2023 Golf Summit Highlighted by Four Fascinating Presentations
KENILWORTH, N.J. – The 2023 Golf Summit presented by Donnelly Industries held on March 23 at Galloping Hill Golf Course convened a slew of club leaders, decision-makers, NJPGA Professionals and the public to discuss relevant topics within the golf industry.
“We always think it's great to try to get as many people in the industry together, whether it be players, people that work in business, superintendents, managers of clubs, and golf professionals. We're pretty lucky to get this group together,” NJGA President Michael McFadden included in his opening statement.
Now in its 13th year, the 2023 Golf Summit featured presentations on a variety of trending topics in golf. Donnelly Industries, former Echo Lake Superintendent and current Professional Golf Turf Management Program teacher Chris Carson and Rand Jerris, Founder of Purple Valley Consulting all provided insightful and suitable information in regards to the golf industry.
A group of NJPGA professionals in Andrew Bostrom, Jason Fiore, Don McCabe and Reed Lansinger led a panel discussing the Health and Well-being Initiative of the New Jersey section; best practices for cultivating a strong partnership between a club's governance team and the golf staff, and strategies for attracting and retaining a talented golf professional staff.
Watch all of the Golf Summit HERE
Justin Avallone, Vice President of Donnelly Energy provided useful information on ways New Jersey can become more energy efficient. More specifically, Donnelly Industries, a partner of the NJSGA, is well known for working with a slew of country clubs in the Garden State, renovating their club houses and providing a better way to utilize their resources.
Donnelly Energy provides retrofit lighting upgrades (interior + exterior), HVAC upgrades (including boilers and chillers), commercial refrigeration, Electric Vehicle charging installation and infrastructure, and solar energy. Each golf facility may require different services needs depending on their individual goals.
As Electric Vehicles become a bigger factor in the coming years, Donnelly Energy has all the resources to help the transition for EV infrastructure.
Carson, who recently retired after over 35 years of service at New Jersey golf clubs and over 20 years at Echo Lake Country Club in Westfield, provided insight on what a superintendents role at a golf course truly looks like. While there are many upsides to the job, there are also challenges. Although they are primarily working behind the scenes, a superintendent and their employees are working around the clock to keep the course in top notch shape. It’s the superintendent’s responsibility to develop and encourage their employees, which includes appropriate safety measures, pay, growth and opportunities.
Other variables a superintendent has to take into account includes long and short term goals, budgeting, weather forecasts, course care, membership expectations, the safety of staff, state regulations amongst other elements.
Needless to say, superintendents are doing the thankless work that allow golfers to play on the impeccable golf courses day in and day out.
Along with Carson’s experience as a superintendent in New Jersey, he’s served as a teacher in the Rutgers Turfgrass Management Program. As a matter of fact, Rutgers has the largest turfgrass research team in the world and has saved clubs in New Jersey millions of dollars and helped superintendents produce high-quality playing surfaces.
Jerris, Founder and CEO of Purple Valley Strategies provided valuable information on routes to better discover and salvage club histories. Although club history may not seem useful in the moment, its purpose is to better understand and appreciate the club, and to preserve the best parts of a club’s culture which often have their roots in the past. Other benefits of preserving club history may include, creating an atmosphere, culture, pride, engagement, member retainment, member recruitment, and brand differentiation.
“You need to really understand what you have, what the value of it is, have you designated someone to be responsible for taking care of that history, are you being responsible stewards of one of the most significant, although somewhat intangible assets of your club?” said Jerris of club history. "This is a core part of your identity.”
Jerris highlighted a few of the different types of club history facilities he’s worked with, which range from archive rooms to grand hallway displays. Either way, Jerris has found these historic tools to be beneficial for any club, five years old or 105 years old.
“History matters because it helps you share your identity, and this is something I think that's become increasingly important over the last couple years with the pandemic,” Jerris expressed.
Bostrom, Fiore, McCabe and Lansinger represented the NJPGA, sharing current and best practices, challenges, ambitions and more as golf professionals at clubs in New Jersey.
Since the golf boom, Head Golf Professionals, PGA General Managers, Assistant GMs, Directors of Golf, Director of Instruction roles have become much more demanding.
“There are a lot of positive things that have come from this boom," explained McCabe. “With that comes new challenges that have arisen because of this moment. Ultimately, the demand and more rounds are going up, but the number of staff members on our teams has not gone up, so what we're trying to do is to do more with less. At the same time, the standards, and the expectations for the golf experience that we provide that is just as high as ever and the member expectation has not dipped. That really is the challenge we're trying to maintain those expectations and provide these great experiences to our Members and our guests again with the same amount of staff as before. It comes down to being better managing your time.”
Despite these challenges, golf professionals around the state are implementing improved practices for scheduling staff, conducting events, utilizing modern technology and more.
As roles evolve and change, as does the role of the typical PGA Professional. For Lansinger, Director of Golf at Canoe Brook Country Club in Summit, he’s tasked with managing 36-holes of golf, which means more people to appease. Like many club professionals, Lansinger wears many different hats. He serves as a teaching professional, while also running the pro shop, handling club fittings amongst other duties like building relationships with members and staff.
With the development of technology in the golf industry, there are tools on both the instruction side and tournament management side like Trackman, Golf Genius, Blue Golf that have altered the modern day professionals daily operations. Golf professionals have found this technology beneficial in their efforts to increase their operations.
“For the golf pros of yesteryear, it took two days to prep for a tournament, from calligraphy or hand writing scorecards, it now takes us two hours,” said Fiore. “There's a lot less human error involved with it as well. You enter names into GHIN and out comes some beautiful scorecards and score sheets, so that's great.”
“Ultimately it comes down to having to do more rounds, more action with the same number of people,” Bostrom commented. “We need to be more efficient with within our operations, so we have to use technology to do that. With the integration of Golf Genius industry wide now, something that we brought on for all our events about six or seven years ago, it wasn't nearly as heard of, but I think we're seeing more and more clubs with live scoring, with fewer and fewer clubs always printing out scorecards as you go along.”
The foursome wrapped up the event with encouraging thoughts on ways club leaders, members and staff can help one another. Adding staff, ways to retain staff, avoiding burnout and forging a solid foundation within the professional staff stems from communication between all stakeholders within each club.
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