Turning Time into an Ally

With a well-regarded Jack Nicklaus Signature course winding through picturesque terrain just minutes outside Denver, The Country Club at Castle Pines doesn’t seem like it would need to worry much about competition from other activities for the attention of its nearly 400 members.

But according to PGA Head Professional Andrew Hedrick, the upscale private club is fighting a foe other clubs will find familiar: time.

“Golf is fighting an uphill battle on time, especially in a world where you can walk into Topgolf and have a golf experience in an hour, or have a simulator in your home,” Hedrick says.

“Pace of play is a prominent part of the discussion here, and you have to appreciate that members’ time is important. You don’t want pace of play to be a reason people don’t remain members.”

Adding to the challenge at The Country Club that Castle Pines is the setting. The club sits at 7,000 feet, with seven miles of golf car path winding through 500 feet of elevation change and residential areas – and only two holes that run parallel to each other. Policing pace of play on such a rugged and sprawling site is daunting for staff members.

“Before 2017, we were operating blind – we could put two staff members out in golf cars and ride around, but you could go halfway around the course before you got to the trouble spot,” Hedrick says.

“We had members asking if we could just pay more retirees to help manage pace of play as hourly employees, but I don’t think a high-end club should rely on that solution in having sensitive discussions with members during their rounds.”

Hedrick and his staff looked at a variety of solutions, including those offered by golf car manufacturers, before bringing Tagmarshal in for a demo. The club immediately saw the benefit of being able to track groups from the computer in the golf shop, sending a golf professional to the source of the slowdown instead of hoping a ranger happened upon it.

“Telling someone they’re holding up play can be a tough conversation, especially at a private club. You need to have tact, and you need to know the personalities – I can count on our PGA Professionals to do that,” Hedrick says.

“Plus, we understand that the group might be playing part of a seasonlong match play event, or there might be a member hosting three guests on business. You don’t want to embarrass a member in that situation, because this is our business.”

The Country Club at Castle Pines has now been using Tagmarshal for nearly three seasons, and the staff is using the data collected over that time to improve the member experience and further the bond between the golf staff and the golf committee.

Hedrick includes pace of play data in his annual report to the board, and the golf committee uses the data to communicate with members who are habitual slow players.

The club hosts approximately 23,000 rounds during its short season, and its most avid golfers have cheered improvements in pace. The average round has dropped from 4:20 to 4:04, but more important is the feeling rounds flow more smoothly around known bottlenecks, like the famed par-5 fifth hole, a 650-yard beast with a split fairway.

“Our members expect an optimized experience, which is what we get from technology in so many other parts of our lives,” Hedrick says.

“The members love that we’ve invested in a solution that helps them move consistently around the golf course, and they ask about their times. We also have data on which players could speed up, and we can have that conversation from a position of being helpful instead of embarrassing them.”

National Golf Links of America Improved tournament pace of play by providing shuttle service to avoid a long walk around the water.

“An affluent club like ours expects an upscale experience, and it expects to play in a certain amount of time. You have so many other things that take time, but our members want to make the most of their time here. So if they know they can come out, warm up, play 18 and stay for a drink – and still be home within five hours – they’re going to do that more often.”

The impetus for the creation of the Tagmarshal pace of play system in use at many of the top golf courses in the U.S. and abroad came from a text message to Bodo Sieber.

“What happened was that two of my friends were playing on a beautiful course on a beautiful Saturday and their group was stuck on the 15^th hole alongside three other groups,” Sieber, the CEO and co-founder of Tagmarshal said. “They all picked up their phones and called management and asked why they were doing that to them – making them wait. They wanted to know where the marshal was and told them that wasn’t what they came there for.”

One of the friends texted Sieber, who at that time was heading up a business that was tracking technology and efficiency solutions for corporations, wanting to know if he could come up with a solution to help golf courses become more efficient.

That was six years ago. Today, the Tagmarshal system is in use at name-brand facilities such as Erin Hills, Whistling Straits, Winged Foot, Baltrusol and Oakmont.

What is Tagmarshal?

Think GPS on steroids.

“We created a system that essentially speeds up the game of golf,” said Sieber. “It’s a huge challenge for the game. Players have less time to play, especially younger players that are the next generation of the game. We came up with technology solutions to fix that.”

Sieber won’t divulge how the Tagmarshal system works, but essentially it tracks each group and compiles data that courses can use to increase their efficiency in a variety of ways. With Tagmarshal data, course operators can figure out ways to set their course up to obtain maximum efficiency and chart trends and areas that need attention in order to provide the best experience possible.

Tagmarshal’s first big breakthrough into the market came in 2015.

“It took us about six to 12 months to get our first version working,” Sieber said. “We presented our system as a new and very green company at the PGA Show. We got a call from Erin Hills (in Wisconsin) and they said it looked fantastic and wanted to know when we could deliver it to them.”

Sieber, who admits he is not an avid golfer, didn’t realize how big of a deal having an inquiry from Erin Hills was until he saw his colleagues “jumping up and down.”

“Erin Hills had already been earmarked to host the U.S. Open in 2017,” he said. “They told me that this just wasn’t a course, it was a major course. It was a great opportunity to start at the top end of the market.”

From there, other courses jumped on board and Tagmarshal was on the way to success. The early courses also provided key feedback as the technology continued to evolve.

“They told us what we can do well, what we could do better at,” Sieber said. “We have always kept it that way. We are not operators. We are reasonable golfers. It’s the people who really know how to run the game, they have to tell us what they need and then we have the technology to make it happen.”

