Abe Hernandez, the 2018 PGA North Texas Section Youth Player Development Award Recipient, is a PGA Golf Professional at Royal Oaks Country Club, in Dallas, Texas.
Abe Hernandez on the importance of using supply and demand to your advantage:
The past three years have seen amazing growth in our PGA Junior League. It was just a few years ago that we decided to implement the program for our Royal Oaks youth, and invited a mere twelve individuals to participate. We wanted to start small, while highlighting the exclusivity of participation in this new and exciting endeavor. Little did we know the effect that limiting participation would have on our membership. We immediately had parents asking questions about the program, inquiring how their kids can get in, and requesting an invitation as soon as the next set of invites went out. We increased participation the second year to the first 48 youth golfers to sign up. This ensured members would read our club emails, check out our website more often, and frequent the club more, so they didn’t miss out on the chance to register their young ones for our newest player development program. Needless to say, when it was time to register, it didn’t take long to fill those 48 spots. The four teams we compiled would compete against each other, eliminating the need for added travel time and expenses to be incurred by our members. The competition was made even more special, as most of the participants already knew each other or were good friends, swimming together and enjoying the Royal Oaks lifestyle together. With demand greater than ever, we have decided to implement one travel team of our better-developed players. This team will travel to other clubs to compete in wider, broader PGA Junior League competition.
Abe Hernandez on the business impact of using supply and demand to your advantage:
Implementation of PGA Junior League at our facility has been an overwhelming success. At $550 per participant, we are continuing the level of exclusivity, ensuring only the most dedicated youth golfers participate. This often serves as motivation to the rest of our youth golfers, those in our after-school and summer programs who strive to someday participate in PGA Junior League as well. By heavily limiting initial participation, and then opening it up gradually to more youth golfers, we are maintaining demand at a level where everyone wants in. PGA Junior League matches bring out the families, boosting food & beverage revenues and golf shop sales. We sell a lot of caps, gloves, and balls, as well as U.S. Kids Golf clubs and Taylor Made, Tour Edge, and Cleveland junior clubs. We are also better able to promote the North Texas PGA Junior Tour, encouraging many of our budding young golfers to get involved. They get very competitive and want to learn more every day, increasing participation in other youth opportunities, including our “Girl Power” and “Golfletics” programs. Finally, as we all know, once you get the kids involved, the parents often follow; this is truly the case for us, as we’ve witnessed more moms and dads playing and taking lessons, making golf a family affair at Royal Oaks Country Club.
If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email Abehernandez@pga.com
