Kali Fox is the Lead Assistant Professional at Olympia Fields Country Club, in Olympia Fields, Illinois.
Kali Fox on the importance of taking every opportunity to use all of your facility:
We have an annual program, our Women’s Member-Member-Member, which featured 33 participants this year. It was very competitive, you had to have a handicap, and the event – officially called our Women’s Sweepstakes – was the highlight of the year for many of them. But what we did the night before is what I want to bring to light here, because we turned what could have been a regular dinner into something special they won’t forget about anytime soon.
Kali Fox on the business impact of taking every opportunity to use all of your facility:
From talking with our food & beverage team, I found out we had some leftover wine bottles from a previous event, so we came up with a fun event to help give them away. We have a Himalayas-style putting course here at Olympia Fields. I put the bottles all over the place, with wild undulations surrounding it. From one spot you got three chances – I brought out our Scotty Cameron demo putters for this – and it was plain and simple: if you hit the bottle, you kept it. It was a fun, relaxed way to kick off the event, with women rooting FOR people they’d be (playfully) rooting against 12 hours later. Some of the husbands came out along with an audience of about 8-10 people who were there from another event and hung around to watch. It cost $30 to participate, and while many women did not hit any bottles (you needed all three balls to get a sense of how crazy these greens are) and wound up with zero bottles of wine, it was a great way to kick off the event and a great reminder to use all of your facility. It was also a great mix of ability and longevity of membership – some people have been here decades, some just months. It’s right behind our outdoor patio and a great place to take a drink and have some fun. Juniors love it and I try to bring them there as much as I can. It kickstarted this event in a great way and I know finding a way to use all of your facility will do the same for you, too.
If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email kfox@ofcc.info.
