Community - GolfBusiness

ity to the golf course. In one version,
golfers arrive at a hole and find they’re
asked to execute five different kinds
of bunker shots toward concentric
circles drawn around the
hole and representing different
point values. Desert Pines even
employs a contest to check a
golfer’s ability to skip a ball
across a water hazard to the
other side. Other events, designed
for groups that might
have some real golfers but
also some folks who’ve never
picked up a club, have included
a water balloon toss and
chipping into a kiddie pool
along with more traditional
golf challenges.
“Our business model
is about people enjoying
themselves,” Dahlstrom
says. This could mean a
mini-competition in which
golfers try to escape from
the 8-foot-deep Hell Bunker,
a replica of the famed
St. Andrews Old Course
feature, on Royal Links Golf
Course. Or it could mean setting
up a bar with a DJ to create
a block-party atmosphere
on the course or the range.
Amid all the seeming frivolity is a
push on the part of Vegas operators
to use instruction to turn tire-kickers
into golfers. It’s common at Paradigm-managed
facilities to build in
golf clinics with highly rated instructors
working the tee line energetically.
These teaching pros are dispensing
short-form instruction so as to build
at least a temporary golf swing and
result in some bona fide ball-striking.
After all, who knows where latent
talent lies—or where the next avid
golfer is coming from
A
s the golf instruction segment
draws on technology and new
diagnostic tools, there’s pressure
to translate this arsenal into makemy-day
fixes much like the dollar-a-minute
tune-up approach of Sean Patterson.
Laird Small, director of instruction at
the Pebble Beach Golf Academy at the
famed Monterey Peninsula resort, accepts
the burden of having to equip
semi-golfers with playing ability on
short notice. Corporate people who
don’t exactly know how to swing
need some kind of competence to
take onto the course. Otherwise, the
company’s investment won’t be seen
as providing a proper return.
“It’s tricky,” says Small, referring to
business-driven academy activity. “So
many people come to our schools with a
lot of rust on them. It’s our responsibility
to give them a chance out there.”
Top-rated Palm Beach teaching
professional Kellie Stenzel agrees.
She hosts an annual corporate event
in Boca Raton that gathers the country’s
leading minority CEOs. Stenzel’s
team of instructors “comes
with its A game” to make the golf
element a huge hit and keep the
event firing on all cylinders. “It’s
our job to make the golf part seamless
and enjoyable. People have to
play decent golf, they have to enjoy
themselves out there—that’s on us
to make it happen,” she notes. Every
launch monitor, portable “putting lab”
and biofeedback gadget on the market
gets deployed toward that goal.
Even with hours of lessons, better
ball-striking requires practice. And yet,
managers who work hard at programming
and cultural tone don’t want golfers
on their range to feel they’re grinding.
One answer is music, being played
over pricey speakers keenly positioned to
improve the overall mood without causing
a jarring distraction. Recently, a user
of the yelp.com Web site explained his
loyalty to the practice facility at Coyote