Designed by the world-renowned architectural team of Dr. Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, The Quarry opened for play in 2007.

The Par 72 championship golf course offers an exceptional golf experience with spectacular views. Stretched across 800 acres of pristine native preserves, it features abundant wildlife and an expansive lake system.

For our latest Quick 9 interview, we caught up with The Quarry’s Head Golf Professional, Pat Doyle, PGA, who had some great insight and golfing memories to share with us.

How would you describe your morning routine to kickstart your day?

My morning routine involves first watering my bonsai trees before I leave the house. I’ve never been a big breakfast person before work but I do enjoy coffee. So that involves making black coffee at home with a bit of honey added or stopping at Dunkin for a cold brew (AKA rocket fuel). My drive in to work takes about 30 minutes and I like to spend it listening to a book on tape or music and driving slowly.

Has golf always been your first love?

Golf for me has always been about spending time with people and enjoying good competition between friends. I wouldn’t consider it a love but more of a hobby that I’ve made into a profession.

Tell us about your role at The Quarry Golf Club. Why is it important?

My role at The Quarry Golf Club is to manage our day-to-day operations and golf events. The day-to-day goal is to meet all of our Members’ and Guests’ expectations of what they think “their” private Golf Club experience should be. Obviously, it is very difficult to meet everyone’s expectations but if you give each individual the time and listen, each will tell you ways they think you can improve.

Why has your course decided to invest in Tagmarshal?

The Club invested in Tagmarshal to provide the management team with real-time pace data and a high-level visual of course traffic to improve our reaction time with slow play. The gravy on top is the 8” color display screen in each of the members’ private carts that provides them with their actual pace of play and hole yardages.

Since implementing Tagmarshal, how have your golfers responded to the on-course experience?

Any time you are introducing something new into a Member’s golf experience there can be some pushback. With Tagmarshal the Members thought we just needed better player assistants rather than paying a GPS company to tell us players are slow. Tagmarshal is a major assist when experiencing slow play and provides the Golf Staff with real-time information to react quicker to solve the issues sometimes before they develop into real problems.

Since implementation in 2022, our Members have embraced Tagmarshal and really enjoy the 8” color display screen and improved pace management.

Describe Tagmarshal in three words.

Sharp, intuitive and advantageous.

What is your dream golf destination? Why?

Old Head in Kinsale, Ireland. If you’ve been there then you know.

Your best golf moment?

Can I give you two? Watching one of my playing companions on the ‘Road Hole’ – number 17 at St. Andrews – make a 10 when he was 3 under through 16. One of his shots even stopped on the road.

The other was a match with one of my Club Members at North Berwick, Scotland (my favorite golf course). On the 2nd hole, he hit his drive on the beach (Firth of Forth). Luckily, the tide was out, he climbed down the ladder, hit his shot off the beach and somehow made a PAR. We ended up tying the hole and he won the match.

If you could be a caddie on Tour, whose caddie would you like to be and why?

I would caddie for any player in a Ryder Cup match, USA or European. The intensity and fire in that sporting event are unmatched.

Playing more than 7,000 feet from the back tees, Tierra Rejada is nestled in the foothills of eastern Ventura County in Southern California.

Since opening in 1999, this par 72 masterpiece of playability and scenic beauty consistently ranks among the state’s top courses. It offers a true test for golfers of all skill levels.

We spoke with Brian Helmuth, Tierra Rejada’s Manager of Golf Operations, to learn more about his role at the club and how technology is being used to optimize operations.

How would you describe your morning routine to kickstart your day?

My morning routine is to open Tagmarshal and check the current pace. If I see our pace from the day before was abnormal from the report generated, I check the delayer groups.

Has golf always been your first love?

Yes.

Tell us about your role at Tierra Rejada Golf Club. Why is it important?

Manager of Golf Operations. I work directly with customers and our marshals. I also provide relief to Kris (Dennis, GM) and Jacob (Chandler, Assistant GM) and am more hands-on with guest interactions.

Why has your course decided to invest in Tagmarshal?

The GPS is a big plus for a tough course like ours.

Since implementing Tagmarshal, how have your golfers responded to the on-course experience?

Positively.

