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By Trent Bouts
Simple tips for boosting you business through better leagues
When Doug Mcdavitt recently closed Willowbrook Golf Course because of rain, he left the clubhouse doors open. A few hours later, “20 or 30 people” turned up, munching and sipping their way through more than $500 worth of hamburgers, beer and more. Money like that on a day like that can be critical for an operation like Willowbrook, a 27-hole facility in Watertown, New York, about 70 miles north of Syracuse.
At one time, when manufacturing was king, the town was home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the country. But manufacturing, like golf, isn’t what it once was. Nor is Watertown, and millionaires are as scarce as double eagles at Willowbrook. “We’re not exactly what you’d call one of the great courses,” McDavitt says. “We’re never going to host the U.S. Open.”
It hasn’t helped that there has been a slew of other rainouts recently. “Worst spring in my 31 years here,” McDavitt proclaims. It even snowed on May 8. In such a climate, that $500 and change means even more. It came in because of Willowbrook’s solid league operation and the social culture it engenders.
“These guys are friends. Their league is their night out from the wife and kids,” McDavitt explains. “Our golf season is short and when winter comes, a lot of them won’t see each other for four or five months. So they look forward to catching up even if they can’t play.”
Another of the club’s nine leagues even has a compulsory attendance clause in its rules. Rain, hail or snow, members of the 50-plus co-ed league that plays on Thursdays at 3 p.m., must turn up to spend a few hours together. “They’ll play cards or get up a marble game or something,” McDavitt notes. “I appreciate it because what they spend really helps us. It’s really pretty cool.”
Golf leagues are nothing new in the industry. They proliferated during the manufacturing boom of the 1970s and 1980s when, in a tight labor market, it was common for companies to encourage, sponsor and administer leagues. But when manufacturing dwindled or moved offshore, much of that benevolence also went away.
At Briarwood Golf Club in York, Pennsylvania, general manager Rick Saxon has made multiple entreaties to the nearby Arm and Hammer distribution facility “with hundreds” of workers. “They just don’t want to get involved,” Saxon laments. “We haven’t had real good success reaching out to businesses.”
Corporations may no longer be knocking on clubhouse doors with check books at the ready, but for many facilities like Briarwood and Willowbrook, leagues are rising in significance once again—for some if only by default. As Saxon says, with more than a hint of irony, “They are growing…by depletion.”
As weekend play dwindles at 36-hole Briarwood—a trend that is now several years old—largely static league numbers account for a larger portion of the revenue pie. “We work hard at our leagues,” Saxon boasts. “They’re about 30 percent of our business now, with about 1,000 players a week.”
For others, though, like Scott Lake Golf and Practice Center in Comstock Park, Michigan, leagues have graduated from supporting cast to a lead role. The club has some 1,600 registered players across 42 leagues that now generate north of 40 percent of all green fees and cart revenues. “Our leagues are the foundation of us being able to operate a successful business,” owner Jeff Hoag declares.
A decade ago, Hoag was a party to efforts by the Michigan Golf Course Owners Association to develop software that would take the headaches and hard work out of running leagues. That drive, Hoag says, has been a “fabulous success.”
Historically, league administration relied on hours of weekly toil over pen, paper and phone by a volunteer. It was a perilous model. Volunteers often burned out, then so did their league. Golf course owners might have recognized the players by face and even name, but their phone numbers and emails, often scrawled on graph paper and notepads, disappeared along with the secretary. In the case of a 32-player league over a 15-week season at $25 a time for golf and beer, that could create a $12,000 hole in a hurry.
Hoag hasn’t just plugged that potential drain with the software the MGCOA eventually developed with what was then Handicomp and is now Golf Handicap Network, his league capacity is “actually maxed out.” In turn, that demand has enabled him to steadily ratchet up the price of league play.
The software that makes 15 minutes work of what was once three or four hours a week for those volunteers has been a big contributor to that growth. Myriad versions are available through multiple companies these days, but the software is only part of the story. Today, Hoag treats his league players like the royalty he regards them as.
For instance, he runs a league appreciation week each year, when grills are wheeled out and players are treated to as many hot dogs and brats as they can eat. This year, he’ll give away a 40-inch flat-screen TV on each of the four league nights of that week. It’s a step up on the nightly spinning wheel during season when someone wins anything from a cap to a box of balls, or maybe new golf shoes.
“I don’t care how many hot dogs we give away,” Hoag says. “You’ve got to tell your people how much you love them. It’s an all-too-often overlooked facet of this business. With the spinning wheel alone there will be 72 players who will walk away with a prize over the course of the season. That generates interest and has been very well received.”
