Brian Crowell, the 2024 Metropolitan PGA Section Patriot Award Winner, 2020 Section Golf Professional of the Year and the 2003 Section Professional Development Award Winner, is the PGA of America General Manager at Bally’s Golf Links at Ferry Point in Bronx, New York.

Brian Crowell on the importance of correlating grass or turf range days to highest usage:

We’re one of the rare facilities in New York City to have a grass driving range, a short game area with a bunker, and a practice putting green. Use of that facility is baked into your greens fee, where you can come an hour before your tee time and have full run of the place. We also offer something called a practice pass, where for $70 you can have unlimited usage of the facilities for two hours. We’re a premier experience in an area starved for great golf facilities, and players are taking every opportunity to warm-up and practice. Since our audience continues to increase, it’s created a potential turf management & over-use challenge. So, we came up with a plan that has been working tremendously for us.

Brian Crowell on the business impact of correlating grass or turf range days to highest usage:

It’s pretty simple: we correlated when to allow players to use the grass teeing areas to our highest usage times, and the times when we charge higher fees. So, on Monday through Thursdays, the full-swing range is limited to a long strip of artificial turf (about 30 stations are available) while on Fridays through Sundays and holidays players have the natural grass teeing grounds to warm up on. They can also use our teaching area if no coaching is being done at that time. This has been a win-win for everyone involved. The weekday audience overwhelmingly understands the need to let the grass rest and recover, while having gratitude for the other areas of the practice facility available. (And practice pass customers are tending to come during the week, as they know those with tee times over the weekend can easily send them to a waiting list.) Meanwhile, the weekend audience is glad to have fresh grass to hit off of. COVID forced us to re-think a lot of what we did in terms of turf management, and this plan has helped make our facility perform at its best when expectations are highest.

If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email bcrowell@ballysferrypoint.com.