Arsich is making life a lot easier for local competitors.

Bringing Order to the Scene

History is riddled with failed “can’t-miss” sports website ventures. Well, LocalAmateurGolf.com isn’t one of them. Because founder Chad Arsich isn’t out to get rich—not yet—and his site already does a solid job at what it promises: helping competitive amateurs of all ages tap into the super-busy Chicagoland/Illinois tournament schedule.

It can even get you discounts at tournaments. This is the Internet, after all.

Arsich is a Mokena family man and sells forensic and corporate security software for AccessData by day. But he’s also a former golf pro—educated at Ferris State in Michigan—and was an assistant pro at Ridge Country Club in south-suburban Beverly in 1998 when he decided that it wasn’t the career for him.

Getting into sales was a smart choice, and in 2005 he let his PGA membership lapse so he could compete in amateur tournaments. But he found he missed the golf business, and he also got tired of cobbling together his own tournament schedule from scattered websites. 

“Chicago has a great amateur golf community. Pretty much every weekend there’s a good, solid amateur event that any competitive amateur can play in,” Arsich says. “I’d go from event to event and ask when’s the next event, writing them down on cocktail napkins.”

So he built LocalAmateurGolf.com himself—he’s still a team of one—starting with a simple list of events. Pretty soon he was posting the entry forms, and then results. (“Amateurs like seeing their results online,” he says.) And he started networking.

On a recent weekend, this consisted of talking to other players while competing in the I-80 Amateur at New Lenox. There, Arsich followed a three-bogey first round with a poor second but still finished in the money—the $25 he won covered his gas. Playing in events helps his cause, because a site like LocalAmateurGolf.com will grow only through awareness, even though there’s nothing else like it in Illinois, and just California and Texas—golf hotbeds—have comparable sites.

Oh, and he started two tournaments of his own, under the aegis of his website: the Illinois Amateur Invitational in 2011 and the Illinois Match Play Championship in 2012. Last year, Chadd Slutzky of Deer Park won the Invitational with an 11-under 36-hole score of 131 on the Schaumburg Golf Club course to take home $750. In the Match Play Championship at Prestwick Country Club in Frankfort, Mark Sider of Highland Park beat Brian Hickey of Downers Grove, 3–2.

The choices of an invitational and a match play are smart—the invitational guarantees a strong field—and the match play event, also invite-only, is spread across five weeks and five courses, giving LocalAmateurGolf.com added exposure.

“What I was trying to do was take the concept of the larger national events—your North & South Championship, your Azalea Invitational, your invite-only events that most amateurs are not going to have the opportunity to play in—and apply that to Illinois,” Arsich says. The only additional tournament he’s contemplating is a senior event, also for strategic reasons. “Seniors are always looking for more events—but I’m not looking to compete with other events,” he says. “There are senior events that are 30 years old, so I’m not out to knock them off.”

But he operates on strong business principles. Bettinardi Golf, the Tinley Park-based putter maker of global reputation, is the presenting sponsor of the Invitational, for example. And Arsich has netted a partnership with the larger AmateurGolf.com, which includes Arsich’s news and events in its weekly newsletters. Arsich also recently put together a players committee for awareness, for input on events and, importantly, for the player rankings that Arsich devised and has tweaked over the years and that AmateurGolf.com now publishes. 

But the site is a still a venture. Arsich has reached out to college golf coaches throughout the state, and they’ve been supportive: “During the summer, you have a lot of Division I, II and III players who like the opportunities to play in amateur events,” he says.

He’s had donations, and his two tournaments put him in the black each year. “But I don’t really make a lot of money,” he says. “Perhaps someday, as I continue to provide value and get the tournaments associated with the site more exposure.”

And for now, he’s only focusing on Illinois. “I’m taking baby steps to make sure I’m doing everything right,” he says. “It’s still exciting because there are a lot of amateurs who don’t know about the site, and I’m working to promote not only the events that focus on the scratch golfer but also to good events that are flighted and have higher-handicap players.”

There are a lot of tournaments that don’t know about his site, as well. “I need them to be pro-active and reach out to me. I do this in my off hours, my spare time, whenever I have an hour here or there,” he says, “Whenever I’m not at a baseball game, or when the kids are sleeping, I’m at work. I do all the social media, everything—I’m a one-man-band.”

And, by the way, a one-man-band who plays to a 0.3 handicap, although he’s candid about it: “I haven’t posted anything yet this year, so I’m sure I’m a little higher than that.”

And just for the record, Arsich plays TaylorMade RocketBallz Tour woods and forged MB/MC Combo irons, Titleist wedges and—naturally—a Bettinardi putter. Because when you’re a small business and still taking baby steps—heck, when you’re any kind of business—you keep the sponsors happy.