CGA executive director Ed Mate had to chuckle at the fitting symmetry of it all.

When Gerry Brown was hired at the CGA in 1992, he was asked to do the wiring for the first computer network at the association offices, though he was brought on board mainly to help run tournaments.

Twenty-six years later, as Brown’s career at the CGA was winding down leading up to his impending retirement, he found himself in much the same situation.

“Just to show how as a lot of things change, they also stay the same, there’s a phone in our huddle room (in the CGA offices) that wasn’t wired properly,” Mate recalled recently. “I said, ‘Gerry, do you want to do one more wiring job for us?’ Sure enough, he got the ladder and pulled the cable and got it done. So he started out pulling cable and he ended up pulling cable for us. But that’s Gerry.

“If you’re on a survival quest, you want people on your team that are resourceful, and that’s Gerry. No matter what it was, if you had a problem in the office — the copier won’t work, my computer is acting weird, my phone is not doing what it’s supposed to — call Gerry. He’d be there in two seconds. And not only was he willing to do it, he wanted to do it. It was almost like he would thank you for the opportunity to help you. He’s just an amazing human being.”

Indeed, as the year comes to a close, it’s the end of an era for the CGA staff. Over the last quarter-century, no one besides Brown has been continuously employed by the CGA. That even includes Mate, the CGA’s executive director since 2000 who also worked with Brown in an earlier stint with the association, but spent four years on the Colorado PGA staff in the late 1990s and early in 2000.

Brown is one of three key CGA staffers who have or will retire in the final four months or so of this year. Ann Bley, longtime director of finance for the CGA, departed at the end of August (READ MORE). And former CWGA executive director and current CGA managing director of membership and integration Laura Robinson (READ MORE) will join Brown in retiring at year’s end. A retirement party honoring the three will be held Wednesday at Pinehurst Country Club.

Brown was initially hired by the CGA to help Jim Topliff, who had had a quadruple heart bypass, with tournaments and to work with the Golf Handicap and Information Network tournament pairing program (TPP) that was just being released. As Brown noted with a laugh in 2012, “Jim was strictly — as he liked to call himself — ‘the out-house guy’ and I was the ‘in-house guy.'” Brown also served as the de facto information technology manager. But he’ll retire after being director of course rating and handicapping — or some variation of that title — since 2001. He’s also the managing director of club and facility services. As Mate said, he’s been a very valuable “utility infielder” for the organization.

(Brown, second from right, is pictured above recently at TPC Colorado with CGA course raters Laurie Steenrod and Dick Simpson, and CGA staffer Aaron Guereca.)

So how does it feel leaving a place where he’s worked since 1992?

“It’s extremely difficult,” Brown said in a phone interview last month. “I feel like I’m leaving so much of my hide — all the blood, sweat and tears we’ve put in over the years. To see how smoothly this office has been operating — I can’t attribute it all to me — but there’s been a lot of consistency with having one person, with that longevity, in there. Comparing to other golf associations, you just don’t see that.

“To me, each day was a new day. I never got bored with coming to work. It was always so much fun to come in and see what was happening with courses and with GHIN. GHIN always had their problems with their software; I always chuckled, thinking that’s job security (for me). I enjoyed waking up each day and coming to work. Each day had its pluses and minuses — and there were a lot more pluses. There was instant gratification when you could do something for a golf professional. The golf professionals here in Colorado treated me very well — as an equal and an authority for handicapping, tournament formats, software support, course rating. Whatever question they asked, if I didn’t have the right answer, I certainly got it for them. I think there was a large amount of respect.”

Indeed, to demonstrate as much, on Oct. 15, exactly 26 years after he started at the CGA, the Colorado PGA presented Brown with a Distinguished Service Award at its fall meeting.

“That was a very nice gesture on their part,” Brown said. “I’ve had a number of them call and say farewell; that’s been heartwarming and gratifying. I’m going to miss that.”

Paul Lobato, PGA head professional at Meridian Golf Club, was among those who sang Brown’s praises.

“Gerry is a golf pro’s best friend,” he said.

