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Tag: Colorado Golf Association

The Power of eClub Membership in the Colorado Golfing World: Reviving the Colorado Golf Association

When Colorado Golf Association membership growth landed in a bunker around about 2000, it couldn’t climb out. Ho, hum, 18 years of stagnation. Then came the 2020 pandemic and the golf explosion. By then, the CGA was ready to roll into high gear with its high-tech tool, the eClub membership.

“It used to be, you’d have to go into a golf shop, ask a grumpy pro shop employee, ‘How do I establish a handicap?’” says CGA Executive Director Ed Mate. “You’d get a very surly, not simple answer like, ‘See that box over there? There are forms there, I think.’ And you’d fill out a form and hope it stuck. Now, it’s so simple.”

You could join the CGA in those days, but most members joined the CGA by joining a golf club, either a private club or the men’s or women’s club at their local public course. CGA Chief Marketing Officer Erin Gangloff says it wasn’t until 2019 that the CGA began promoting eClub, which allows players to go online and assign themselves to one of five Regional eClubs for a membership fee of $59.95. 

READ: Inside Colorado’s Post-Pandemic Golf Goldrush

Through 2022, eClub enrollment had reached nearly 10,000. It’s the prime driver in overall CGA growth, from 59,000 in 2018 to 76,000 heading into this year.

“They’re predominantly men over the age of 50 who do not have loyalty to a club or a facility,” says Mate. “And they’re golfers who have no interest in joining a men’s club, a women’s club or any other type of club. They just play golf with their friends. Historically, that type of golfer was on the outside looking in. They really were not welcome, because they didn’t fit. That’s now changed.”

Mate says the USGA, the national governing body of golf, jump-started the CGA’s efforts by abandoning its long-held marketing strategy of imploring golfers to “join a club” and instead promoting a link on its website that said, “GET A HANDICAP.” A Colorado resident is then directed to the CGA website.

So far, the main benefits of eClub are an official handicap, reduced green fees at CommonGround, CGA tournament eligibility and access to CGA member play days, which have consisted of recreational rounds at some otherwise private courses. With research showing the state has 250,000 core and avid golfers, the CGA is continuing to look at adding member benefits to attract the 174,000 outsiders.

Says Mate, “If we’re smart and we continue to build reasons to join and tell our story, I don’t see any reason why we can’t be at at least 120,000 members in the next 10 years.”

 

Susan Fornoff has covered golf for the San Francisco Chronicle, regional golf associations and her own GottaGoGolf.com. She is a member of the Overland Park Golf Course and Links at Highlands Ranch women’s clubs. This is her seventh Executive Golf Guide for ColoradoBiz.

How Colorado’s Golf Heroes are Tackling Staffing Shortages, Inflation and Record Traffic to Keep Courses Lush Despite Challenges

First, they had to grow grass despite a drought. Then, they worked through a pandemic. Now, they’re facing staffing shortages and inflation, with record numbers of feet trampling their work every day.

“It’s absolutely amazing to me the condition golf courses are in,” says Colorado Golf Association Executive Director Ed Mate. “I think about how hard it is to maintain my lawn, which is three inches of rough, with nobody walking on it or taking big, gouging divots out of it, no carts driving across it. And I can’t keep it green or even healthy. And these guys and gals are able to keep acres and acres of maintained turf pristine, despite people attacking it all the time.”

READ: 6 Indoor Golfing Spaces to Book Your Tee Time in 2023

The state’s golf heroes these days aren’t the players breaking par but the superintendents and maintenance workers who are on the job long before the golfers tee off. Golf courses all around the state were in impeccable condition last summer and well into the fall, until the late-December snowstorm that shut everyone down through January and promises an equally lush 2023.

Denver Golf Director of Agronomy Pam Smith says the pandemic’s early days gave the crews a lesson in what could be.

“We were shut down for six weeks and had the maintenance staff reporting, so we had the luxury of doing a lot of deferred maintenance, aerification and fertility,” Smith says. “And the lack of traffic had the courses in probably the best shape they’ve ever been in.”

READ: Inside Colorado’s Post-Pandemic Golf Goldrush

After that, says Smith, three seasons of increasingly nonstop, dawn-to-dark traffic raised new challenges: “How do we work while people are playing golf? How do we get our jobs done?”

Mitch Savage, superintendent at CGA-owned and operated CommonGround, credits his board with coming to the rescue with new machinery. “From there,” he says, “it was really about getting creative. A small example might be mowing a new walkway through a little native area where you’re not as worried about people beating down a nicely maintained turf area. We look for ways to help people and carts maneuver their way through the golf course without sacrificing the golf course.”

CommonGround incorporates maintenance blocks twice a month, clearing the tee sheet for three or four hours first thing in the morning so that crews can accomplish things without golfers in the way. Denver’s municipal courses, expected to bring in revenue while also providing their communities with recreational opportunities, don’t have that luxury.  

“So we have the philosophy that we want to get out ahead of golfers, get our greens mowed, cups cut,” Smith says. “Each golf course is different in how they do it, but we throw a lot of labor at those early morning jobs to get out and ahead of golfers.”

