May 26, 2020
IJGA Members,
Per the Golf Operational Restrictions issued in Illinois on May 24th, tournaments and shotgun starts are prohibited in Illinois during phase 3 of restore Illinois. Due to these restrictions, the IJGA staff and Board of Directors have made the decision to run a select number of events in Wisconsin and Indiana during this time.
While these restrictions are not ideal, we must abide by them in hopes of being able to run tournaments in July. In the body of this email, you will find an updated tournament schedule for June and general policies and procedures that we have put together for tournaments to ensure the safety of our players. As for tournaments in July, we will wait to hear from the state if tournaments will be allowed after June 26th in Illinois.
Please click HERE for the updated tournament schedule. These tournaments will be available to players aged 12-18. PBE from the American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) will be updated as soon as we hear back from the AJGA. These events will also be recognized by the Junior Golf Scorecard (JGS). These events will be open for registration starting on Friday, May 29th at 10:00 AM.
As a reminder, Basic Members can play in one MAJGT event at the non-member price. Basic Plus Members can play in one MAJGT event at the member price and one MAJGT event at the non-member price.
The Illinois State Junior Amateur is one of the biggest junior events in Illinois. We have decided to move the event to August 11-13, in hopes that golf tournaments will be allowed later this summer. With the cancellation of June events, all qualifiers had to be cancelled. As a result, the ISJA will be an invitation only event. We will be releasing event invitation criteria over the next few weeks.
Please click HERE for updated general policies and procedures.
We appreciate our membership being as patient as you have been with us over the last few months. This has been very frustrating for our staff not knowing what would be happening with tournaments on a week to week basis. They spent months piecing together a schedule of over 140 events for 2020 and there is a chance that we are only going to be able to run a handful of events this year.
As a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that relies on 2-3 months of tournaments to keep our organization afloat the remaining months of the year, this is certainly a huge blow to us. This will affect the IJGA beyond 2020, but we are motivated to making the best out of this situation. We also understand that many of our members may have also been impacted by COVID-19 financially. We will continue to offer financial assistance to members in need of it and you can apply for that HERE.
With the news of tournaments being prohibited in Illinois during the month of June, you may decide you do not wish to participate in IJGA events this year. If you wish to receive a full refund and cancel out of all the events you were registered for in 2020, you will find more information about how to do so HERE. As a reminder, all Players Account balances do roll over to the next year, so you may use any remaining credit from this year for the 2021 season. There will be more information sent out with final refund policies set over the next few days.
We certainly understand that this is not an ideal situation and this was in no way how we pictured the 2020 IJGA season would go, but we want you to know that we are doing everything we can in order to provide safe and well-run playing opportunities to our members. We will continue to assess new restrictions that come out and alter the 2020 schedule as we see necessary.
Matt Wennmaker
Executive Director, IJGA