“Words can’t describe” what Gerry meant to the CGA, added Mate, who worked alongside Brown for more than 20 years. “He’d become the face of the organization in so many ways. I saw (Cherry Hills Country Club head professional) John Ogden recently and he can’t say enough positive things about Gerry Brown. Whenever a club needed something relative to handicapping or course rating, they would call Gerry. When those calls come up, they tend to be urgent — ‘We have a situation where our computer won’t work or we’re trying to set up a tournament for this weekend.’ Gerry would basically be on call 24/7 and had such an incredible way about him and willingness to help.”

Brown, who will turn 68 next month, has long been highly regarded in his work, to the point that he served on the USGA Course Rating Committee from 2011-18, which he calls “the high-water mark in my career.” In that capacity, he’s assisted the USGA staff with calibration seminars around the U.S. and overseas. At calibration seminars, USGA representatives make sure course raters do their work to consistent standards. Raters evaluate the playing difficulty of a course for scratch golfers and bogey golfers from the various tee boxes, based on yardage, effective playing length and obstacles. The idea behind both course rating and handicapping is to make the game equitable for golfers of all ability levels.

In his course rating capacity, Brown has been sent to Scotland (to help instruct the Europe golf associations), the Dominican Republic and Japan.

In fact, Brown has made enough of an impression that he’ll likely continue to help the USGA on the course rating front — but on a volunteer basis, with some expenses paid.

“I think (the USGA) is going to want to keep me as someone to assist with training — and somebody who can travel,” he said. “There’s a lot of small countries and areas with only one or two golf courses so to have a formal course rating group in these areas does not always make sense. The USGA feels comfortable sending me to teach in areas like the Dominican Republican or the islands of the Caribbean. They don’t have any one group that will rate all of these courses. They’re talking about sending me and a team from Colorado to rate the courses as needed. Typically, they only do it every 10 years. … For a larger group like the Japan Golf Association, I’ll continue to do training (through) calibration seminars.”

Brown said he’ll also volunteer to rate courses in Colorado, though now Aaron Guereca, who’s become the CGA’s manager of club and facility services, will do the coordination and the setups. Brown has had Guereca, a former CWGA staffer, “on his shoulder” for 2 1/2 months in the late summer and fall to learn the ropes of the job.

Still, demonstrating his devotion to the CGA and the game, Brown said, “I’ve told Aaron I’m always just a phone call away. If I’m not doing anything, I don’t mind coming in and volunteering an hour or two of time to help him or show him how to do things.”

For a guy who was hired without any background in golf administration — he and his wife Cathey were in the publishing business with their offices located directly above those of the CGA and the CWGA in the early 1990s — Brown has certainly made a name for himself in the business.

“Just the fact that I got this job, given the way golf associations hire staff …,” said Brown, who considered himself a “self-taught computer geek.” “I was in my (early 40s) when I came here and had very little or any golf experience. I was just an avid golfer. But I brought a need to them. I helped them network the office for the very first time and got them onto a singular piece of software. I’ve still kind of hung on to my IT roots and assist with equipment and bits and pieces with the network here in the office.”

But it was in his primary job the last 17 years that Brown especially has made an impression.

“Course rating and handicapping is a very small niche in the golf industry,” he said. “There’s probably not more than five people in the entire United States that did course rating AND handicapping the way that I did. They go hand in hand in my opinion. One feeds the other. It’s been a natural and easy process for me.”

Combine that with Brown’s general helpfulness, and you have one valuable staffer.

“I’ve never met anybody that is as willing to help as Gerry Brown. That’s just his DNA,” Mate said. “I’m not kidding, if I called him and said I have a personal issue, he would drop everything he’s doing. You’d barely get the question out and he’d be there.

“One of my favorite stories about Gerry Brown: Early in my tenure as executive director, I had a tree in my back yard that I wanted to cut down. I had a little get-together at my house for the CGA staff — this was in wintertime around George Washington’s birthday, and I said, ‘We’re going to have a George Washington birthday party.’ People didn’t know why and I said we’re going to cut down a tree. Gerry, who just had shoulder surgery or was just about to, jumped in with both feet, was climbing the tree and doing all the work. I have video of the tree coming down and Gerry being halfway up it. That’s Gerry; he just wants to help people. I’ve never met somebody so willing. He and Dustin (Jensen, the former CGA managing director of operations) have that same quality. That showed every day. When people called, he was like, ‘What can I do to help?’

“On the other hand, he wasn’t a pushover. If a club called and said we don’t like our course rating, can you change it?, he’d say no, absolutely not, that’s not the way that works.”

