NEW YORK — Kevin Hammer was installed as the 68th president in USGA history Saturday at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in Manhattan, and he opened his tenure with a simple but direct plea about the state of a game that stands on the precipice of the greatest growth curve in its history.
“The game is strongest when it is unified.”
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After being introduced by outgoing president Fred Perpall as a man whose upbringing in golf seemingly made him “born to be president of the USGA,” Hammer thanked his parents who raised him just off the first tee at Delray Dunes in Florida, where his father Laurie was the head pro and mother Marlene ran the merchandising of the golf shop.
“I am humbled by this, and just thankful that the game has been a really driving force in my life,” said the former AJGA All-American, No. 1-ranked junior, college golfer at Florida and participant in multiple USGA championships. “I was raised in a house that felt like it was nestled at the center of the game of golf. … It is fitting that the USGA headquarters has traditionally been called Golf House, but before I knew that place existed, I thought Golf House was the house that I grew up in.”
Hammer, who has served five years on the 15-member USGA Executive Committee and is a past president of the Florida State Golf Association, committed to continuing the USGA’s expansive collection of programs, including a host of new initiatives that represent more than $300 million in spending in 2025. Hammer has led the Championship Committee and has been instrumental in the early growth of the U.S. National Development Program, which has provided funding for more than a thousand players in its first two years. He stressed that the organization responsible for everything from championships to growing the grass that makes up the playing surfaces for those tournaments, as well as your member-guest, will be “more personal, more transparent, more human, more connected, more fun.”
“We will continue to lead, we will show up, and we will listen,” he said. “We will collaborate with all stakeholders, the R&A, the PGA of America, the Masters, the LPGA Tour, PGA Tour, all of our allied golf associations, the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, Golf Managers Association, the AJGA. The game is strongest when it is unified, and unity is a choice that we make every day. But the game is bigger than all of our organizations.”
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Hammer, an investement advisor with Merrill Lynch for more than 25 years and currently the managing director of the firm’s Rubin, Hammer, Eaton & Conrad Wealth Management Group, is joined by two new members on the USGA executive committee, Brenda Corrie Kuehn of North Carolina and former PGA of America president Suzy Whaley, who are each beginning a three-year term.
He now leads an organization that is at the forefront of record-setting participation numbers. More than 82 million scores were posted on the USGA’s GHIN system in 2025—more than a million more than the year before from a record-setting 3.68 million golfers with a handicap index. According to its annual report, the USGA invested some $347 million in the game last year. Hammer promised to aggressively act on golf’s current moment, from simulated golf to the U.S. Adaptive Open.
“We can and we should embrace the new while protecting and coveting the traditional,” he said. “There is room for all. We love this game and we love all forms of it. In short, we believe the world is in a better place when more people are experiencing the game. That lesson is that how we play this game is a lot more important than how well we play this game. In a world of so much division, so many screens, phones, computers, too much isolation, golf is such a welcome space to breathe, to walk. To excel, to fail. To look at each other in the eye and come together.”
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