5 ways golf cart GPS systems are helping Hazeltine and Erin Hills reshape on-course operations
Tagmarshal recently celebrated its 10th year of attending the PGA Show with a high-calibre Education Session, showcasing how its golf cart GPS systems help Hazeltine National and Erin Hills.
The 2025 PGA Show was a high-energy and well-attended event, as was the Education Session on Thursday, January 23, titled “Lessons from major hosts Hazeltine and Erin Hills: How optimization tech and data are reshaping on-course operations – and how your facility can benefit too!”
Tagmarshal CEO Bodo Sieber was joined by Prof. Kris Schoonover, a USGA expert and Director of Operations at Erin Hills, and Kyle Brandt, PGA, Hazeltine National’s Head Golf Professional. During the hour-long discussion, Kris and Kyle showcased many of the ways their operations benefit from the full power of optimization tech and data.
Below, we will cover 5 key takeaways from the session, which apply to courses ranging from prestigious, high-end private clubs to the well-run daily fee course down the road.
1. Golfer touchpoints and golf cart GPS systems
Golf cart GPS systems have proven to be hugely beneficial across many of the roughly 1,000 touchpoints a golfer experiences before, during, and after a round.
These have a huge bearing on player satisfaction, according to USGA research. From the moment a player books a round (‘engage’) through to touchpoints that happen after a round is done and a player has left (‘extend), courses can impact satisfaction.
Perfect delighters – touchpoints that have the biggest impact in enhancing the experience – include courses displaying information about pace of play expectations and how professional player assistants are. On the other hand, perfect frustraters – which are proven to negatively affect the experience – include corrective actions for golfers falling behind pace and the speed of other players. Both of these will be impacted by how effective a course’s player assistants are.
Hazeltine National, the world-renowned private club in Minnesota, offers a high-touch environment with a member and guest experience that can be more easily planned than at a resort course like Wisconsin’s Erin Hills, where the experience is subject to additional variables. The more a course can do to mitigate these factors, the greater the chance of dealing with them effectively.
Customer retention for us is huge and improving the player experience through pace of play management plays a big part in what we do on the golf course – Tagmarshal plays a huge part in us achieving this.
2. Gathering and analyzing golf cart GPS systems data to identify patterns
Leading courses like Erin Hills use golf cart GPS systems to ensure they provide a memorable player experience, complete with exceptional service and an enjoyable pace and flow of play.
Understanding how certain variables impact pace and flow, which is central to the player experience, helps Erin Hills control and pre-plan the golfer journey to some extent.
The gathering and analysis of this data is made easier by using Tagmarshal. By inputting extra data fields into the tee sheet, alongside player names, the course can gain valuable information on what they mean for pace and flow.
As Erin Hills switches to Tagmarshal’s new 4.0 software this season, the Data Directory feature will make it even easier to capture this information.
Erin Hills tracks variables such as:
- New players versus returning players
- Golfer handicaps
- A group of friends versus strangers playing together
- White tees versus green tees
For smaller teams and operations, it isn’t always possible to capture this level of detail. Where possible, courses should at a minimum track first-time course players versus return players to understand what is an achievable pace for both.
Hazeltine has utilized the hole-by-hole data to refine the expected time they allocate to each hole. With each hole’s time broken down into time spent on the tee box, fairway and green, operators can fine-tune expectations and communicate these to members.
I love the hole-by-hole data, which we use to adjust and tweak expectations to make sure that we are setting realistic pace targets for each hole.
3. Revenue gains driven by golf cart GPS systems pace management
By effectively utilizing golf cart GPS systems and proactively managing pace, Erin Hills has seen huge revenue gains – $700,000 per season on green fees alone.
These gains are underpinned by the course knowing that the majority of rounds are going to finish in or around the goal time of 5h03m. This has allowed Erin Hills to remove ‘buffer’ tee times that were previously in place during peak periods, which went unsold.
To further bolster the bottom line, Erin Hills is now able to sell an additional two tee times in the late afternoon, with players certain to finish before the course closes for the day.
According to industry research, as many as 40% of people who play golf for the first time don’t play again. To reduce this number and continue the game’s growth trajectory, operators need to ensure they make new players feel welcomed.