Coincidentally, Brown’s first course rating came on Sept. 11, 2001 — at Spring Valley Golf Club in Elizabeth.

“I was standing there watching the television with the head professional, and we’re just jaws down to the floor” in seeing what had happened with the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon, and in Shanksville, Pa. “The (rating) team drove up from Colorado Springs and had left before the disaster and had no idea what was going on.”

Seventeen years after that first course rating, Brown is considered a national expert in the field. Which means it certainly won’t be easy to replace him. But you can’t accuse Brown of not giving Mate fair warning about his retirement. Indeed, he first told Mate of his plans early in 2016. And early the next year he reminded Mate by saying, “two years”.

While the powers that be kicked around the idea that Brown’s duties might be better distributed among two people, the CGA’s unification with the CWGA at the beginning of 2018 helped partly solve the matter. That’s when Guereca was tagged to start working with Brown, learning tournament software, handicap issues, course rating, software support, etc.

As for Brown moving forward, the fourth-generation Colorado native and wife Cathey plan to do some traveling. Among the destinations on their bucket list is South America — Machu Picchu, the Galapagos Islands and perhaps a trip to the Amazon River Basin.

But barring the unforeseen, the Parker resident will continue to call Colorado home for the foreseeable future.

“I have no desire to leave these Rocky Mountains,” he said. “My heart is in Colorado.”
 

It’s been a quick-moving, eventful last three years in golf administration for Laura Robinson.

And, as of the end of this month, the ride will be over for a person who couldn’t have foreseen all the twists and turns along the way.

Robinson, a former CWGA executive director who’s currently the managing director of membership and integration for the CGA, plans on retiring at the end of the year, calling it a career after lengthy stints in the business world, as a college faculty member in an information technology studies program — and these recent years in leadership roles in Colorado golf.

“This has been the most rewarding three years of my career,” Robinson said in a recent phone conversation. “I had to pull knowledge from every aspect of all my experience together — from accounting and finance, employment law, human resources, marketing, customer service (and) operations in order the lead the CWGA, then to integrate the two associations (the CGA and the CWGA).

“I think I’ve been very, very lucky to have this as the capstone to my career. It’s been so much fun. I truly appreciate the support the CWGA board of directors gave me by first hiring me for the job, then keeping me in line and teaching me about golf administration and everything we were trying to do to build out women’s golf in Colorado.”

Robinson, a Colorado resident for the last 20 years, couldn’t have known what to expect when she volunteered in the summer of 2014 to help develop an I.T. stragegy for the CWGA. She then joined the association’s volunteer board of directors in 2015.

When the CWGA board decided to go in a new direction, leadership-wise, it turned to Robinson, who became the acting executive director at the beginning of 2016 and resigned her board position. And in May of that year, the “acting” part of her title was removed and Robinson became just the fourth E.D. the CWGA ever had, following Maggie Giesenhagen (1988-1991), Robin Jervey (1992-2014) and Ann Guiberson (2014-15).

During Robinson’s time as executive director, the CWGA celebrated its 100th anniversary throughout 2016, then the association joined forces with the CGA, becoming one organization at the beginning of this year. The unification, prompted by the USGA’s decision to partner with just one full-service Allied Golf Association in each state or region, was long in the works, with current CGA co-presidents Joe McCleary and Juliet Miner playing key roles in the process, along with Robinson and CGA executive director Ed Mate. (The four are pictured below.)

“This was an unexpected career move for me,” Robinson said regarding golf administration. “I was thrilled to be working for the CWGA for two years and learning about golf administration and running a small business. Merging with the CGA was a wonderful business move and I was really excited to be one of the leaders in that effort.

“It was very exciting formulating a plan make the CWGA and CGA a new organization to support the future of the game. It was so exciting to be part of all that — to lead an effort to integrate two companies so successfully, to identify a new logo, a new website (both of which will be unveiled early next year), a new way of operating, to expand our programs to men. It was just so exciting to be part of making sure the future of golf was strong in Colorado.”

And, given that this process has played out over more than three years, how does she think the integration has worked out?