Sieber said successfully launching at Erin Hills was crucial. He said with the help of Tagmarshal, the former host of the U.S. Open is now generating an extra $150,000 in greens fees annually.

“The ultimate end game, obviously, is to provide the course with the controls so they can get more capacity onto the course but at the same time provide an even better playing experience than they ever had,” Sieber said.

At a course like Erin Hills in Wisconsin, a walking-only course, a tag is clipped onto a bag or a caddie at the start of play and the starter informs the group what it is for and reminds groups to stay in position to ensure everybody stays on time and has a good experience.

Making Course Marshaling More Effective

If a group falls out of position, a marshal is dispatched to remind them to get back in position.

At other clubs the system is attached to carts, and groups are monitored. If bottlenecks develop, the course can quickly manage it effectively and without confrontation.

“The traditional marshaling role is not very effective,” Sieber said. “But with some training, that person can become a player assistant rather than a police person. And that is the space we are creating.”

More importantly, Sieber said the Tagmarshal system allows the course to compile data and determine the best way for the course to be set up depending on the amount of expected play and conditions.

“It’s like a factory,” he said. “You set it up to run efficiently and if it doesn’t, it affects your business.”

Tagmarshal added an option that also functions as a GPS that shows the hole and other information. It also provides tells players when they are out of position.

“The system lets you manage yourself and that suits a lot of people,” he said. “It’s phenomenal what you can do if you have data and what you can really measure when you have the variables that have an impact on your performance.”

And, get those five-hour rounds down to a comfortable four hours or less on courses across the nation, including Alabama golf courses.

View Alabama Golf News article

To learn more about how Tagmarshal improves the golfer experience, through on-course optimization, watch the free demo here.

HOW PEBBLE BEACH PREPARES GUESTS FOR PACE OF PLAY

One of the most sought-after tee times for most golfers is Pebble Beach Golf Links, where a difficult golf course, windy conditions and players looking to savor a bucket-list destination can conspire to create pace of play problems. To help set expectations and prepare players for a speedier pace, the resort directs visitors to a special page on its website prior to their visits, located at https://www.pebblebeach.com/pace-of-play-guidelines/

Here are some of the highlights:

• Pebble Beach used data from Tagmarshal to set pace of play targets for different times of day, from a four-hour pace for the first group off to 4:55 for tee times at noon and later.
• If a foursome falls more than two shots behind the group in front of them, a player assistant will give the group a pace of play reminder. A forecaddie will be sent to assist the group if it is still out of position after two holes. After three holes, the group will be asked to move ahead or given the chance to restart their round after the last group of the day.
• The pace of play page also has a primer on how to play ready golf; how to use the new Rules on stroke and distance on balls lost out of bounds; and for keeping the flagstick in while putting, as well as maximum scores by handicap for players to pick up their ball.

Keeping Competitors on the Move

As the old adage says, there’s golf – and there’s tournament golf. Improving the pace of play during the nervy rounds of tournament golf for the 350-plus members at Long Island’s National Golf Links of America has been a major accomplishment for PGA Head Professional Jim Morris.

While the famed club values a culture of healthy pace of play during daily rounds on its lauded C.B. Macdonald/Seth Raynor layout, Morris saw that competitive events often bogged down at the club.

“We have a lot of competitive events at the club, and members with a high golfer IQ, and their expectations are high,” Morris says.

“For these players, one bad pin position can ruin an experience. Pace of play falls into the same category – if it takes too long to play, it ruins the experience and has a real effect on players.”

Morris and his staff brought in Tagmarshal to help identify trouble areas on the course in an effort to smooth out tournament play. By putting a GPS tracker on one player’s bag in each group, the golf staff can monitor the flow of the entire event and be ready to assist wherever needed.

Tagmarshal’s data also helped Morris create novel solutions to ongoing problem areas. For example, holes 13 and 14 require players to walk around – and play over – both sides of a large pond. In addition to the time it took to actually play the two challenging holes, players also lost time in walking around the water twice.

The data showed the detrimental effect this slowdown had on the rest of the field, giving Morris the idea to provide mandatory golf car shuttles to get around the water between shots. Two long walks have been transformed into 30-second shuttle rides, and pace of play is maintained.

“There were other areas that could cause problems, too, but Tagmarshal really let us see the patterns that lead up to issues during tournament play,” Morris says.

“We’ve now alleviated the problem, and the response from the membership has been ecstatic. It’s added to their appreciation of our events that they don’t have to take all day to play anymore.”

As a result, National Golf Links has increased the size of the field and number of flights for each of its member tournaments, and all were oversubscribed this season.

“We have more members playing in our events, and they’re having a great experience,” Morris says.

CEO of Tagmarshal, Bodo Sieber, returned on GOLFWRXs “The 19th Hole” with Michael Williams podcast. As golf courses in the US have started reopening, based on local and regional #SafeGolf guidelines, social distancing has become a critical part of the discussion, in terms of how golf operators can incorporate this into their daily operations.

On the show, Sieber discusses how Tagmarshal is helping golf courses globally to incorporate social distancing, and doing more with less available resources, to provide a safe player environment.

Listen to the interview which starts at 26.40:

To learn more about how Tagmarshal improves the golfer experience, through on-course optimization, watch the free demo here.

In case you missed it, the Tagmarshal Expert Session webinar is now available on-demand. Register now to watch the free video.

To assist you in achieving success this season, Bodo Sieber, CEO of Tagmarshal, shares insights on how to optimize gap intervals and capacity, as well as addressing the requirements for safe social distancing, efficiently while maximizing revenue.