Muni Golf Highlights 2018!

Community Golf Fan,

What a year 2018 has been! Staples Golf was fortunate to have worked with over a dozen Municipalities all over the country, and we hope you and your golf course(s) had a great year too!

Here’s a "rapid-recap" of the Top 5 Best Performing Reading the Green’s from 2018 (including our personal favorite!) according to you the subscribers.

The Municipal Golf Course of the Future! (February)

*Highest Impact for Course Planning*

Here's a great new tool called the Course of the Future (COTF), that gives a glimpse of where golf course trends are headed in terms of sustainability and overall user diversification. This tool was developed by the ASGCA, and highlights many of the ideas Staples Golf has been promoting for years: renewable energy, water harvesting, family friendly design, practice facilities, short courses, etc.

Simply click this link to discover a myriad of ways your course can outpace your competition! (Click here for full version.)

Historical Muni Golf Preservation (July)

*Staples Golf’s Personal Favorite*

Beyond the style, setup, and quality of a course, an often-overlooked opportunity to market your golf facility, is to promote and embrace your course’s history and design lineage. We at Staples Golf believe there’s an obligation to record your history accurately, and we make it a priority in all our Master Plans. One important reason is to inform future parties as to how the golf course evolved over time, and why certain decisions were made out on the course.

Regardless of who designed and built your course, we're sure it has some interesting historic details worth sharing with your golfers and community. Beyond that, the importance of preserving history shouldn’t be taken lightly by those in positions of authority over these facilities, and who should consider themselves present day stewards. (Click here for full version.)

Muni Golf Practice Facilities Need Love! (September)

*Highest Open Rate*

Staples Golf has been doing a lot of work recently on practice facilities, and want to stress the importance of improving your course's practice facilities to capitalize on current golf trends, and driving revenue. Oddly enough, this is a significant area of neglect for many courses, so here are 5 Reasons Why Your Practice Facility Offerings Might Deserve More Attention:

Practice Facilities

• Are More Appealing than Ever
• Will Widen Your Net
• Act as First Impressions
• Can be a Place to Congregate
• Can drive More Revenue

In the end, our emphasis on the increased utilization of your practice facility through quality improvements, almost makes the More Revenue reason obvious and unnecessary, but for struggling facilities, it's the most important to point out. (Click here for full version.)

Muni Golf's Top Agents of Change! (October)

*Highest Subscriber Feedback*

One of the most daunting things when it comes to implementing crucial and necessary initiatives at golf facilities, is figuring out where to start and what the priorities should be. Often however, the more beneficial question to be asking is who can get these initiative over the finish line? Finding this motivated agent of change could be the difference between wallowing over the improvement approach for multiple years, and seeing the necessary improvements come to life.

We’ve decided to highlight our Top 5 Agents of Change, and the positive impacts these individuals have had on their golf facilities and communities. (Click here for full version.)

• John Ashworth – Goat Hill Park (Oceanside, CA)
• Bo Links and Richard Harris – Sharp Park (Pacifica, CA)
• Mayor Steve Leary – Winter Park Country Club (Winter Park, FL)
• Mike Cirba and Joe Bausch – Cobbs Creek Golf Club (Philadelphia, PA)
• City Manager JJ Murphy – Rockwind Community Links (Hobbs, NM)
• Bonus. Andy Johnson – The Fried Egg (Website and Podcast)

Muni Golf Project w/ High ROI (November)

*Highest Click Rate*

In today’s golf market, golf facility stakeholders are weighing the costs of improving their courses and other facility infrastructure and wondering if now is a good time to invest. We at Staples Golf have pulled together some common facility improvements and wanted to share with you the ones proven to show high impact with ROIs, of which are seriously worth considering.

• Target Maintenance Revisions (ROI: 1-3 Years)
• Turf Variety Replacement/ Reduction (ROI: 2-5 Years)
• Forward Tees (ROI: 3-5 Years)
• Bunker Upgrades (ROI: 3-8 Years)
• Irrigation Improvements (ROI: 5-25 Years)

Odds are high that your most pressing project is your irrigation system. This is the lifeblood of your golf course, and represents significant opportunity for not only reduced annual costs on maintenance repair, water, and power, but for improved conditions that have proven to result in high customer satisfaction and increased revenue. (Click here for full version.)

Here's to a Great 2019!

We at Staples Golf certainly hope you enjoy our Reading the Green newsletter as much as we enjoy creating them. We look forward to providing more great content for improving your golf facility’s bottom-line in 2019, so please stay tuned!

Sincerely,

Andy Staples, ASGCA