“The two organizations were combined to make both of us stronger,” Robinson said. “We could share the resources the CGA had. They had more resources than the CWGA. And the CGA could benefit from all of the programs that are developed for women and high handicappers that could be rolled out for men. We were literally building the future of a golf association in Colorado to serve a wider variety of people than either organization had served before. It was really exciting to be part of that.”

Mate has worked closely with Robinson in recent years, both before and after the unification, and he certainly appreciates what Robinson has done to make the merger relatively seamless.

“Laura was just the right person at the right time in so many ways because of her business background, her ability to organize, prioritize and really kind of tease out the right questions through the integration,” Mate said. “She maintained the really good continuity with the leadership of the CWGA through this transition. She was just indispensible.

“Her business background has been such a great addition, a skill set we’ve been able to really capitalize on because she was able to develop a strategic plan by working with a team during the busiest time of the year. As we’re preparing for next year, we have by far the best blueprint to guide us for the next several years. She led us through a process of prioritization and analysis of membership. She almost did a Masters degree project that was an excercise in strategic planning. It will have huge benefits moving forward. She’s leaving us in great position. What a great legacy that that will live on for a while.

“Beyond that, she’s been very fun to work with, very passionate about the game of golf.”

The staff of the CWGA didn’t simply move into the same offices as the CGA. The volunteer boards of the two organizations were joined together — with McCleary and Miner agreeing to serve a year as co-presidents to further ease the transition period — and the CWGA staff has become integral in CGA work moving forward. That includes Kate Moore, Matthew Walker, Aaron Guereca and Debbie Kolb — in addition to Robinson.

“We had a great team in the (CWGA) office, and I’m so glad for the CGA that every one of them has decided to stay,” Robinson said. “I feel like I’ve made friends for life through this whole experience.”

And Robinson’s run over these recent years also gave her an ever-increasing appreciation of the work volunteers do — and have done — for the associtions.

“Due to this experience, I truly learned about volunteerism,” she said. “The CWGA has almost a hundred dedicated volunteers, passionate about golf, passionate about giving back to the game they love. Without the volunteers, we couldn’t have had the successful tournaments and Golf Experiences that we had. Thank you to each and every one of the volunteers for being part of the success.”

During the last year as part of the CGA staff, Robinson (at left with Miner) has taken on a multi-faceted role in the effort to make the association as good as it can be serving its newly combined membership.

“I led the team to integrate the two organizations,” she said. “It was a lot more than simply moving in together. We had to identify new roles and responsibilities. We kicked off a plan to develop a new brand and identity through a new logo and color scheme, which will be shared with the public at the (Denver) Golf Expo in February. We have a new website that is currently under development to take advantage of the new brand identity — presenting one consolidated view of the CGA to all golfers in the state.

“I was behind the effort to create a strategic plan for the newly formed CGA. It wasn’t merely taking two organizations and band-aiding them together. We really wanted to take advantage that we were a new organization focused on new programs, new demographics and a new way of operating. So a strategic plan that I developed helped support that effort. We still have a few tasks left in the integration, (including) merging all of our documents and the combined website. Though we started moving in (to the CGA offices) in late October of 2017, it truly has taken over a year to complete the integration of the two organizations.”

As the CGA forges on, Robinson and her husband Paul will continue to split time between Colorado and Florida — and will remain members at Hiwan Golf Club in Evergreen. The plan for the foreseeable future includes “playing lots of golf, ski and travel,” she said.

And, there will be time to reflect on these eventful last few years in golf administration.

“Every day was memorable,” she said. “Every day was a learning experience, meeting new people, developing new programs, cementing our relationship in the golf community. One of the highlights was when the CWGA (received a distinguished service award from) the Colorado Golf Hall of Fame. I think that cemented our history and our place in history in the golf community. Another high moment was when I chaired my very first annual meeting for almost 175 women from clubs all over the state. That was incredibly rewarding to see the level of passion, energy and participation from public clubs, private clubs, nine-hole leagues, 18-hole leagues, championship golfers and high handicappers alike.”
   

In fact, one way Bley remembers when they first started working alongside one another was that she met Mate’s daughter, Anna, “on the way home from the hospital when she was born” in 1997.

Given how much they’re been through as staffers at the CGA — and the Colorado PGA before that — it’s not surprising that Mate notes, “I used to joke with Ann, saying ‘When you leave, I’m leaving’ just because I have that much confidence in her.”

