Walk us through that journey a little bit, and I'm particularly interested in what brought you back to the golf industry.

Hmm.

No, that is, it's, uh, you know, everybody has their interesting journey and pathway in their career, right? And almost never does it turn out how you expect it to when you were 21 or 22.

But, you know, what you glossed over, Derek, was my very first job out of college was at Kappa Sigma Fraternity headquarters.

So my first job was in the bowels of a national staff headquarters of an organization with, you know, tens of thousands of members.

So I, I got this taste for what it's like to be at the nerve center of a pretty large organization.

Um, and then that's just kinda happenstance, but that was my first gig.

And I'm curious, from your perspective, what are the best owners and operators doing right now that maybe the private clubs haven't quite e-embraced or started thinking about?

Well, it gets real busy here in the Coachella Valley for about five months, and then we take five months to kind of reset and – prepare for the next season ahead but uh you're all over the place so yeah you don't get the chance to slow down but uh this is not your first first run with the ngcoa you spent nearly a decade back in the late 90s early 2000s before stepping away there and coming back 11 years later tell me more about that journey what first led you to the ngcoa and what brought you back and just what what does the organization mean to you personally and to the game of golf

Ricky, I got a career and a marriage and a family out of this deal.

It's been pretty awesome.

So in 1997, I moved to Charleston, South Carolina to get my master's degree.

My intent was to be a high school social studies teacher.

That was what I was going to do.

And I enrolled at the College of Charleston in the master's program to get my MA in history to kind of give me a leg up in the teaching profession.

But what role do those clubs and private clubs play in preserving the game for the next 25, 50, 75 years?

Yeah.

Then you look at the municipalities, there are 3,000 municipal golf courses in America.

A lot of them lose money if you just allocate every possible expense to the golf course and you just do a P&L study.

A lot of them don't make money, but they also are in the Parks and Rec division.

And so they're kind of part of a larger portfolio and, you know, taxpayers subsidize.

But to tell you the truth, even within that sector, Derek, you've got rising expectations of financial performance of golf courses.

You've got golf courses moving into what we call enterprise funds.

So where are we today from a participation and continued