Describe Tagmarshal in three words.

Smart, effective, accurate.

What is your dream golf destination? Why?

Augusta. To play a round at Augusta National – for obvious reasons.

Your best golf moment?

Albatross on a par 5 (6 other hole-in-ones…not to brag).

If you could be a caddie on Tour, whose caddie would you like to be and why?

Rickie Fowler. I grew up competing against him and he is from my rival high school.

Latest technology will track every group on three top-rated courses, managing pace of play
and creating other efficiencies

Streamsong Golf Resort—the exceptional golf resort with three top-100 courses in central Florida—has chosen to use the latest software from Tagmarshal to optimize its on-course operations. The innovative technology will be fully operational this Spring.

Streamsong is owned and managed by KemperSports, which has already implemented Tagmarshal at other leading resorts it manages, including Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley. Like those properties, the Streamsong courses range over large, open tracts of land filled with sand dunes, dramatic contours, and vast expanses that can make it hard to track and service hundreds of golfers every day.

Streamsong will get full, real-time line-of-sight and analytics from Tagmarshal’s proprietary system, which tracks everything that moves on its courses from golfers in carts and caddies to maintenance crews, drink carts, and other staff. The Live Map feature allocates a color to each group of players, with different colors used to indicate whether they are on pace or not, and if their pace is negatively affecting other groups.

With this data, Streamsong will be able to proactively manage pace of play, identifying potential problems before they become intractable and effectively dealing with out-of-position groups in a non-confrontational manner with supporting data.

“Pace of play has been one of the main detractors in the golf industry for years,” explained Miles Blundell, the resort’s Director of Golf. “At a bucket-list destination like Streamsong we want to be on the cutting edge of helping solve challenges like this one for our guests. Tagmarshal’s software will give us the opportunity to drill down on the pace of play data in real time that we’ve not had previously to ensure the guest experience at our three Top 100 courses exceeds guest expectations.”

Tagmarshal’s latest intuitive and highly customizable new system powered by AI and machine learning—which was introduced at the 2024 PGA Show—also will give Streamsong other ways to optimize its on-course operations. These include automating many aspects of pace and flow of play management, increasing operational efficiency and resource allocation, and unlocking the opportunity to generate additional revenue by adopting advanced strategies such as tee sheet optimization. 

Tagmarshal partners with more than 35 of the Top 100 golf courses in the U.S., including many private, resort, and daily-fee facilities, as well as hundreds of other courses of all types and in all price ranges around the world.

For more information about Tagmarshal, access the website at www.tagmarshal.com/demo

Mill Valley, CA – Whoosh, Inc., the best-in-class club operations software, is proud to announce their newest integration with Tagmarshal, the industry leader in golf course optimization through pace and flow of play management.

Mutual customers of both industry leaders can rejoice: the integration between Whoosh and Tagmarshal brings unparalleled efficiency and insight to golf course operators. With this collaboration, clubs can seamlessly view bookings managed in Whoosh directly within the Tagmarshal system, eliminating a duplication of effort and optimizing workflows. This joint effort streamlines operations, enabling operators to assign tags and carts to specific members or players without interruption, enhancing overall course management and personalized service.

The partnership between Whoosh and Tagmarshal is founded on a shared commitment to modernizing the club industry. 

“We’re building the golf operations system of the future and opening up our API to like-minded companies allows us to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the golf industry,” added Colin Read, Whoosh’s co-founder and CEO. “We’re not just integrating systems; we’re unlocking new realms of innovation and efficiency, ultimately changing what clubs have come to expect from their green grass software tools.”

Looking ahead, the integration will extend to incorporate player pace profiles and trends from Tagmarshal into the Whoosh platform, providing clubs with comprehensive player data and insights to further improve course operations and hospitality.

For more information about the Whoosh and Tagmarshal integration, or for a product demo, please reach out via email to contact@tagmarshal.com.

To read the full article, click here.

Article by Harvey Silverman, Golf Business Live

We launched “Tech Talks” this past February, a new webcast to bring members a variety of interviews with technology leaders from around the world. In fact, we’ve set the record for the longest-distance NGCOA interview, all the way from Cape Town, South Africa, outdistancing Seoul, South Korea. So, yes, we’re “spanning the globe.” More importantly, we’re spanning a variety of new and innovative technologies for green grass golf course operators.

