Veteran Golfers Association – Another Group That Gronk Can’t Join

Well, guess what, Gronk? Here’s another group you can’t be a part of, but thousands, maybe millions, can. You have to be related to one of them!

It’s the Veteran Golfers Association (VGA), formed 10 years ago by two Army veterans. From the first year, when they had 300 members, they have grown to between 28,000 and 29,000 golfers in their organization. They are in all 50 states, in some territories, and they even have international locations in Germany and Australia to name but two.  

The organization holds nearly 1500 local tournaments across the US, including the Veteran Golfers Association National Championship each fall in Pinehurst, N.C.

“We're very honored and humbled to say that we're the one of the largest amateur golf associations in the United States,” said VGA Co-Founder, Joe Caley, a former Army Ranger, on The Golf Show 2.0.  “We started in 2014, our start was really by chance.” 

Josh Peyton, co-founder, and now the organization’s President and CEO, and Caley were chosen to play in a Wounded Warrior Ryder Cup-like competition against veterans from Great Britain. And they lost. By a bunch. Neither Caley nor Peyton could figure out how they got “out-golfed.”  

However, being veterans, they weren’t about to take a loss lying down. They finally decided that what they needed was more competition to get themselves tournament-tough. They were great at fund-raiser golf but hadn’t yet learned real competitive golf. So, they created a tour just for veterans, which Peyton now heads.

“We wanted it to be a tour, and let's kind of model it after like maybe the US Open where at the end of the year, the very best get in an invite to our national championship, but they got to play their way in,” Caley explained.

Because Peyton ended his military career near Fort Bragg, recently renamed Fort Liberty, in N.C., he moved to Pinehurst, N.C., which became the headquarters for VGA and the location of their National Championship.

Caley, though, may have the bragging rights on retirement locations because he’s in Augusta, Georgia, where he was moved by the Army for rehab at Eisenhower Army Medical Center. At that time, Caley didn’t know anything about Augusta and had never heard of the Masters. He thought golfers were old people who wore funny clothes.  

Fast forward and he and Peyton make sure the champions from each of the 16 flights of the National Championship, including a women’s division and a family division, get a chance to attend the Masters for a practice round day. 

The first year of the championship, Caley admits to being worried. Each player gets a bag with his or her name on it upon arrival. The bags were all lined up in the ballroom.

“I'm like man that's a lot of bags. I hope I hope this many people show up,” he said.

It didn’t take long for him to get his answer.

“We've had guys who were Vietnam veterans with tears in their eyes, and man that really hit me,” Caley said. “I was like -- okay we're doing something right.”

Of course they were. Twenty-nine thousand veterans can’t be wrong. The memberships and the events have mushroomed from that first year.

In addition to playing some great golf courses, Caley and Peyton have made some great friends along the way, including former football coach Urban Meyer who is now a member of the VGA Advisory Board.

“He grew up in the military family,” Caley explained. “His father was in the Army. His sister’s in the Air Force, and so he understands our mentality, and he's a fierce competitor, too.”

They invited him to the Armed Forces Cup, one of the VGA special golf tournaments with teams from the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, and Coast Guard. Last spring, the Air Force won. 

In addition to creating an organization for veterans, Caley and Peyton and the VGA were discovered by FOX News. When that happened, the network decided to create a television special about the Armed Forces Cup which was aired over the July 4th holiday.  

Who can join the Veteran Golfers Association?

If you are a veteran, wounded or not, you can join and play in the tournaments near you and even in tournaments in other states. The Census Bureau estimates that there are nearly 18 million veterans in the country, so this organization is sure to grow in the years ahead.

If you are a veteran who doesn’t know how to play golf, there are plenty of PGA of America members who are probably more than happy to do some teaching, sometimes for free for veterans, which is how Caley learned. According to Caley, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, there was a golf professional who would come around and ask them to come out and learn.  

“I mean they were coming to knock on every service member’s door saying. ‘Hey would you like to come out and try your hand at golf,’” he recalled. “I used to throw pans at my man, my food at these guys, like go away, I don't play golf.”

Finally, he realized it was actually a gift he was being given.

“So, I said, all right I'm gonna go try this this golf, right, and you know, all it took was being able to hit the ball one time that that actually looked like what they did on TV, and I was like – okay – this can't be that bad,” Caley admitted. Not bad at all.

If you’re not a veteran but someone in your family is, you can play for the veteran in the family, even if it’s a grandfather, grandmother, or great-great-grandparent. However, if the USAA commercials are right, Gronk seems to be out of luck when it comes to joining the Veteran Golfers Association, but maybe he just hasn’t looked far enough back on his family tree!