APGC General Manager Shan Outlines Vision

Singapore: Asia-Pacific Golf Confederation (APGC) General Manager Nick Shan has outlined his vision for building a sustainable golfing eco-system for the amateur game across the region.

In his first interview since assuming the post at the start of April, Shan has highlighted the importance of unifying the schedules of the APGC’s 47 member organisations and creating career opportunities within the industry.

He said: “The APGC has the opportunity to really build the golfing eco-system from an amateur point of view across Asia-Pacific. We need to build a co-ordinated schedule, and elevating existing events with more World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) points is key.

“But beyond that, we have a significant volume of amateurs that love the game, and being a professional in the game shouldn’t be the end point. If they don’t achieve that, there should be an opportunity for them to still support the game that they love and that they’ve been playing for so long. And therein lies the opportunity to create a career path with golf being the pathway to broader horizons and career opportunities which support golf.

“And we, as the APGC, building the eco-system, as well as for our stakeholders, APGC membership, we need to build a depth of future administrators, we need to collaborate with existing programmes which already offer expertise, and build a depth of future people that want to support the industry, whether it be from a club manufacturing point of view, or their sights to become a future director of golf or general manager or food and beverage manager. 

“These are opportunities which the APGC can provide avenues into from either a diploma or an enrichment point of view on the job. These opportunities are maybe not short-term goals, but they are definitely opportunities to grow our eco-system supported by many people who love the game of golf.”

In his first six weeks in the job, Singapore-based Shan has attended APGC tournaments in Japan and Indonesia and met with APGC Board members, representatives from national associations and sponsors, in line with his plans to keep lines of communication open with all stakeholders.

He said: “I’d like to thank the Board members of the APGC for their selection of me as their General Manager. I believe it to be a very important position, a position with a lot of responsibility to help collaborate and co-ordinate and help lead all the member countries to provide more playing opportunities, more playing opportunities with WAGR points.

“That’s something that we collectively need to achieve, and with a bit of communication and co-ordination, it’s something we can put together in a fairly short space of time.

“I believe it will be good for all the different sub-regions of Asia-Pacific to have communication with APGC. In time, I will reach out to the different sub-regions and understand the challenges that they have in terms of the number of events that they have, the number of international tournaments that they have.

“It’s something that we can work collectively on with the rest of the APGC member countries to help elevate the current events on the different schedules in the sub-regions to be worth more points on the WAGR and to be able to accommodate more players from all of our member countries.

“We need to look at developing a co-ordinated schedule across the whole region, taking into account the different weather patterns that we have across the region. This will be helpful for us to try and accommodate all the different countries but, at the same time, be able to handle what we’re dealing with, from a world point of view.

“With elevated flight prices at this time in our life, we need to provide more tournaments organically here in Asia-Pacific. That is really a short and long-term goal. It will be beneficial for the APGC and its membership by having a co-ordinated schedule that reduces the costs to travel long distances to compete for WAGR points.

“If we have more tournaments to play for in our region and our respective sub-regions, that is the building block to growing a co-ordinated schedule that has a lot more value for our membership.”

Shan is conscious also of respecting the history of the APGC, which was formed in 1963.

He said: “We need to be very mindful of the history of the APGC and its supporters – The R&A, Augusta National, Rolex, the International Golf Federation. These are all stakeholders which have supported the APGC.

“We should also mention the Japan Golf Association and the Japan Golf Tour Organisation. There’s been a long history with that part of Asia, starting the Nomura Cup, starting the APGC. Japan has been part of the DNA in all of these relationships.

“Moving forward, we will look to create more value for our stakeholders as well as for our membership. We thank the stakeholders very much and look forward to their continued support.”

***To watch the full interview, please click on the link: https://www.apgc.online/elevating-apgc/