A New Approach
In today’s world, golf facility managers are dealing with increasing maintenance costs, lack of available labor and decreasing participation rates. These shocks to both supply and demand have led to the diminished financial viability of some facilities. The current pressures facing the game have impelled the USGA to adopt a strategy of actively helping golf facilities, which form the backbone of the golf ecosystem, by providing guidance, information, tools and soluti
ons to help these small businesses remain financially viable.
According to research conducted by the National Golf Foundation, there has been an average annual net decrease of 131 18-hole equivalents since 2011. One of the biggest factors in this trend continues to be water. As with the world at large, water will be the resource issue of the 21st century for golf facilities. While some golf courses, especially in California and other parts of the West, have already had to deal with water shortages, more and more courses nationally will likely soon be forced to address diminishing availability, reduced quality and higher prices for water, as well as increasing regulatory oversight for water usage. See box, “21st Century Challenges for Golf Facilities” (right).
Some mitigation strategies for dealing with water issues include embracing new turfgrass cultivars that are more tolerant to heat and drought, creating a water-management plan, completing an irrigation audit and utilizing new technology such as advanced moisture sensors.
Another strategy for golf facilities to use fewer resources and lower maintenance costs is to reduce the amount of maintained turf. Many courses in California have adopted this approach, as has Pinehurst No. 2 in North Carolina, the site of the 2014 U.S. Open and U.S. Women’s Open. After a restoration of the Donald Ross-designed layout reduced 36 acres of turfgrass, Pinehurst cut its water use by 40 million gallons a year. The Santa Ana Country Club (see sidebar, page 28 below) also improved its course and in the process reduced the amount of turf and water use.
There are concerns that changes in course maintenance may negatively impact the golfer experience, worsening industry-wide struggles with declining participation. There has been a decrease of 2 million golfers in the U.S. during the last five years. The industry has responded to this trend by investing in “grow the game” initiatives that seek to attract new players—juniors and women in particular—to the sport. Since 2011, 12 million people have taken up the game. In 2016, 2.5 million people played golf for the first time—the highest level ever recorded.
Yet overall participation has decreased over recent years, which indicates that millions and millions of golfers—beginners and established players alike—didn’t find their golf experience compelling enough to stay with the game.
To help reverse this trend and advance the game, the USGA’s strategic plan includes a commitment to arming facility managers with scientific data and tools that will help them ensure their courses provide a product that best meets the needs of their customers—whether they are daily-fee guest or members—and attracts new interest in the game. There are two parts to this approach:
- Improve facility productivity and efficiency
- Elevate the golfer experience
Improve Facility Productivity and Efficiency
The USGA has set a goal for the industry by 2025: a 25 percent reduction of critical resources—such as water, fuel and labor—that are used in maintaining golf courses. This is crucial as the cost of maintenance—already the largest expense for a facility—continues to rise due to numerous natural, regulatory and market factors.
It would be financially prudent for courses to pare back their maintenance budgets, but most don’t want such actions to negatively impact the quality of the golfer experience. To help facilities measure and allocate their finite resources more effectively and make smarter decisions without an adverse effect on golfers, the USGA has introduced Resource Management, a web-based tool that provides exact data about how maintenance budgets are spent on the course.
The engine of USGA Resource Management is a fully customizable map and dashboard (below), which users can populate with the inputs, boundaries and maintenance practices in place at their courses. The tool’s algorithm can then calculate the cost of maintaining specific areas of the course—a single hole, the fourth fairway, all the greens, the fairway bunker on the 17th hole, etc.
By editing features in the map, it is possible to calculate the financial implications of potential changes to the course design or maintenance levels, such as converting portions of the course to native areas, adding teeing grounds or removing bunkers. USGA Resource Management also helps contextualize how such changes will impact golfers, an element which is too-often overlooked, by allowing users to overlay golfer heat maps (generated by inexpensive GPS loggers employed by USGA), that identify the areas that most frequently and most rarely come into play. Collecting data about golfer tracks and behavior is an area that has the potential to yield benefits and innovations in numerous areas of facility management and golfer experience, from pace of play to course setup to course design.
In addition, the USGA is looking to add potential features such as an advanced weather dashboard that provides guidance for maintenance tasks; the ability to track hole locations on the map and print hole-location sheets similar to those used at the U.S. Open; and a pace calculator to model the impact of changes such as tee-time intervals, hole lengths and number of players to pace and playing times.
