You're at odds with golf pros over player experience and course performance. How do you find common ground?

Considering golf as a business, professional golfers are technicians. They understand the game and the course but the business of golf is so much more than that. It is critically important to have golf industry professionals and professional golfers as part of the team, together with experienced and skilled business operators. Understanding is not a one way street, it’s a 360 degree, continuous exercise that everyone must appreciate.

Feedback is so often used as reactive data, but the truth is that feedback should be used as part of the overall strategic planning loop. Different golfer, member, guest, visitor, junior, beginner etc etc demographics have different needs and expectations; and feedback is only meaningful in context, not in isolation. So rather than reacting to feedback, let’s match the feedback to the planned experience for each key audience and then evaluate against the plan. Behavioural blueprinting is the key process that must underpin any planning and feedback loop.

Identify shared objectives, such as improving overall player satisfaction and course performance. Emphasize the mutual benefits of finding solutions that cater to both serious and casual golfers. For example, maintaining the course in excellent condition, with playable roughs and well-kept greens, ensures that the course is enjoyable for all skill levels. Advanced players appreciate the challenge and casual players enjoy a well-maintained environment. If that is not plausible for the time of the year and weather, communicate with the pro so they know the expectation.

The premise of the statement assumes that golf professionals are the drivers and leaders of course changes and conditioning. This is an extremely dangerous perspective. Value, from any given user’s perspective, can only be delivered in context of expectations. What a tournament professional regards as important in terms of conditioning is unlikely to match a 15 handicap’s perspective. Conditioning and course setup changes with the seasons and for the event and the audience. The course is a living, changing, dynamic environment that can be adapted to deliver value in any given situation. Golf professionals may be part of the venue management team but key decisions are more likely to be led by marketers and course superintendents.

Analysis of course use profiles and associated design is probably outside the skill set of golf professionals. They should absolutely contribute to the framing of appropriate strategic and technical challenges within a broader planning process but should not be asked to shoulder the responsibility that is properly the domain of course architects and designers.

It is critical to appreciate that course and environmental changes are part of the overall service delivery that fits within the strategic plan. Golf professional suggested changes should follow the overall strategic framework or, at the very least, lead innovative strategic thinking. Tactics follow strategy, not the other way around. Economic impacts should form part of any business case analysis to be considered by the board as part of the planning process - before any decision to change is taken. Golf as a business should behave like a business, with economic impacts (i.e. value creation and marginal utility) front and centre.