# Joe Schwent watched Gateway PGA grow from Monday golf into veteran outreach

By MarketScale Newsroom · Published 2026-10-30 · Sports & Entertainment on MarketScale
Canonical: https://www.marketscale.com/industries/sports-entertainment/joe-schwent-watched-gateway-pga-grow-from-monday-golf-into-veteran-outreach-1283489

> Joe Schwent recalls Gateway PGA’s move from Monday playing days to PGA HOPE and PGA ABLE, as the section backs a $4 million North St. Louis project.

## Key points

- The Gateway PGA Section serves more than 400 professionals at more than 200 facilities, one of 41 PGA of America sections, and Schwent places it among the smallest.

Joe Schwent marks 40 years as a PGA of America member on April 1, 2026, and when he heard the Gateway PGA Section was celebrating 50, his first instinct was to do the arithmetic. He has worked in golf since the early 1980s. He says he honestly does not remember the section being called anything but Gateway.

Schwent, the 2023 Gateway PGA Hall of Fame inductee and director of golf at Country Club of St. Albans, told the story in a MarketScale Studio segment for the section's Gateway Conversations series, in an episode led by the show's host. It runs from a merchandise tent at Bellerive Country Club in 1992 to veterans standing up at a PGA REACH banquet. In between is the account of how a section of Monday golfers became a community organization.

The anniversary sets the clock. The Gateway PGA Section celebrated its 50th year with a Pro-Am at St. Albans Country Club on June 15, the section said in a press release, with the event raising money for the section's office build-out and future initiatives for PGA professionals, part of a yearlong celebration that also includes a commemorative 50th Anniversary Book on the people who shaped five decades. In an August 14, 2026 press release, the Western Golf Association confirmed the BMW Championship's return to Bellerive, the PGA Tour's first stop there since 2008.

## The section Schwent cannot remember by any other name dates to 1976

According to the Gateway PGA Section's new-member page, the PGA of America created a Central Section in 1916 as one of seven original regional offices, the Eastern Missouri Section was formed from that territory in 1931, and the section took its current name and boundaries in 1976. The PGA REACH Foundation's section profile uses the same founding year. That is the half century being celebrated, and it explains why a man who played junior golf in the region cannot picture the older name.

What he remembers is the culture. Schwent says the early section was entirely about golf: being a Gateway member meant you were a golfer, and the question of whether you wanted to work at a club or a golf shop came second. People fell into the trade because they could play, he says, and then found the job left little time to play.

Mondays were the exception. Schwent's favorite memories are section playing days, rain delays included, and pitching quarters with Tom Wargo, who went on to win a Senior PGA Championship. He names Bob Goss among the best players around the section now and says the fields are strong enough that he has no chance of beating them.

## The 1992 merchandise tent ran on cash, trash bags and overtime

Schwent's single greatest memory is the 1992 PGA Championship at Bellerive, where he ran the main merchandise tent for Jerry Tucker, who held the concession. Schwent was an hourly employee that year, so the paycheck told him exactly what the two weeks cost.

> So looking at my paycheck after those two weeks, I worked one hundred and twenty hours overtime. — Joe Schwent, PGA Professional & Hall of Fame Member, Country Club of St. Albans

He says he never saw daylight from his car and was never tired, because every day was that much fun. He watched one shot all week: Jerry Tucker's second into the 18th in the second round, which drew a round of applause before Tucker missed the cut. Nick Price won, and Schwent calls him a gentleman and the final day unbelievable golf.

The money moved by golf cart. Sales were mostly cash, rounded off with no coins, and Jerry Tucker's wife kept the books in the main golf shop, Schwent says. Her brother, whom the staff called the trash collector, drove a convertible cart between a satellite tent, Schwent's tent and the shop, emptied the registers into a trash bag, dumped it at Schwent's station and ferried it back to be counted, then went out for another pickup.

The tent set sales records, Schwent says, and the structure behind it is the detail he most wants remembered. Tucker shared the revenue with the club on a sliding scale, and Schwent is careful to flag the figures as his recollection.

By his account the club's share rose as sales climbed, so the membership was rooting for the tent rather than resenting it. Tucker was also generous with the staff who worked those weeks, Schwent says, naming Alan Clark, Mike Tucker, Mike Spalding and John Hayes alongside himself. Schwent's own point of comparison is the pros who came before: by his account, some who held the merchandise concession at earlier PGA Championships lost their jobs because they did not share the revenue with their clubs.

The championship itself was a fraction of today's economy. In an August 2018 article, PGA.com reported that the 1992 purse was $1.6 million, with $280,000 to Price, against a $10.5 million purse and $1.89 million to the winner at the 2017 championship. Schwent's crew was hauling trash bags of cash at an event whose entire prize fund was $1.6 million.