This could entail a player assistant making an effort to check in and welcome a group with new players, informing them of any pro shop or clubhouse specials that may be running, or asking the group in question to provide feedback after the completion of their round.
These minor efforts have a massive impact on how likely a player is to return to the course, and even whether they will return to any course to carry on playing golf. Ensuring first-time players leave happy is a win for that individual operator, but also for the industry at large.
Tagmarshal has enabled us to effectively implement our pace of play policy, assisting us in reducing playtime, which allowed us to add additional tee times for extra capacity. Tagmarshal pays for itself a hundred times over. I’d recommend taking a strong look at Tagmarshal. Don’t let yourself fall behind technology.
4. Using golf cart GPS systems to deliver exceptional member experiences at Hazeltine
At a club like Hazeltine, with such a storied history and reputation for excellence, members expect a seamless experience every time they step onto the course, coupled with a high level of service excellence, both of which are facilitated by golf cart GPS systems.
The club makes very effective use of Tagmarshal’s Live Map. The real-time view of exactly where each playing group is on the course, coupled with how they are doing pace-wise measured against the course’s goal time, means that problem groups can be immediately identified. When groups that are behind pace are dealt with proactively, the impact on the rest of the field can be reduced.
Drawing on more than 75 million tracked golf rounds, Tagmarshal’s AI and machine-learning capabilities are able to accurately predict course bottlenecks and pain points, further empowering staff to direct their interventions to the groups that will have the biggest impact.
Elevating the player experience at a club could take the form of a clubhouse renovation, or even a course redesign, provided the club has the capital required to undertake these costly efforts. When you look at what it costs to give teams what is needed to operate more effectively and efficiently, which frees up hours they can dedicate to improved service offerings and engaging in the touchpoints that really matter, implementing golf cart GPS systems becomes even more appealing.
5. How golf cart GPS systems data helps inform challenging conversations
Having pace-based conversations with members is never easy, especially when you do not have data from golf cart GPS systems to rely on. These interactions are vital, however, and are key to creating a pace of play culture at a club that members buy into.
Knowing that all of the data gathered by Tagmarshal is tied to each member, and easily accessible via their Player Profiles, makes the job of Kyle Brandt, PGA, Hazeltine National’s Head Golf Professional, a little easier.
As these profiles are built out, members that are consistently falling out of position and impacting the field will be highlighted. Kyle and his team rely on this data to inform and guide difficult conversations with members, as well as for golf committee reporting purposes. Because the data is neutral and factual, conversations with members are far less confrontational.
It’s also easy for Kyle to access the Track Map at any time, showing how a group has progressed around the course. Color indicators throughout show their pace relative to the target time, and all interactions are logged and time-stamped.
Having this information at his fingertips is another tool to deal with pace-based conversations effectively, and the data is a great way to ask members to work with him in ensuring that their guests don’t adversely affect pace and flow of play.
At the end of each month, Hazeltime members receive a newsletter with pace data. Not only does this help build awareness around pace, but it also highlights the ongoing efforts from the club to ensure an optimal member experience.
With Tagmarshal in place, we can say ‘this isn’t my biased opinion that you’re slow, the data speaks for itself’. After a round, or the next day, I can show our members their pace in the Track Map and it’s point blank right in front of them. At the start of each month, we send our members Tagmarshal’s reports and it’s super helpful in having pace discussions.
Conclusion
Golf continues to grow and increase in popularity across the US, and the buzz around the Orange County Convention Center during the 2025 PGA Show was a clear indicator of the health of the golf industry at large.
Technology is pivotal to sustaining this growth and both Erin Hills and Hazeltine National are great examples of operations re-shaped by harnessing the full power of optimization technology.
While these are globally recognizable names, Tagmarshal’s roster of more than 600 course partners includes many $40 to $60 daily fee courses, which are also achieving excellent results. The lessons we take from the likes of Hazeltine and Erin Hills apply across all course types, not just those who host Majors.
Ultimately, Tagmarshal’s optimization technology gives teams of all sizes the ability to operate more efficiently, positively impacting the player experience without a significant capital outlay being required.
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