Focus on Golf Facilities
While golfers have benefitted from technological advances such as launch monitors, high-speed video, range finders and GSP-enabled devices and apps, golf facility managers largely have been left behind amid the surge in innovation engulfing other industries and businesses. Many companies collect and analyze data to better understand their customers’ behavior, provide improved products and services, make their operations more efficient and formulate well-informed decisions that will improve their bottom lines.
For example, retailers can predict how the placement of certain items in their stores will impact sales. Amusement parks have precise information on the traffic patterns of their guests. Shipping companies know that avoiding left-hand turns by their fleet will save millions of gallons of gas annually. And hotel managers can measure how they are performing financially in relation to their peer sets due to an effective benchmarking system. Without a doubt, golf managers would benefit from similar insights, but, since the vast majority of golf facilities are essentially independent small business, they simply do not have the resources to tap into these innovations.
With tools like Resource Management, USGA is taking a more active stance in addressing that issue, equipping golf facilities with guidance, education and innovation based on science and technology.
Elevate the Golfer Experience
In ongoing research, the USGA asks golfers to rate the aspects of the golfer experience that are most important. We ask facility managers to perform the same exercise. Not surprisingly, factors highly rated by both golfers and facilities include course conditioning and the cost and pace of play.
Despite that consensus, taking a closer look at the data reveals small differences that could provide insights into improving the management of facilities, especially at private clubs. For example, private club facility managers valued course conditioning, pace of play and the social aspects of the game (being able to play with people of their choosing) much higher than their public-facility counterparts, and higher even than the golfers reported.
To be sure, golfers pay premiums to join private clubs to maximize these experiences, and private club managers are very cognizant of the desires of their members. This is why private clubs devote considerably more resources to the golf course and have been more aggressive about pace of play.
But private club golf course managers may not be aware of some key discrepancies between what they value and what their golfers value, which may be preventing them from providing the best possible experience for their members and guests. Here are some areas in which significant gaps in perception exist between what golfers value and what private club managers think contribute to the golfer experience: Availability of restroom facilities on the course: golfers (67 percent) vs. private club managers (40 percent)
- Appropriate directional signage on the course: golfers (66 percent) vs. private facilities (13 percent)
- Availability of drinking water on the course: golfers (65 percent) vs. private facilities (37 percent)
- How well they play: golfers (60 percent) vs. private facilities (38 percent)
- Availability of pay-by-the hole and other flexible pricing programs: golfers (43 percent) vs. private facilities (5 percent)
- Availability of carts with GPS: golfers (43 percent) vs. private facilities (2 percent)
This information, even for aspects that may seem trivial, helps golf facility managers make decisions that better position their facility for success, which is vital in this competitive industry. It also points to the larger issue of golfer’s low overall satisfaction level, which currently stands at 69 percent. This is the same level as those for airlines and the U.S. Postal Service—two industries not particularly renowned for customer satisfaction. The industries with the highest levels of customer satisfaction are banks (80%) and automobiles (79%). After comparing customer satisfaction in other industries, the USGA has set a goal for golfer satisfaction: By 2025, the USGA would like the industry to increase golfer satisfaction by 20 percent. To help achieve this goal, the USGA will continue to conduct significant research in the areas of golfer satisfaction and golfer experience.
This will help us better identify the factors that most impact customer satisfaction, understand the relationship between golfers and facilities, and measure how facilities can improve this important facet of their operations, so that we can provide golf facility managers with actionable data they can utilize to improve their course’s long-term success.
Advancing the Game Together
Although the USGA is the national governing body for the game, the ability to directly engage with the entirety of the U.S. golf ecosystem is well beyond our scope. We rely on friends like the National Club Association to provide valuable feedback about our activities and communicate with their members on our behalf.
This interaction is critical because it helps us use our unique position in the areas of data, research, science and technology to foster innovation that will increase golf’s knowledge base and strengthen the health of the game. It is a significant undertaking, and we can only do it with the help of clubs like yours, and organizations like NCA, NGCOA, ASGCA and GCSAA. Together, we will provide a better future for the game that we all love.
Hunki Yun is the director of partnerships, outreach and education for the Research, Science and Innovation department of the USGA. He can be reached at [email protected].
Santa Ana Country Club
Golf Course Renovation Increases Offerings While Reducing Water Usage
