The Western Golf Association (WGA) is one of the United States' oldest golf organizations, and its headquarters are located in Golf, Illinois. The WGA sponsors three prestigious golf tournaments: the Western Junior, the Western Amateur and the BMW Championship, a FedEx Cup playoff event. Founded in 1899, the WGA has also administered the Chick Evans Scholarship Program for deserving caddies since its inception in 1930 through the Evans Scholars Foundation.
More than 500 member clubs, 36,000 WGA Par Club members and 100,000 golfers in the WGA Bag Tag Program support the Evans Scholars Foundation, one of the nation’s largest individually funded scholarship programs. The program is also supported by 23 affiliated golf associations and proceeds from the BMW Championship, a PGA Tour event whose 2010 edition will be held September 6–12 at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont, Illinois.
The Evans Scholars Foundation awards full tuition and housing scholarships to deserving caddies across the country. Currently, there are 865 Scholars attending top universities in the United States. More than 9,000 caddies have graduated from college as Evans Scholars.
To qualify for the scholarship, students must have outstanding academic and caddie records, good character and leadership skills and financial need. The Scholarship is renewed on a yearly basis.
Most Scholars live at one of the 14 universities that has a Foundation-owned Scholarship House. The 14 chapters are as follows in order of foundation: Northwestern University (1940), University of Illinois (1951), University of Michigan (1952), University of Wisconsin (1953), Michigan State University (1955), Marquette University (1955), University of Minnesota (1958), Ohio State University (1962), Purdue University (1967), University of Colorado (1967), University of Missouri (1968), Indiana University (1969), Miami University (1974), and Northern Illinois University (1987).
The WGA agreed to oversee the scholarship program in 1930. It was started by Charles "Chick" Evans, Jr., an outstanding amateur golfer. Today, there are over 500 country clubs in the United States that support the WGA. All of these clubs also help support the Evans Scholars Foundation.
The WGA is administered by officers who volunteer their time to operate the organization. They are called WGA Directors. Roger Mohr is the Chairman of the WGA/ESF. He is almost the first Evans Scholar graduate from Marquette University. John Kaczkowski is the current President/CEO.
Originally formed as a rulesmaking body, the WGA was born because U.S. western golf clubs (the current Midwest was "the west" in the 1890s) felt that they weren't being properly represented in the United States Golf Association, based then in New York. But after 20 stormy years followed by negotiations, the WGA officially recognized the USGA's authority as the rulesmaking body in the U.S.
The WGA oversees and hosts professional and amateur events. Today it has conducted more than 250 tournaments. Its first tournaments were held at the Glen View Club. The events the WGA runs today are the Western Amateur and Western Junior championships.
The 108-year run of the prestigious Western Open ended in 2007 when the PGA Tour moved the event from the Western's traditional first week of July dates to September and made it the BMW Championship, the third leg of the four-event FedEx Cup playoff series. The elimination by the PGA Tour of the word "Western" from the tournament's title has been controversial, to say the least; many longtime supporters are very upset "The Western" exists no longer.