass this playability test, you play 36 holes in one day and have a target score you must shoot based on the slope and rating of the course you are playing. It is typically around 15 over for the 36 holes. This score may sound easy enough, but less than 20% pass on any given attempt. It took myself two attempts (thanks to scoring a 10 on one hole my first try) and even then, I passed right on the number.
The second way of pursuing membership is the route I took. I also have a college degree in Education that I pursued before signing up to work my way towards a PGA membership. I must say that the day I received my PGA membership, has been my most rewarding day of my career life (marriage and children have been more rewarding in my personal life). It felt more special and rewarding than receiving my college degree as it has always been a dream of mine to have a career in the golf industry. Receiving membership within the PGA helped to push me in that direction. It was by no means easy and it was difficult to do with balancing work, family and doing the self-study lessons, but it has also been worth it. Speaking of worth it, the cost is something else to consider when thinking of attempting to become a PGA member. If you go through a university, it is no different than paying for school with any other degree. If you choose to take the path of doing it on your own, you can expect to spend close to $7,000 with no financial assistance programs. Much of this cost comes from traveling to Florida three separate times for seminars (if you live in Florida, this can be a much cheaper expense).
Next time, I will address the myths that golf pros get to play golf all the time and have an easy job if you live in the northern half of the country because of mother nature and the winter months. Let me know if you have any questions in what it takes to become a PGA member, I would be more than happy to assist in exploration in any way that I can.
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