We had our longest-distance interview with Bodo Sieber, CEO of Tagmarshal. Bodo connected from Cape Town, South Africa (Tagmarshal has a U.S. office in Atlanta), a tidy 7,858 miles from NGCOA HQ in Charleston, SC, and just edging out Seoul, South Korea. Tagmarshal is an NGCOA Smart Buy partner and brings a data-driven GPS tracking system to a worldwide portfolio of courses, including notable ones like Bandon Dunes, Erin Hills and Whistling Straits. Tagmarshal began as a “tag” technology, a device that could be attached to a golf bag or carried in a golfer’s pocket or cart. Its purpose was to track the flow and pace of play and give course operators real-time data to improve it.

Next came the ubiquitous on-cart screens displaying GPS distances, hole layouts, and more. But Tagmarshal doesn’t want to be known as just another GPS company. Its DNA is in the data it provides and analyzes. Bodo explained to us the three metrics to consider when measuring pace and flow. The key is “average time vs. goal time.” “Average is a bad indicator,” Bodo exclaims. “It hides the outliers, both good and bad, so we work with courses to establish goal times and then measure how many rounds are faster, on pace or slower.”

In Bodo’s example, the average on a particular day might be six minutes over goal time. But drilling down in the data, it might show 20% of the rounds played considerably faster, 40% were on pace, and 40% went over the goal time. So the average round time might be acceptable, except that 40% were materially delayed with wait times – a primary source of golfer discontent. Management now has the data to enhance the flow by time of day, depending on the play volume.

Read the full article here.

By Steve Eubanks, Golf Business Magazine

The problem is as old as the game, and so are the debates on how to fix it. Ask any operator or any golfer to list their top-five gripes and “slow play” will fall somewhere near the top. For the player, it’s a maddening mixture of frustration and resignation, the kind of thing that drives many out of the game or at least away from more rounds than they might otherwise play. But for the operator, it’s a financial disaster. Footfalls on the first tee are the revenue engine of every club – public, private, resort or hybrid. Slow play limits rounds and reduces revenue. Full stop. Anything that can remedy that ailment is welcome news.

Enter Tagmarshal, a digital tracking product that does a good deal more than tell an operator where his slow groups are located. According to Bodo Sieber, the CEO of Tagmarshal, “The idea for the system came, as you might expect, during a very slow round of golf. My two partners played and were backed up with three groups waiting on the 14th hole. As often happens, they were saying, ‘Where is the marshal?’ When they got back, they came to me and said, ‘You’re a tech geek. Is there not something we can do to solve this?’” In the past, the answer has been, no. In a private club setting, the staff knows who the slow players are. There are rarely any mysteries among members. On the resort and public front, a marshal can only do so much. The guy shooting 140 paid the same fees as the single-digit handicap behind him. And when the tee sheet is full, letting a group or two play through doesn’t do much to solve the problem.

Clubs have tried building “time pars” into their GPS systems so messages flash when you’re behind. Unfortunately, golfers either ignore those messages or find them infuriating. The most hostile interactions on any given day occur when the marshal rolls up and says, “You guys are out of position and need to pick it up.” “The standard GPS system that you have on your typical golf cart is of great frontend value to the golfer,” Sieber said. “You can see how far you are from the flagstick, get a video flyover of the hole or at least a graphic overview, and maybe order some food for the turn. But there aren’t really back-end business applications there.

“Of course, the commercial engine at a course is high-quality rounds. Maximizing quality and quantity adds value. Given a course’s high fixed-cost base, any additional capacity you create is bottom-line profit. It’s like adding three more rows of seats to an airliner and selling them. The fixed costs remain the same.”

With that in mind, Sieber, the tech geek, created a device-and-software interface that tracks every player on the course and also provides impressive backend data to the management team. For cart riders, the device looks like your standard GPS. For walkers, it looks like a small cell phone that’s clipped to the golf bag or given to a caddie. “With the data we can generate, we add so much more value than the initial vision of making golf faster. We really have built a powerful business engine that looks at everything from round-time-per-hole to tee-box-wait-times as well as breakdowns of flow over particular times of day or particular days of the week. This allows the course to optimize everything from staffing to pin placements to ensure that the flow of play is consistent, and the quality of the experience is really high.