Well, Bley is indeed leaving the CGA this week — Thursday is her final day — though Mate will be sticking around as executive director. Bley, the longtime director of finance for the CGA, will be retiring, following suit of her husband, Greg, who did likewise earlier this month.

“My husband just turned 65, so he decided to retire. I kind of thought that was a good time for me to retire too,” Bley said recently.

Bley (pictured) has been a fixture at the CGA offices since 2001, making her one of the longest-tenured current staffers. Only director of handicapping and course rating Gerry Brown (since 1992), director of communications Aaron Kellough (since 1998) and Mate (since 2000, in addition to an earlier stint on staff) have worked for the association longer.

And her career in golf administration goes back even further, as she worked at the Colorado PGA — with Mate, who was then the assistant executive director at the Section — starting in 1997.

Bley’s retirement “is very personal for me,” Mate said earlier this month. “I started working with Ann when we were both at the Colorado Section of the PGA. And when I was hired as executive director (of the CGA in 2000), the first time I had the opportunity to hire somebody who does accounting — the stuff Ann does — (I hired her). We actually hired her to do tournament stuff as a way to get her in the door, then it was just a matter of getting her in the right seat.

“She’s worked her way up to director of finance. And she’s really been a stalwart, reliable presence for all these years.

“It’ll be hard because she’s much more than (what her job entails). She’s a friend and somebody I trust. She’s also been such a great sounding board for me because she’s got such good instincts and good people skills and world experience. Again, she’s so much more than just somebody who pays the bills.”

At the CGA, Bley handles anything to do with money, whether it’s revenue for donations or grants or member dues or club dues. She pays all the bills for the CGA and its related entities, handles human resources duties, the association’s government reporting as a non-profit and works with the auditors as needed.

While Bley, 63, is looking forward to traveling more, spending additional time with her granddaughter and doing volunteer work, she knows that exiting the CGA after 17 years will take some getting used to.

“It’ll be strange not having work to go into and emails to check,” she said with a chuckle.

But most importantly, she knows she’ll miss the personal and professional interaction with the people she’s come to know so well.

“The people here are like my family,” she said. “I’ve watched a lot of them grow up from when they were interns and now they’re full-time staff and we’ve known each other for 17 years in some cases. Ed and I worked together at the PGA Section office before I came here, so I’ve known him for 21 years. When you’re used to seeing somebody every day for that many years, you’re very invested in their lives.”

Asked what her favorite memories have been over her time with the CGA, Bley gravitates toward activities that lend a golf-related helping hand to youngsters.

“Anything to do with the Evans Scholarship (for caddies), the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy and the junior golf programs are all things that I could emotionally get behind and feel like we were making a difference,” she said.

Bley is one of that relatively rare breed that was born and raised in Colorado and has spent her entire adult life in the Centennial State. She graduated from Colorado State University and has also worked as an adminstrator at a medical research firm, at a hotel management company and in the oil and gas industry briefly.

But the CGA has “definitely” been the longest-standing job of her career.

Bley said she and her husband will continue to live in northern Douglas County in retirement.

As for who will take over Bley’s duties once she’s gone, much of that will fall to Debbie Kolb, currently the CGA’s manager of administrative services, who served in a related role with the CWGA before the integration of the two associations at the beginning of 2018.

“This is a great example of how the integration has worked out so well because Debbie Kolb was in a similar role with the CWGA,” Mate said. “It’s actually worked out really well because she and Ann are really working closely now. Debbie jokes all the time, ‘Ann, don’t leave yet,’ but it’s going to be pretty smooth in terms of the blocking and tackling of bill paying and invoicing and the stuff if you don’t stay on top of you get so far behind. So we haven’t missed a beat in that way.

“But Ann is so much more than that — really understanding the CGA’s finances and really being the lead in building the budget every year. I don’t expect Debbie to be doing that. But in terms of the bookkeeping piece, we’re in good shape.”

As for Bley’s presence at CGA offices, that may be irreplaceable.
    

Mark Passey had a long career before working full-time in the golf industry, but even way back when, he seemed destined to devote much of his life to the game.

Noting that he caddied periodically for Frank Beard on the PGA Tour in the 1960s, Passey said he learned he didn’t want to tote bags for a living. “But being inside the ropes is special,” Passey added in a recent phone interview. “I thought, ‘I’d love to work at the USGA sometime.’ The fact that it happened is a miracle.”

