The pursuit of a First Tee Idaho headquarters, and a case for reimagining green-grass golf facilities
By: Shane René, USGA P.J. Boatwright Media & Operations Intern
In the back wing of what’s been dubbed “Golf House Idaho” — a cozy office space shared by the Idaho Golf Association, Idaho Junior Tour and First Tee Idaho — you’ll find the office of Nick Blasius. Inside, you’ll see the 32-year-old executive director working away, chasing an idea that he believes will unleash the potential of his First Tee chapter.
Katie McKelvey teaching a class at Falcon Crest Golf Course in Kuna. | Drake Cooper Agency
Through three floor-to-ceiling windows, which limit privacy more than they shout: “executive director,” his desk looks across a cluttered hallway to an office shared by First Tee Idaho Program Director Katie McKelvey and Coordinator Britnee Kemble. The three of them are responsible for running First Tee operations in Idaho, a national organization that introduces young people to golf, engaging them with the values and assets surrounding the game.
“Our goal is to use the game of golf as a vehicle to give kids skills to be successful in life,” Blasius said. “First Tee does a great job of actually taking those feelings, and that general consensus, and putting it into a curriculum of building strength through character.”
Britnee Kemble demonstrates a putting lesson for two students | Drake Cooper Agency
McKelvey and Kemble are, in some sense, the faces of First Tee Idaho. Effortlessly personable, bright and bubbling with their own love of golf, they are the ones you’re most likely to see (often accompanied by a small cast of volunteers) out at Treasure Valley golf courses delivering the First Tee curriculum to its students. In the office, you’ll find them shuttling bags of donated clubs to and from parents, planning classes and events, creating promotional content and cobbling together First Tee’s resources into a product that carries its mission forward. They are, in the purest sense, foot soldiers in the grassroots development of youth golf in Idaho.
Back in his fishbowl of an office — where his PGA credentials hang unassumingly on the wall behind him — General Blasius is channeling his capacity as executive director into a literally and figuratively groundbreaking new project: build a green-grass First Tee facility in Idaho.
Blasius uses the phrase “golf education center” to describe the concept — something that serves First Tee’s dual mission of teaching golf skills and personal development. And while he’s still in the early phases of pushing his project toward realization, indicators of the projects short-and-long term feasibility, he says, have been strong. And his organization continues to grow, underpinning the case for new space.
“I’ve learned that it’s a very slow process,” he said. “But you’ve just got to keep putting one foot in front of the other and make sure you believe in the vision — and the concept and vision has changed throughout the process.”
The origins of this pursuit trace back to those murky, early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, a mere six months into Blasius’s time as executive director. As the PGA Tour, NBA, and every other non-essential institution hit pause, Blasius and his team followed suit, canceling all classes in the spring of 2020.
But while concerts, schools and restaurants shuttered, golf was having a moment in the sun. Outdoors and naturally distanced, a game that once withered in the economic downturn of 2008 became a safe haven for everyone gone stir-crazy during lockdown. Suddenly, First Tee Idaho found themselves uniquely equipped to solve a crisis for families across the Treasure Valley.
Hauling in donations of masks and gloves, even cleaning supplies to wipe down grips, Blasius and his team took every precaution they could for a summer full of classes. But as registration opened, the flood of displaced youth was more than they imagined. Classes at Pierce Park Greens were full in just two hours, spilling over into a waitlist twice as long as the number of students they could accommodate. Other host sites filled waitlists of their own.
“I was frustrated because our job is to service youth and give them an avenue to do this, and we weren’t living up to that,” Blasius said. “Yeah, it filled up; that’s great... but more kids wanted to partake, and we couldn’t do that for them.”
While First Tee enjoys a productive, if not symbiotic, relationship with many of Southern Idaho’s public golf courses (a relationship Blasius hopes to continue), relying solely on small slices of borrowed space and time seemed to be an impassible barrier to First Tee’s ability to scale its operations. So, Blasius picked up the phone and tapped into an impressive network of golf-loving community figures, and emerged with some faith in the possibility that, one day, First Tee Idaho could have its own space to call home.
“It turned into this kind of feasibility study with a lot of people in the community about — hey, if we can make something like this happen, does it seem sustainable? Is the community going to rally behind it?” Blasius said.
“The answer was overwhelmingly ‘yes’.”
First Tee’s priority is to serve youth and not golfers, per se; they aren’t here to develop Idaho’s next PGA Tour player. And that position gives Blasius some flexibility with the golf-centric elements of this project, which he sees as an opportunity to be as creative as they can with the playing surface.
“Golf in 2023 isn’t our dad’s version of golf, right?” Blasius said. “Golf has changed a lot; the culture of golf has changed a lot. You don’t see a lot of pleated Dockers on the golf course anymore…
“Let’s do fun, cool, creative projects.”
Blasius is as credentialed as golf nuts come. Launching his golf career in the cart barn at Plantation Country Club (now The River Club) as a teenager, he became the club’s head professional in his mid-20's. His office and wardrobe are bursting with items that beg other golf nuts to stop and chat, even when he’s walking his goldendoodle, Ollie, who wears a collar from Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. He represents a growing demographic of golfers willing to re-evaluate the conventions we use to introduce new golfers to the game.
When we sat down to talk about his project, we quickly found ourselves deep in the weeds, waxing on about the introduction of par as a scoring standard in the early 20th century and the implications its had on the way golfers approach the game. Blasius is exactly the kind of guy you want around for a geek-fest like this, but his greatest skill is understanding how to take golf theory and present it in a way that is palatable, practical and productive.
Golf, after all, is a game that begs to be explored, not explained.
Ultimately, this looks like exploring the middle ground between golf’s common arrangement of facilities: 9-or-18-hole loops for play and flat slabs of grass to practice your swing. Places like Pierce Park Greens in Boise (including Falcon Crest’s Cadet course and Sand Creek’s six-hole par-3, among others) are a popular vision of what intermediate or “bridge” facilities look like. Ranging from 85 to 115 yards, no hole will leave you feeling like you’ll never find the bottom of the flag stick. It’s a place where golf’s difficulty is accessible.
“We need more places like Pierce Park,” Blasius said. Discussions of bridge facilities have gained steam with the rise of Top Golf and other non-traditional golf experiences, as green-grass facilities try to convert new golfers into long-term customers.
But Blasius is interested in doing something more dynamic — something entirely removed from conventions of par, length, routing or the driving-range teaching model that demands a burdensome time commitment to see results. He’s inspired by places like Bandon Dunes, where the idea that golf courses should have a certain number of holes is seen as a suggestion, not a rule, and where exploration of the land is paramount. He wants to build something that engages a more holistic golf experience, where good golf shots win the day and making eight never needs to matter.
“From the core of this project, it was going to have to be creative for us to get this done,” he said. “Now the more I do research on it and pursue it, I think the whole project itself is a creative project — it’s essentially giving a golfer, like yourself, a canvas.”
Maybe that looks like a handful of fun green complexes that can be played in a flexible, undefined routing. Maybe it’s a multi-sided driving range that you can play through the middle of. Maybe it’s one, big hydra of a golf hole that lets you pick your own adventure.
No matter how that vision solidifies, Blasius wants this to be the coolest golf playground you’ve ever seen.
“Let’s build something that is every kid’s club,” Blasius said. “Whether you play your golf at Warm Springs or Crane Creek Country Club, this can be a common home for both of those kids.”