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Consider a golf practice complex
like Haggin Oaks in Sacramento,
California, which will cater to the
break-80 diehards by day, then turn
on floodlights at night to welcome
20-somethings who want to socialize
seriously and hit balls casually.
“It’s a different market and a new
revenue stream entirely,” says Mike
Woods, head golf professional.
Golf will always have to explain
and often downplay its long list
of constraints and prohibitions
(including the newest ban involving
anchored putter handles), but
course managers are finding that
it’s possible—and productive—to
turn these taboos selectively on
their head. Last summer, management
of the 36-hole Bay Creek Club
in Cape Charles, Virginia, showed
true programming versatility. In
the first week of August, the club
hosted a prestigious championship,
the Bay Creek Amateur, then it
closed out the month with a Cross-
Country Scramble tournament in
which Bay Creek’s tony Nicklaus
Course was rigged up with backward,
sideways and out-of-order
play for contestants paying just
$40 a team to enter. Point being,
it’s possible to be very buttonedup,
then let your hair down.
Success with the cross-country
idea at places like Bay Creek or at
Mill Creek Golf Club in Salado, Texas—where
they play one on Super
Bowl Sunday each year—isn’t new,
but it fits the present era notably.
If you recognize time-shifting and
culture-bending as key ingredients,
this format represents both. Given
a 125-acre field of play to set up creatively,
how long would a group of
competitors ideally want to be out
there If it’s 90 minutes, that can
be easily arranged and configured.
It’s likewise if contestants prefer an
outing of two hours or three hours.
And, unlike other time-shifted golf,
the cross-country structure spreads
players far and wide in a free-ranging,
rule-breaking manner.
This type of concept gets taken
to the limit during the Halloween
Cross-Country Scramble, a masquerade
event that’s contested at
The Lodge Resort in Cloudcroft,
New Mexico. A viral video of this
competition shows some formatting
details that are questionable
from a personal-injury perspective,
but rules and guidelines could be
adjusted to make them less freeform
for a course that wanted to
catch the enthusiasm of this approach
more conventionally.
There will always be championship
events and a five-pound
book to explain the Rules of Golf.
Beyond that, the old attitudes are
fading. For Joe Dahlstrom, CEO of
management group Paradigm Golf,
last year’s Ryder Cup contained a
moment that crystallized this notion.
“When Bubba Watson urged
the gallery to yell and cheer while
he was teeing off in his fourball
match, that was something very
new for golf,” says Dahlstrom, “and
it’s one of many signs that the
game’s culture is really changing.”
Indeed, what had been the satirical
premise of a “Happy Gilmore”
scene played out in real life at hightoned
Medinah Country Club. Dahlstrom
took particular notice because
his company’s portfolio has long
included properties in Las Vegas,
where innovation gets extra leeway.
“Las Vegas provides a looser environment
for programming golf in part
because the entertainment culture
affects the golf culture so strongly
there,” Dahlstrom notes. “But that’s
happening elsewhere, too.”
At Las Vegas facilities like Desert
Pines Golf Club, managers program
by bringing practice-range activ-
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