Indeed, after spending 19 years working for Smith’s Food & Drug in Utah, Passey was hired as the executive director of the Utah Golf Association in the mid-1980s. And for the last 27 1/2 years, he’s been a director of regional affairs for the USGA, with his region always including Colorado. But, as of the end of June, that will change as Passey — who recently turned 70 — is planning to retire.

The Highlands Ranch resident will work his 22nd U.S. Open — this one at Erin Hills in Wisconsin, which will conclude June 18 or 19 — then tie up loose ends for the remainder of that month before bidding adieu to his days as a USGA employee.

“I won’t like it,” Passey said when asked what his emotions will be as he leaves. “It’s very bittersweet. I’m not leaving because I don’t like (what I’m doing anymore). It’s just the right time. I’m 70 and I want time to be home with my family.

“But I’m going to miss my collegauges and the work. I’ve been blessed to do this job. It’s a real privilege. But I’ve thought about it for a long time. And I like to look forward, not back. There’s a lot of fun still left in life. I have an interest in a lot of things. I look at it as a new chapter.”

Besides retirement giving Passey more time to spend with wife Charlene and on (non-golf-related) travel and various others interests, he notes it makes sense from a work standpoint.

“A lot of big projects the USGA are working on are on 1-yard line: (major modernization of the) Rules of Golf, state and regional golf association changes (with the USGA streamlining relationships with SRGAs as part of the USGA’s new membership engagement model), and the worldwide handicap system. They’re all happening at once, so the timing was right.”

The CGA and CWGA have had a close relationship with Passey over his 27-plus years with the USGA as Colorado is one of nine states currently included in the Central Region, for which Passey is the USGA regional affairs director. Other states in the region are Utah, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa and Missouri — and Passey has traveled to each at least annually. But that relationship is closer for the Colorado associations because Passey has been based in the state since 2006, when he and Charlene moved from Utah, his home for about 50 years of his life.

“Mark came into the golf industry after having had a previous career — and that’s unusual now,” said Ed Mate, executive director of the CGA. “Today’s generation of golf administrators are (mainly) P.J. Boatwright Interns right out of college and they go into it right from the beginning. But Mark was a grocer, got involved (with the Utah Golf Association) as a volunteer, which led to this. … So for 27 years, he’s been pinching himself that he’s been so lucky. He appreciates more than most what the real world is. He’s made the most of those 27 years.

“But the thing about Mark — and I wrote a letter to him and tried to sum it up — he’s really unique in his appreciation for the history for the game. He has great perspective on the game. He has a great loyalty to the USGA, but not blind loyalty; he’s critical at times when he disagrees, but he’s thoughtful. He doesn’t jump to the most popular, trending opinion on things. I have great respect for him and we’ve been very fortunate he’s been here in Colorado because we’ve gotten to see more of him than many of the other states he’s responsible for. We’re going to miss him for sure.”

Mate has known Passey since 1989. Laura Robinson has worked with him for a much shorter time — she became executive director of the CWGA in late 2015 — but she likewise appreciates the work he’s done. (At left, last summer Passey presented Robinson with a plaque from the USGA commemorating the CWGA centennial and honoring the association for its longtime service to the game.)

“Mark has done an incredible job for golf in Colorado,” Robinson said. “We’re going to miss him a lot and I hope he misses us equally.

“He’s helped roll out new programs, he’s a resource for both the CGA and CWGA to go to, he’s our point of contact with the USGA (and) he gives us a heads-up what’s happening. He’s just passionate about golf.”

State and regional golf associations like the CGA and the CWGA run many USGA qualifiers, are sanctioned caretakers of USGA course rating and handicap systems, serve as a clearing house for the USGA Rules of Golf, and share the USGA’s emphasis on outreach and developmental programs, particularly at the junior level. In the last decade, the USGA has provided generous grants to a couple of programs at the CGA-owned CommonGround Golf Course — $175,000 for the Kids Course and $10,000 for the Solich Caddie & Leadership Academy. The national association also funds Boatwright Internships which benefit the CGA and CWGA. In many ways, the CGA and CWGA have long served as unofficial franchises of the USGA.