“With this technology, many courses simply do away with marshals altogether because that relationship is always adversarial. Instead, one of the assistants or other shop personnel goes out as a ‘play ambassador’ or some other name, armed with the data. They know exactly where to go because they know exactly where the holdup is. And they arrive armed with data on how long a group has taken to play each shot on each hole. That person then helps the group catch up by being with them and subtly showing them ways to move. Not once has the staffer needed to say, ‘You’re slow.’ It’s just showing them data and helping them move along.”

A decade ago, players might have balked at having the creepy eye of Big Brother attached to their golf bag. But with GPS tracking in cell phones, cars, computers and appliances, and AirTags being attached to everything from keys to pet collars, people have become accustomed to a tracking world. “At first, we were finding that people asked what it was all about, especially if they’ve been given a device to put on their golf bags,” Sieber said. “But once it’s explained that this is to eliminate slow play, they all said, ‘Thank goodness.’ There is no resistance after that.”

As of this writing, the Tagmarshal system is on 500 courses in 14 countries, with some impressive clients on the list. Baltusrol and Erin Hills were early adopters. Whistling Straits, Kiawah, Bandon Dunes, Oakmont, Pinehurst, even the DP World Tour and the R&A use the system for certain data points. And while the system was not originally built as an agronomic tool, the value to superintendents and general managers is astronomical. “We have built a system that displays a heat map of where people go and where hey don’t go, so you can track that over time,” Sieber said. “So, a superintendent can look at that map and use it for three purposes: First, to save on routine maintenance. You know with data whether or not you have to irrigate and fertilize certain areas. Just changing a sprinkler head from 360 degrees to 180 degrees saves half the water, for example.

The second area is determining how much or what parts of the course can be turned back to natural areas. We have several cases where a course looked at the patterns and a golf course architect said, ‘We now have an opportunity to extend our cost savings way beyond what we originally thought was possible.’” That’s what Baltusrol did during its renovation. As Gil Hanse looked at the Lower Course, the club provided him with the heat-map data, which made it much easier for Hanse to return certain areas to nature. “There is also a function of traffic control,” Sieber said. “Obviously, there are areas where you are not supposed to go, especially with a cart. The superintendent can tell where to put signage or put fencing or how to change the course.

“That is so vital because course planners can now look at the data and say, ‘If we just took out this one bush or this one tree or converted this one area back to clay or natural grasses, we could speed up play on this hole by six minutes.’ Conversely, sometimes you might want to make a hole more difficult and a little slower to open up a bottleneck that naturally occurs ahead. We can show the impact that these incremental changes make over long periods of time.

“Pinehurst has looked at another variable: green speeds. Obviously, if your speeds are tour grade, the weekend golfer is going to struggle, and pace-of-play will deteriorate. Operators have to find a balance. Guests want a major-championshipcaliber experience, but they also want to play in a reasonable time. Pinehurst has used the system to determine at what green speed play is optimized. “It’s actually about 25% slower than what the USGA recommends as a standard green speed, because of the course design and the number of rounds that they play.” A superintendent can also track his equipment to know exactly how long it takes to mow or maintain each area. And he can interface with the golf shop to see if there are any gaps in play so the crew can slip out and get some work done.

The art of business intelligence is to make data actionable and easy to digest,” Sieber said. “We realize that the majority of our market is not Baltusrol or Pinehurst. It’s Average Joe golf courses with $2.5 to $3 million in revenue. Those operators don’t have time to dig into the data like a major championship venue, so we have a level of the system that is appropriate for them. “But the nice thing about our system is that it becomes essential. Just as we have all become dependent on Map apps on our phones, our system can be understood at a glance by an 8-year-old. You don’t have to know all the calculations to get a great deal of usage out of it.

“Our clients look at our system 30 to 40 times a day because it becomes intuitive. Obviously, there are business analytics that can be used, but that is not for everyone. But everyone can use certain aspects of the system to incrementally improve the operations and track outcomes.”