## Mike Murphy brought Ozzie Smith, and the section's purpose changed

Schwent remembers section meetings where the old guard sat in the back with newspapers open. The open mic belonged to Terry Hauser, Dale Boggs and Mike Murphy, and Murphy's theme never changed: what the section could do to be better, and what it could do to be more of a community.

Smith, the baseball Hall of Famer, is President of the PGA REACH Gateway Foundation, the section says on its site. PGA REACH is the PGA of America's charitable foundation, and its Gateway arm works in three areas, according to the section's new-member page: youth, through the Gateway PGA Junior Tour, PGA Jr. League, Drive Chip & Putt and scholarships; military, through PGA HOPE; and inclusion, through partnerships with Urban Golf of Greater St. Louis, the Boys & Girls Club of Greater St. Louis and the Diversity Golf Marketing Foundation. Schwent says the national organization adopting the Gateway model and tweaking the name sits fine with him.

The one giveback Schwent recalls from the early years was Clubs for Kids at Butler Park, a day when a crowd of section pros taught a crowd of children. Everything else the section did back then, he admits, he would need to be reminded of.

PGA HOPE is a free six-week instruction series for veterans and active duty military with disabilities. Nationally, the PGA REACH Foundation describes a Memorandum of Understanding with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs that lets the VA refer veterans directly to PGA HOPE as a therapeutic resource, with the program active in every state.

The scale is national. By the foundation's 2025 figures, PGA HOPE has served 71,000 veterans since 2015 at 670 program locations, running 1,203 sessions in 2025 with an average of 20 veterans per program. Schwent's own measure is the PGA REACH banquet, where he says hearing veterans speak about the program is heartwarming.

One name in his list needs sorting. Schwent speaks of veterans, PGA HOPE and the work Kevin Corn is doing at Ranken Jordan in a single breath, and the shorthand can make the hospital sound like a veterans program. It is a children's hospital: according to the section's 2026 Herb Graffis nomination, Corn has been bringing golf to hospitalized children at Ranken Jordan Pediatric Bridge Hospital since 2011, one professional and one bag of clubs at a time.

That work now sits inside PGA ABLE, short for Abilities Beyond Life's Expectations, which the PGA REACH Gateway board formalized in 2023, the section says. Its first program launched at St. Luke's Hospital's Albert Pujols Wellness Center for adults with Down syndrome, Corn's Ranken Jordan work was folded in shortly after, and the program now spans six sites serving children and adults. Other sections have begun adopting the model, according to the nomination.

The next step is ground. In the same 2026 nomination, Gateway PGA says its $4 million Play Through Capital Campaign, fully funded under Smith's leadership, will turn a ten-acre former Superfund site at the Carter Carburetor property in North St. Louis into the North St. Louis Youth & Community Center, anchoring Urban Golf of St. Louis and the Diversity Golf Marketing Foundation and extending PGA HOPE to veterans at the neighboring John Cochran VA Hospital. The section says it expects to break ground later in summer 2026.

## Small by Schwent's count, with no published ranking to check it

Asked what separates Gateway from other sections, Schwent says it is very small but mighty, and that he loves the nickname Greatway. He keeps an eye on the surveys and comparisons shared at section meetings and believes Gateway does more than its fair share on community and camaraderie when set against the rest of the country. He places it among the smallest sections.

The Gateway PGA Section serves more than 400 professionals at more than 200 facilities in eastern and central Missouri and southern Illinois, according to the section's new-member page. It is one of 41 sections serving more than 30,000 PGA members and associates nationwide. Neither the section's page nor the PGA REACH Foundation's profile ranks Gateway by membership among the 41, so his placing of it among the smallest is his own read.

His path to the board started with Mike Tucker telling him in a meeting to run. Candidates then gave a short speech on why the membership should elect them secretary, the first rung on a ladder to president. Schwent heard Mike Miller's speech, stood up, said he was voting for Miller, and sat down; Miller later made him a presidential appointee, and Schwent ran for a seat after that.

He describes his board years under John Hayes and Mike Miller, and alongside Nathan Karnes and Ben Kent, as collaboration with nobody wielding a gavel. He credits Josh Riley from the same era, who went on to the PGA of America. By then, Schwent says, the section was beginning to thrive.

## Bellerive's August 2026 BMW return follows the road Schwent says 1992 opened

Schwent credits the 1992 championship with setting St. Louis up as a place for professional tournaments. Jerry Tucker, he says, wrote a list of 10 things the organizers could not control, among them crowds, traffic, the champion, the closeness of the race and the weather, and afterward graded every one an A or A plus. Schwent remembers cold mornings with spectators banging on the tent door to get warm and buy something, and afternoons that, by his memory, never got hot.

