Something for the golfers

Unbelievable! Someone must have screwed up at Golfnow.com.
Went on there to look at tee times near AC for wed 6/19.Couldnt believe my eyes! The Renault Vineyard course at 9am for $5 ,yes 5 bucks .Jumped on that as fast as I could. The other times in that time frame were $79.
Theres gotta be a story here somewhere.

 

Man, you gotta love that kind of kismet.

Reminds me of times I found ProVs at Target priced like DTs and Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs priced like Chandon at TJs.

 

Ken, I too had a similar experience finding mis-marked ProV1's at Target and picked up a few dozen around $20/dozen a number of years ago. I also have a bit more in depth story that netted me some free goods.

About 7 years ago I ordered a custom set of irons from Golfsmith and it said they should be on my doorstep in 30 days. Two weeks before the initial delivery date I receive my irons and I'm happy as hell that the order was sent to me in half the time quoted. I play a few rounds with the new irons and am liking them. Two weeks later, on the original deliver date, I received another package at the door...the exact same irons, same specs, same everything. So now I'm sitting here with two sets of irons hoping that they didn't bill my account twice. I check the card that I used for the purchase and there is only one charge on there. Long story short, after contacting both Golfsmith (saying that they only placed one order with Taylor Made) and Taylor Made (their records only show one one set of irons) and waiting for about a year to make sure a charge never showed up, I basically got a buy one get one free deal for a set of golf clubs. I ended up selling the unused irons for about 75% of the initial cost, and then a year or two later sold my used irons for about 50% of the initial cost. So for three years of use I actually made about 25% of my initial $700 irons.

 

Worked out great

Mistake was made,but they honored it. Ken would be happy here ,a nice course,a winery and a gourmet restaurant.

 

i can actually top that. i found a local course here on golfnow earlier this year for $0.00. i paid the transaction fee to golfnow went to the course (normally about 65 bucks and on the higher end of courses in the area) and walked right on and played. They didn't even bat an eye...

 

The local course was contacted by GolfNow and being a municipal course run by dilligent oversight of the city council, we declined the offer to include the course on their website. It turns out you (the course) dedicate certain tee-times to golf now and they take it from there. The object is to widen the base of golfers knowledgeable about your course at a reasonable rate, hoping you will return for golf at the published rate. The course (we were told) gets no compensation for the use by GolfNow. The "arrangement" could be individualized for each course.....but the powers that be declined.

So the course makes not money in this deal in this part of the country. And anyone that uses it around here seldom returns to a course for retail fees but instead goes back to the GolfNow site for the reduced fare. So o $ for a round doesn't actually effect the course as it would appear from their offer to us.

 

I am not a golfer, but I can never understand why a municipality runs a golf course. Tennis courts, basketball courts, other types of parks and recreation, but I see golf as a much bigger business endeavor that requires big budgets and is risky.

With that said, if your logic prevailed, Restaurant.com, Groupon, and other such promotional businesses wouldn't exist. Your fixed costs will be about the same and variable costs like cart rental is paid by the new golfers. And if they had a good time, maybe they will spread the word.

 

I was merely trying to point out the course may not have a profit interest when someone comes in with a GolfNow coupon for a tee time. If we had it we would not be making any money on the time as we had dedicated it to GolfNow. So when it is noted they accepted some ridiculous fee for a round, the course may be untied to whatever the price is / was.

As far as municipality run courses, at least here, it is CHEAP as a result of the city's funding. We pay 345 $ for 6 month (fixed) membership which covers all green fees. You can bring your own cart, walk or rent a cart. Pencil to paper tells you when the old "geezers" play everyday 7 days a week (some only 5 days as they must rest on weekends), it comes out to a ridiculous figure per round. However they knowingly support via property taxes and taxes which flow from interacting within the town. They do not (for the vast majority) swim, lob tennis balls, run on the trails in the parks, etc. But they support those activities as well financially.

However, not looking for an argument on pros and cons of such a situation. That is not the thread. But wanted to clarify.

 

Affordability and availability for the masses. Locally Milwaukee County owns and operates 15 courses.

Our county is about a tenth of the size, but they own and operate two of them and as a resident, I can do a walking round for $25 on a weekday, $29 on the weekend. As opposed to a club open to the public where a walking round is $59 but the holes are so damn far apart that walking isn't practical, so you also rent a cart.

Or Black Wolf Run in Kohler where the fees are $250 or Whistling Straits where it is $360 plus a mandatory caddie and extra fee.

 

I appreciate the follow up. Not my intention either, I lived in a town where the council decided to buy a failing golf course and it became a drain on finances. I suspect it was because all of the councilmen were golfers and the game was more popular. If your course operates in the black, good on you. My background is sales and marketing, and I am always looking for ways to bring more folks into my tent. Giving away a few rounds in exchange for casting a wider net seems like a good trade off.

jerseyguy, a buddy just came back from Renault last week, he said it was a nice course and the restaurant was great. But they must be going upscale, they no longer offer blueberry wine :evillaugh

 

Hammie, it's like any type of Enterprise, public or private sector, ymwv.

There are some wildly successful municipal golf programs. City of Scottsdale-owned TPC Scottsdale has two courses that rake in the dough and the Stadium Course annually hosts the biggest event in all of golfdom, the Phoenix Open. A few others that come to mind are Bethpage State Park in New York, Torrey Pines in San Diego, Pinon Hills in Farmington, NM and Haggin Oaks in Sacramento. There are more.

And what you get here when it comes to pricing runs from $27-$200+, so it's not necessarily a function of rate.

Many publicly-owned courses do struggle. For instance, I don't know whether Chambers Bay yet pencils for Pierce County, WA, even as it is acclaimed as one of the best in the country and with U.S. Open-hosting duties in two years.

 

I can take it a little further

Township and County courses can also fail like any other business because of location,demand quality etc. But I think the biggest cause can be poor and lax management,people thinking its there to be given away to anybody connected and used as a haven for people to draw a salary and do very little.
A lot of polititians think they are experts in golf management also rather than leaving that to the professionals.

 

lol

Terri's in public administration, I once was an aide to an elected ... so true, jersey, so true.