Hoag has been in the golf business a long time, and chuckles when he recalls some of the epiphanies he’s had along the way. One of them came when he was poring over some industry data defining the core or avid golfer as someone who played eight to 10 times a year. “I looked at our leagues and said, ‘We’ve got 700 golfers playing 15 times a year, shouldn’t they be deserving of the best possible treatment we can give them?’”
Thus, Hoag made his league time slots sacrosanct. Nothing—no corporate event, tournament or outing—would interfere with the tee time of any league. Red carpet treatment like that fed satisfaction levels and attracted even more interest, which reminded Hoag of an earlier epiphany—when demand is high, prices should rise, too.
As a result, his league rates have risen a total of 30 percent over the past eight years. By blocking out tee times from about 3:30 p.m. on, league demand has simultaneously shortened the window for regular play. That, in turn, has effectively increased demand by shortening supply, allowing Scott Lake to also increase open golf rates.
Stewart Healey, who’s president of the company that created the software for Hoag and the MGCOA, says the number of leagues using his service grows by 30 percent annually. “But we’re still only scratching the surface,” he adds. “There are still many leagues operating on pencil and paper and Excel spreadsheets. They’re comfortable with that, and a lot of course owners don’t want to interfere.”
That, Healey believes, costs them. He argues pen and paper leagues are a thin version of what a digital platform offers with instant access to schedules, standings, individual statistics and more. That means a lesser experience for the consumer and less opportunity for the facility to “generate touches and build the relationship.”
Ratcliffe Golf is coming off “one of the most profitable” first quarters in company history, which believe it or not, has a downside. A favorable spring, unlike that up north, has generated busy daily-fee play. “Then there’s a challenge trying to balance your league play with daily-fee demand,” says owner Del Ratcliffe. “There’s only a certain amount of leagues you can take. The trick is getting leagues in the time slots that you want them to play, which is when your regular play demand is low.”
Recruiting those leagues takes a mix of shoe leather and detective work. Ratcliffe makes phone calls—generally to HR departments—advertises, and talks to churches. The most successful forays always come from qualified leads. That is, when he can identify an existing customer who has ties to a larger group of people.
“You’ve got to know your customer,” Ratcliffe insists. “That is and always will be the key in this business.” He depends on pro shop staff at his five facilities in the Charlotte, North Carolina, area to help generate that bank of potential league ambassadors.
“You’re always looking to find people with some connection to a corporation or organization,” Ratcliffe says. “Then it’s easier to start the conversation and it’s amazing how many times that person ends up becoming the manager of that league.”
A decade ago, Ratcliffe was chairman of the Carolinas PGA Section, the largest in the country with some 2,000 members. The section took on a franchise for league management software with high hopes of building a league culture in a region which has never quite matched that of the industrial North. But with booming population growth, there were dreams of leagues flooding the landscape.
“There was some growth, but it’s hard to say even for us at Ratcliffe Golf what percentage of revenues comes from leagues today,” Ratcliffe admits. “Across the board, though, I think in the Carolinas we haven’t realized the potential and promise I hoped we would at that time.”
Geography may be to blame as much anything. Northern summers allow play up until 10 p.m., in some areas. At the same time of year further south, darkness falls soon after 8 p.m. “God bless daylight savings time,” Hoag laughs.
He probably should bless the fact he has 27 holes, too. Willowbrook’s McDavitt does. “I don’t know what we would do if we only had 18 holes,” he says. “Having that extra nine makes it so much easier to accommodate leagues. We host a lot of tournaments, so we can do that and still have nine holes for our leagues.”
At Valle Vista Golf Club in Greenwood, Indiana, head golf professional Brandon Bezy has only 18 holes to work with, so his leagues start later—with shotgun starts at 5:30 p.m.—to leave room for all other play. The club runs four leagues of between 24 players and 60 players in summer and another of 48 to 60 in the fall.
Bezy’s marketing tackles one of golf’s biggest challenges head on. “Basically, if you’re sick of complaining about not ever getting to play, sign up for a league,” he writes. “It’s the best way to ‘force’ yourself to play more golf.” That line has struck a chord with more than a few golfers in their mid-30s to late-40s with kids and a job. “They find that once they commit to a league they have the time,” he says.
Like Hoag, Bezy channels resources back into his leagues with a cookout for each league mid-season, followed by a “big night for everyone” at season’s end. There are closest-to-the-pin prizes and a skins competition each night, and the top 20 percent of finishers in each league win a cash prize.
“You’re not going to make it rich, but that’s not why you’re playing,” Bezy says. “Our league players just want a reason to come out, play some golf, have a few beers and some laughs.” Which is exactly what was going on at Willowbrook on a rainy night recently, albeit without the golf.
Trent Bouts is a South Carolina-based freelance writer and editor of Palmetto Golfer magazine.