Bellerive's own club history page lists what followed: the 2013 Senior PGA Championship, which the club says made it the third in history to host all four men's traveling majors, the 100th PGA Championship in August 2018, the BMW Championship in 2026 and the Presidents Cup in 2030. Schwent says the section's bid came with both the 100th PGA Championship and the 2013 Senior PGA, and that players including Tiger Woods raved about St. Louis golf in 2018.

The 2026 BMW Championship brings the top 50 players in the FedExCup standings to Bellerive in August. The Western Golf Association said in its August 2026 release that the 20th edition will decide 30 spots in the Tour Championship, with a Pro-Am on Wednesday, August 19, and a free Opening Drive event on Sunday, August 16, that includes a first look at the merchandise tent and a youth clinic. Veterans and active duty, retired and reserve military receive a complimentary ticket every day of the tournament, the WGA said, and youth 15 and under enter free with a ticketed adult.

The release names Vince Pellegrino, the WGA's senior vice president of tournaments, as the organizer's voice and does not describe a role for the Gateway section. Schwent's claim is broader than the release: he says the return of the BMW and the arrival of the Presidents Cup are happening because of the section, and that the 1992 championship is where that road began.

## Co-head pros who split everything, and the advice Schwent gives now

Mike Tucker, Schwent's co-head professional at Bellerive for years, was announced earlier this year as the section's 2025 Hall of Fame inductee, and Schwent says the committee vote was easy. Their arrangement was built so that each was always pulling for the other. Schwent paid the bills and ran the business; Tucker played.

Any money either earned, from a lesson or a set of clubs sold in the shop they owned, went into a shared pool that also took a share of the assistants' lesson money, Schwent says, and the pros' golf expenses, including Tucker's tournament entries, were paid through the business. Profits were split. When an equipment company named Tucker its player of the year, Schwent says, the prize was divided the same way, with Tucker's wife checking the math and declaring herself good with it.

Schwent's advice to young professionals starts with a correction. He hears some pros tell young players to stay out of the industry; he tells them the opposite, that a golf course is a great place to work, with the caveat that they will be asked to work the weekends and holidays everyone else looks forward to. If they do not like people, he says, or do not like ringing up a dozen balls set on the counter, the business is not for them.

The roles have multiplied. He points to club fitting, and to merchandising, where Kurt Goss, his head professional at St. Albans, recently won the section's Merchandiser of the Year award and was recognized across Kemper properties as merchandiser of the year last year. Schwent says he has honed his own skills toward being the tournament guy and would get out of the business before becoming a director of instruction, though he admires those who teach all day.

He fell into golf himself. A Friday round at Paddock with the man who became his first boss ended with a drink and a question about getting into the industry, and Schwent, a former caddie then in college, said yes. His father, brothers, uncle and grandfather were mailmen, and his father had taken the exam for him, but he never saw himself delivering mail; he thanks Mike Alcum for the first assistant's job and Terry Gross for his development.

Schwent says the game's recent growth came on a fluke, a worldwide pandemic that got everybody playing, and that Topgolf, whatever some professionals say about it being real golf, introduces people who would otherwise never play. For the next 50 years he wants the section to stay on the path it is on with PGA REACH, PGA HOPE and Ranken Jordan. The next dated marker on that path is the one Gateway PGA set itself: ground broken on the North St. Louis site later in summer 2026, with PGA HOPE sessions reaching the John Cochran VA next door.

## Sources

- [PGA HOPE (Helping Our Patriots Everywhere)](https://www.pgareach.org/pgahope) (PGA of America REACH Foundation)
- [7 ways the golf world was different in 1992](https://www.pga.com/archive/events/pgachampionship/7-ways-golf-world-was-different-1992?srsltid=AYCX9vIVP1sgXCS0FEirarrIyVH6ry15SYqNRgJlmT10pMrPXEOaAQDO) (PGA.com)
- [2026 Herb Graffis Nomination](https://gatewaypga.org/2026-herb-graffis-nomination/) (Gateway PGA Section)
- [What to know before attending the 2026 BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club](https://bmwchampionship.com/news/what-to-know-before-attending-the-2026-bmw-championship-at-bellerive-country-club) (BMW Championship / Western Golf Association)
- [Ozzie Smith, Gateway PGA REACH President](https://gatewaypga.org/ozzie-smith-gateway-pga-reach-president/) (Gateway PGA Section)

Tags: PGA of America, Gateway PGA Section, PGA HOPE, PGA REACH, golf, community outreach

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