Passey, who was the Utah Golf Association’s executive director from mid-’80s until the USGA hired him in 1989, was inducted into the Utah Golf Hall of Fame two years ago. He’s one of six regional affairs directors who serve as liaisons between the USGA and SRGAs and as facilitators for USGA programs at a local level, sharing best practices and helping make sure those programs run successfully. Passey also attends Rules of Golf workshops and the USGA annual meeting, among many other events.

Although the Texas Golf Association is no longer part of Passey’s regional territory, it originally was. And he takes some pride in his role in helping the TGA improve and grow dramatically as an organization to the point that it’s now one of the largest state and regional golf associatons in the country.

More generally, Passey is also proud of how the USGA has “really raised the bar” in recent decades regarding improving USGA qualifying tournaments — largely run by state and regional golf associations — and implementation of USGA programs “where the rubber meets the road,” as he once said.

In addition to his role regarding regional affairs per se, Passey is highly regarded for his work at USGA championships. Over the years, he’s worked roughly 140 of them — with the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball at Pinehurst and the U.S. Open at Erin Hills this spring marking the last of his run as a USGA employee. That 140 includes quite a few in Colorado, including two U.S. Amateurs that Cherry Hills Country Club has hosted. In fact, his first USGA championship as an employee was the ’90 U.S. Am won by Phil Mickelson, marking Mickelson’s only USGA title to date. (Passey is pictured at left, in white, at the 2012 U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills.)

At those championships, he’s had a variety of different roles, including scoring and Rules of Golf-related work, player registration, staff person in charge or an assistant. But his work overseeing the large scoreboards at many events has often drawn the most attention.

“Mark is probably most known for his incredible skills doing scoreboards — and not just the calligraphy part but the mathematical part,” Mate said. “He’s really a savant. He can spell the name of every player in the game of golf. Every year at the U.S. Open he’ll sit there at check-in and he has this great curiosity and he knows the etymology of names.

“He has this acronym for scoreboards called ART. A scoreboard is accurate, readable and timely — and they’re all important. I don’t care how pretty it is; if it’s not accurate it’s no good; if it’s so pretty you can’t read it, it’s no good; and if it goes up 10 minutes after the tournament is over, what good is it? It needs to be timely. That’s going to be his legacy, I think.

“That’s a skill that’s no longer really being used. Everybody says there’s TV, mobile devices and real-time scoring — and that’s true. But there’s no way, even with technology, you can have one display that has every piece of information on it more efficiently than a hand-done scoreboard. You can get every data point you need. And the phone is more cumbersome. It’s all there but it’s harder to get to.

“(Also), his ability to add up a scorecard in his head is just incredible. Everything is (based off of) 4s, so it’s plus and minus (from) 4s. But he’s so beyond that. If he sees a 3 and a 5 he knows that’s 8 so he doesn’t even see those. The most amazing thing to watch is when he does a scoreboard for the U.S. Amateur — which is 312 players at two sites. He’s not sitting down all day. Everything he’s doing is by hand and it’s amazing.”

In fact, Passey is so adept with scoreboard paper and scoreboard pens that he’s created some golf-related artwork with them that are good enough that two or three of his pieces are displayed in the USGA Museum and he’s given many others away to people who originally requested to buy them. In retirement, Passey said he may do some fine-art versions of golf course landscapes.

Other things that Passey thinks are possibilities in retirement for him are doing some golf course architectural consulting, possibly contributing to a book, and traveling to places he hasn’t been before.

“I’ve traveled everywhere in the U.S., to the point that I can (drive around many) cities without a map,” he said. “But I haven’t been to Europe. … I’m fascinated by the world.

“One thing I’m trying really hard not to do is plan every day. At every championship that I’ve worked, you’re up at about 4:30 a.m. and you don’t get back until about 10 p.m. I’ve done a lot of that for a long time.”

But Passey is not quite done yet — even at significant championships held in Colorado. In fact, he plans on serving as a rules official at the men’s Pac-12 Conference Championships that Boulder Country Club is hosting April 28-30.

And even after retiring, Passey said he and Charlene will continue to live in Colorado.

“I’ve been fortunate to go to such great places,” said Passey, who has two grown daughters in Utah and Pennsylvania, along with grandchildren. “I’ve gone everywhere in America. I asked myself, ‘where would you rather live (than Colorado)?’ I can’t think of anywhere.”