Which is not so easy with Denver golfers teeing off on both the front and back nines at sunrise.

“We’re starting maybe a half-hour or hour in the dark,” Smith says. “And that is extremely challenging and sometimes even dangerous for our staff to be operating mowing equipment in the dark. If you have a hydraulic leak, you sometimes don’t know it and it can lead to turf damage … It takes a special person to work maintenance these days for those reasons.”

Meet Kelly Huff: Colorado’s Unconventional Golf Instructor with a TrackMan Advantage

With staffing shortages continuing for businesses around the state, even golf course jobs — which may come with perks like free golf, flexible days and great scenery – are vacant. “You could say 50 percent of our on-call positions go unfilled at any given time at any golf course,” says Smith.

She’s working on restructuring job categories to attract more applicants. Savage has maintained his workforce with a “just say yes” approach to inquiries. “If somebody expresses an interest but says, ‘Well, I really only want to work a few days a week,’ I don’t even bat an eye. I just say, yeah, come on in and fill out an application and we’ll figure things out.”

As these superstars of Colorado golf continue to figure out how to keep courses covered in lush, mowed grass, there’s one thing we golfers can do to show some love: When they’re in the way of the next shot, give them a friendly wave instead of the stinkeye.

“We’re trying to be like Navy Seals out there,” says Savage. “We just want to get in and get our job done and get out, without being seen.”

DENVER GOLF ROUNDS AND REVENUE

2020

374,476  

$10,187,141

2021

405,414

$10,257,205

2022 

414,497 

$11,324,118

 

Susan Fornoff has covered golf for the San Francisco Chronicle, regional golf associations and her own GottaGoGolf.com. She is a member of the Overland Park Golf Course and Links at Highlands Ranch women’s clubs. This is her seventh Executive Golf Guide for ColoradoBiz.

Meet Kelly Huff: Colorado’s Unconventional Golf Instructor with a TrackMan Advantage

Kelly Huff has tattoos and no PGA teaching credentials, which means he’s not your typical golf instructor. Yet, if you want to book time with him, you’d better be on the South Broadway Country Club website the third Monday of every month, when his calendar opens promptly at 9 a.m.

It’s not quite as difficult as buying Taylor Swift tickets. “No lottery yet,” Huff says, laughing at the thought. But, note the “yet.”

READ: Inside Colorado’s Post-Pandemic Golf Goldrush

“Some instructors are big talkers but they don’t really communicate,” says SBCC staff member Sam Dudley, who has a front-row seat for Huff’s sessions in the nearby TrackMan bays. “He speaks softly and communicates a ton without being overbearing. And it’s all very positive.”

It’s also very egalitarian. Huff’s students range from sports celebrities to newbies to top local golfers. “He does a really good job of leveraging the technology his facility has in TrackMan and using that for instruction,” says client Chris Thayer, the Colorado Golf Association’s Mid-Amateur Player of the Year in 2022. “And he does a good job of explaining that to his students. I think he was an early adopter, and it’s paid off for him.”

Huff fell for TrackMan, the simulator used by most PGA Tour pros, when he was director of instruction at an Atlanta private club.

“I had a good gig,” says Huff. “But I wanted to open my own teaching facility and started doing a lot of research on different golf markets around the country. TrackMan was all over the Southeast, and it was out in California. I saw the writing on the wall and I knew it was going to be a household name for golf improvement, but it hadn’t really made its way to Denver yet.”

READ: 6 Indoor Golfing Spaces to Book Your Tee Time in 2023

It had, however, made it to Portland, Oregon’s RedTail Golf Center, which had 10 TrackMen (now 14!) and an outdoor teaching line. Huff spent 18 months there learning the technology, earning certifications from the Titleist Performance Institute and U.S. Kids Golf, before moving to Denver in 2017 and opening on South Broadway. In 2018 he finally had his liquor permits, and SBCC joined the now crazy-popular niche of indoor golf bars.

By then, Huff had already built his teaching business, mostly by word of mouth but also by watching customers practice or play on the TrackMan. He’d watch them hit a few balls, guess their handicap and speculate on their typical miss. Next thing you know, lessons were booked.

For all his unconventional style, Huff hasn’t felt stigmatized by golf traditionalists. He and his wife, Amy, a real estate attorney who has helped him expand the business to Tennyson Street and Fort Collins, joined Lakewood Country Club in 2020 and have a regular Friday game there.

“I really do love the old school, traditional, mind-your-Ps-and-Qs country club side of golf,” Huff says. “But I obviously like the avantgarde modernization of the game as well. Golf is becoming cooler and cooler. It’s not as stuffy as it used to be, but I truly like both sides of that.”

 

Susan Fornoff has covered U.S. Opens and the Masters for the San Francisco Chronicle, written two golf books and founded GottaGoGolf.com, a website and newsletter for women golfers. She recently relocated to Littleton, and hopes to play all of Colorado’s 10 toughest golf courses – from the most forward tees.