It All Comes Down to the Putt

By Thomas A. Brophy, president emeritus at Marshall Dennehey Warner Coleman & Goggin, P.C., and president of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation.

On June 11, the Philadelphia Bar Foundation will hold its 30th Annual Golf and Tennis Classic commemorating three decades of significant golf event fundraising (tennis was introduced to the Classic in 2012). This year we will convene at the Union League Golf Club at Torresdale, a beautiful venue which was extensively renovated in 2015. We encourage you to join us whether you’re an experienced or novice golfer (we have an afternoon clinic!), tennis or pickleball player, or a guest who joins us for cocktails and dinner. Visit our registration page to purchase tickets and sponsorships. 

I recently had the chance to page through some of the past souvenir program books distributed after each of the Philadelphia Bar Foundation annual Golf and Tennis Classics. These materials include a brief recap of the day, a listing of the committee members, contest winners, and auction item winners. They also include many photos of smiling, cheerful participants from the day including one that is captioned “…it all comes down to the putt.”

As our golf and tennis committee reaches out to our reliable and generous sponsors who have been dedicated to supporting us for many years, we will also be doing outreach to firms, businesses, and individuals who have not participated recently in order to build new relationships and secure much needed funding in support of the Bar Foundation for 2018.

In the game of golf, a putt is a golf stroke that is intended to make the ball roll into the hole from a short distance away. After the important expansive swings in the tee box and the fairway plays, what is left is the critical putt to get the ball into the hole.

In the same way, after our broad outreach in the months of February and March, and the more intense outreach in April to follow up, we’ll be making many phone calls and requests in May. This is when we putt. We’ll have commitments, but not checks, we’ll have gaps in our budgeted revenue, and we’ll all be taking many small swings at our goal through frequent phone calls and emails. It will all come down to the putt.

In the first few years of the annual Classic, there were a handful of sponsors and the event’s revenue hovered around $25,000. We now have up to 50 sponsors and revenue is typically around $100,000. Much work is involved as a Foundation and a community to raise these funds and we are so grateful to those who serve, sponsor, play and attend.

If you have participated in recent years, we thank you and encourage your participation in our 30th annual event. If you haven’t joined us in a while, or have never attended our golf event, we hope you will consider this event as an introduction to the wonderful community that the Bar Foundation brings together.

This year’s afternoon golf clinic, a fun, casual experience with opportunities for networking and cocktails on the course, was designed especially for non-golfers as an introduction to the game. We are so excited to offer this as an attraction for all skill levels and look forward to having them share their experiences at the cocktail reception and dinner.

Many of the best times I’ve had golfing occur off the course. Reflecting on the past 30 years of the Golf and Tennis Classic, I see that this has been true for other golfers, for the tennis players and for the event attendees as well. For three decades, the Philadelphia lawyers and professionals have gathered in the spirit of community and competition. I look forward to it and to seeing you there on June 11.