The Truth About the
European Golf Teachers Federation

For those of you entering the golf teaching profession in the European market, it is important to have a basic understanding of the history and viable options available.

The European Golf Teachers Federation is a British company and although the name implies a federation of European golf teachers – this is not necessarily truly the case. This may have been their original intention but with the establishment of the World Golf Teachers Federation which is an amalgamation of 35 member nations a more equitable program emerged. The WGTF knew that it would make sense that each European nation should conduct their own golf teaching certification so that teaching professionals could not only belong to their own national association but also a much larger worldwide family of golf teaching professionals as well.

Therefore, the WGTF of Great Britain grew substantially along with the WGTF of the Netherlands, WGTF of Germany and other European member nations. In finding that many of their certification courses were now being radically diminished in numbers, the founder of the EGTF who has permanently resided in Asia for over ten years and has not returned to England then resorted to an interesting way of doing business. The following statement is taken from the homepage of their website. “Founder of the World Golf Federation, along with the American Golf Teachers Federation.”

Of course there is no such thing as the “World Golf Federation” but it is confusingly similar to the World Golf Teachers Federation.  The EGTF is not a member of the World Golf Teachers Federation although this is their obvious implication especially to those who are brand new in the teaching profession and somewhat vulnerable. Furthermore, the American Golf Teachers Federation is an Asian entity not an American company. It has never conducted any training courses in the United States due to the obvious threat of trademark infringement with the well established USGTF. Although the American Golf Teachers Federation is not an American company, again, it would obviously deceive many individuals in Asia who think that by joining, there is some sort of affiliation to the United States.

Furthermore, in the EGTF’s obsession to somehow imply an affiliation with golf in America, they have placed an AmericanGolf.com logo on the homepage of their website and colored it red, white and blue! American Golf is simply a golf club management company in the United States with no ties at all to individual members who have happened to join the EGTF.

It is interesting to note that the International PGA is privy to this type of deceptive marketing and does not recognize the EGTF as a viable entity. It does however recognize all individual WGTF and PGA members throughout the world.

For those in Europe who are searching for an organization with integrity to truly help guide them in their golf teaching careers, we thought it would be helpful to make you aware of these facts.

If you reside in Europe, please log onto the following websites: www.wgtfgb.com, www.dgtf.nl www.ggtf.de. These entities have no affiliation at all with the EGTF.