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What Your Course Can Learn From Valhalla, Pinehurst and Willow Springs

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A common theme among well-run golf operations, whether a high-end private club or the daily fee course down the road, is the shrewd use of technology. From the moment a player makes a booking, to gauging their post-round sentiment, an opportunity exists to leverage technology to your advantage.

While Valhalla (private), Pinehurst (resort) and Willow Springs (daily fee) are very different clubs, there are lessons you can take from each.

Below, we will look at how each course has utilized technology to ensure it functions optimally.

Valhalla

Valhalla is one of the most storied names in golf, having hosted the 2008 Ryder Cup, four PGA Championships – including the 2024 event – and two Senior PGA Championships.

Featuring a mix of cart and walking golf, Valhalla made the decision to be proactive with pace management to reduce average round times and improve pace and flow of play for members.

With Tagmarshal’s system identifying potential problem groups before they affected the field, the club reduced round times by 12 minutes season-on-season, with a 24% improvement in rounds finishing within 10 minutes of the goal time.

Importantly, members quickly felt the benefits of using technology, as there were more than 400 rounds positively impacted per month. 

This helps create buy-in and drives a pace culture whereby members know that marshals or player assistants are monitoring the field using neutral, fact-based data.

PRO TIP: Tagmarshal’s Live Map shows where each group is on the course, with different colors showing whether they are on pace (green), slow but not impacting other groups (red), being delayed by a group ahead (orange) or delaying other groups (magenta).

This is calculated using more than 10 dynamically calculated factors and highlights exactly which groups your team should address to improve pace and flow.

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With Tagmarshal, we know what is happening on the course and can get ahead of any issues with anticipatory service. It’s been really great having these tools.

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Kyle Cramer, PGA

Head Golf Professional

Valhalla Golf Club

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Pinehurst

Pinehurst No. 2 is the only golf course to have hosted all five of the USGA’s most prestigious events: U.S. Open, U.S. Women’s Open, U.S. Amateur, U.S. Women’s Amateur, and U.S. Senior Open.

Following the highly successful hosting of the 2024 U.S. Open, the team at Pinehurst needed to return No. 2 from tournament conditions to what Director of Golf, Matt Barksdale, calls the “championship level for resort guests.”

For this, they rely on Tagmarshal’s data-driven software to answer questions about green speeds, hole positioning, and the impact these have on pace of play.

When the club dug into the correlation between green speed and average round speed, it was obvious that faster greens led to longer rounds and fewer rounds finishing on pace.

With green speeds around 13 or 14 for the U.S. Open, pros averaged over 5 hours a round. For resort guests, the ideal is an average round time of closer to four-and-a-half hours.

Thanks to the data, Barksdale and his team knew that adjusting the green speed downward – making them slower – to around 10 would improve course flow.

PRO TIP: All of the data gathered by Tagmarshal’s set of features comes together in the Analytics Hub and is displayed in a way that is both visually appealing and easy to understand.

By looking at the data in more granular detail, you’ll be able to identify areas where you can drive improvement. You can then set goals for your team and track progress against these.

Remember, just a 1% improvement per week amounts to a significant impact across a season!

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We consider ourselves a living laboratory and we’re continually trying to improve. Tagmarshal is a great catalyst for us to understand what we’re putting in place, providing quantitative analysis of what is working and why it’s working. We run off NPS and in 2022 course 2 got 20 points better. From an NPS standpoint that’s unheard of.

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Matt Barksdale, PGA

Director of Golf

Pinehurst Resort

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Willow Springs

Willow Springs Golf Course is a par 62, 18-hole links-style golf course. It blends 10 par 3s with 8 par 4s, spans 4,253 yards, and offers golfers a “Scottish feel” in the heart of central Maryland.

The course wanted to generate additional revenue and to facilitate this, General Manager, Ben Wilson, looked to enhance the player experience using technology.

Carts were fitted with Tagmarshal’s 2Way screens, which have front-end benefits like to-the-pin yardage and direct messaging.

Using the Live Map and backend system for proactive pace management, round times steadily decreased and course flow improved. As the quality of the experience increased, Willow Springs was able to charge an additional $5 per round and implement dynamic pricing to capitalize on prime tee time demand.

Quicker rounds also opened up the opportunity to add additional tee sheet capacity without adversely affecting field flow.

All of the above led to sizeable revenue gains in Willow Springs’ first season using Tagmarshal, on top of sizeable labor savings due to reduced marshal requirements.

PRO TIP: Tagmarshal’s data pinpoints precisely which days of the week, or times of the day,  your course plays quicker. During these periods, gap time intervals can be reduced and tee times added.

You can then track the impact these additional tee times have on the rest of the day and adjust accordingly.

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Our improved pace means we have added extra tee times throughout the day, and using the data we are looking at shortening intervals to get a few more in. We’ve just had our record month and are on course to make $500k more than last season.

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Ben Wilson

General Manager

Willow Springs Golf Course

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Conclusion

As the influence of on-course optimization technology continues to grow, modern course management practices are shifting towards a more data-driven approach.

With a deeper understanding of your course, you’ll find opportunities to enhance the player experience, increase efficiency and generate additional revenue.

Combining the benefit of GPS tracking with machine learning that gathers and analyzes data in real-time, Tagmarshal’s system has been refined based on the needs of the operators that use it most effectively.

Because of this, clubs as varied as Valhalla and Willow Springs can see great results by utilizing the data insights to make smarter management decisions.

ABOUT TAGMARSHAL

Tagmarshal, the market leader in on-course optimization technology, provides courses with full, real-time operational oversight and reporting, giving golf operators the tools to manage pace and flow of play effectively, resulting in enhanced player experiences, increased efficiency through automation, and additional revenue generation.

Tagmarshal’s technology has collected over 1 billion data points from more than 75 million rounds of golf and has relationships with in excess of 600 partners, including Hazeltine, Whistling Straits, Baltusrol, Fieldstone, Bandon Dunes, Serenoa and Erin Hills.

Tagmarshal partners with several golf management groups, private, daily fee, public and resort courses, including 40 of the Top 100 US courses, as well as many $40-$60 green fee courses, which are seeing excellent results using the system.

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