Tim Krebs, the Middle Atlantic PGA Section’s 2013 Player Development Award winner, is the PGA general manager at Butterfield Trail Golf Club in El Paso, Texas.

Tim Krebs on the importance of hosting golf range socials:
While I was the PGA general manager at East Potomac Golf Course in Washington, D.C., we had a lot of success with player development since we replaced our existing beginner golf programming with Get Golf Ready at our GolfDC Academy in 2009. We added new programs to improve the effectiveness of GGR and the other player development efforts at that facility. One of which is what we called golf range socials. These were scheduled events on the range where players could come out for a casual social experience that included instructors offering swing tips. We also had beer and wine available to help people unwind, as most of our attendees were coming straight from work. Golf range socials became a regular event for us on Thursday nights, and they helped us drive corporate player development.

Tim Krebs on the business impact of hosting golf range socials:
We went from 343 beginner students in 2008 to 854 GGR students in 2009, and had topped 1,100 GGR students while I was still in Washington. While we were working the range, the instructors could target different players and sign them up for GGR classes, or for one of our intermediate leagues. The social element of the events also led to the formation of casual groups that signed up for GGR classes together, or to played rounds of golf together. The average GGR student played a little more than six rounds of golf per year, which generated almost 7,000 rounds at East Potomac in one year. That’s more than $400,000 in revenue that we could track back to GGR participation.

Editor’s note: The above comments reflect the opinion and experiences of the submitting PGA Professional and are not endorsed by PGA Magazine or The PGA of America

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