Those in the Aloha Section PGA are precise with their work description. The 236 members and apprentices, serving 90 Hawaii golf facilities, often describe themselves as “golf professionals, not professional golfers.”

That only makes the Sony Open in Hawaii exemption, given to the winner of their annual Stroke Play Championship, more special.

ASPGA members usually spend more time behind a desk or a bucket of balls than on a golf course. To play in the year’s first full-field PGA Tour event is a rare gift.

“It is a huge incentive for us,” says Eric Dugas, who won his second stroke play title Tuesday and will compete in his third Sony Open on Jan. 11-14. “We’re used to traveling six hours to play anywhere when we live here, so to fly 30 minutes and still be in Hawaii, I’m excited.

“I’m also excited because it will be the first time I played it while not focusing on full-time playing. It will be a little different, more of a stroll.”

Dugas is from Cape Cod, Mass., and has worked at Kukio and Makena the past six years, when he wasn’t playing on a tour. He made the Sony cut in 2014 and played on the PGA Tour’s Latinomerica circuit the following year.

He would survive 10 cuts — and his pidgin Spanish — there and collect $39,000 and three top-10s, including a runner-up finish at the Guatemala Open. He finished 28th on the money list and shot 28 on the front nine in the Abierto Mexicano de Golf.

That gives him something to talk about at Waialae Country Club with Justin Thomas, who shattered a series of Sony Open records this year after opening with a 59.

Dugas came home from Latin America with a sore shoulder. That, combined with an offer to work at the new, private Makena Golf & Beach Club — owned by Discovery Land Company, which also has Kukio — has kept him in Hawaii since.

“They gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse, which was to stay at Makena,” Dugas said with a grin. “I can’t refuse that.”

Playing golf will still be an integral part of his life — with members, in Aloha Section events and on the road a bit, at places like next year’s Sony and the 51st PGA Professional National Championship, at Bayonet Black Horse in Seaside, Calif.

That entry was also part of the three-pronged first prize Tuesday at Kapolei, along with $2,300. First-round leader Garrett Okamura also earned an invitation to the PGA Professional after falling to Dugas by a shot in the final moments.

Okamura, a Baldwin graduate who works at The Dunes at Maui Lani, was the only golfer in the field to break par in a first round played through Kapolei’s maximum 7,000 yards and 35 mph gusts.

He took a four-shot lead into Tuesday’s final round, which began in calmer early morning winds that were quickly replaced by … well, more 35 mph gusts.

Dugas birdied the first three holes to cut his deficit to one. Okamura’s bogey on the 16th left the golfers, both in their mid-30s, tied.

Both birdied the next hole. Dugas reached the par-5 in two, let a downhill and downwind eagle putt slip 10 feet by, then quickly drained that. Okamura drove into a fairway bunker, laid up and stuck his approach shot 3 feet below the hole to cover.

That soft touch into the crazy wind eluded Okamura — Aloha Section player of the year four times since 2011 — on the final hole. His approach into an even harder wind bounced once and went into the back water hazard.

He ended up with bogey and a 74, one shot short at a tournament he won in 2014 and ’15 to secure a treasured spot in the Sony. Dugas’ final-round 69 was the only score in the 60s in two days. His 1-under 143 finish was the only red number at the end.

Both described it as “absolutely” another example of golf’s infinite ability to teach.

“Oh yeah, absolutely. I had to have a lot of patience,” Okamura said. “Eric birdied the first three and probably should have birdied the first five. It was one of those punches in the face and you’ve just got to take it and try to stay in it.”

He did, until a very tough end.

“You learn something every time, absolutely,” Dugas said. “This week it was about frame of mind. Every time you play a tournament you learn the mental part is way more important than how you are hitting it.

“You have to stay in the right frame of mind. Hey, we’re in Hawaii.”

Defending champion Kevin Hayashi (74—149) won a playoff with Kellan Anderson (75—149) and is first alternate for PGA Professionals. Hayashi, 55, has won stroke play five times this century.

The professional Stroke Play Championship goes back to 1960 — 15 years before the Aloha Section began.