Playing it where it lies
Golf businesses try to avoid the rough

by Christopher Key

 

Golf is big business in Whatcom County, no matter how you slice it. Area courses offer a huge variety of terrain and golfing challenges. Like most business involved with leisure time activities, they are trying to avoid the economic sand traps and concentrate on improving their short games.

Lake Padden Golf Course opened for business in 1971 and added a new clubhouse thirty years later. It occupies 201 acres adjacent to the municipal park and regularly hosts the Washington Senior Open and the Pacific Northwest Golf Association Public Championship. According to director of golf Kene Bensel, top dressing techniques make the course playable year round. Top dressing involves punching holes in the course and filling them with sand to promote drainage. The course has gone from 2.5 to 4 stars in the Golf Digest rankings.

Marcia Wazny, enterprise coordinator for the City of Bellingham says the course is self-sustaining and not subsidized with public money.

“We can’t just market this facility to a small group,” Wazny said. “We have to make it available to everyone. The clubhouse and facilities are available for rental and we’ve even had weddings on the putting green.”

According to Bensel, municipal courses face some tough challenges.

“We get a greater variety of people here than private courses do,” he said. “It’s not easy to please everyone from the pro to the occasional duffer.”

A golf committee, made up of a broad cross-section of players, oversees the operation for the parks department. The parks board then makes recommendations to the city council, which sets prices among other things.

“We found that we couldn’t survive by offering an annual pass,” Wazny said, “so we now sell a pass that allows 50 plays over two years and can be used by as many as four people. Pass holders get a 22 percent discount off single game prices.”

Bensel is an unabashed booster.

“I’ve played golf all over the world,” he said, “and this is one of the best public courses I’ve ever played.”

Lake Padden also boasts a feature that is rare at public courses, a regional facility called the Pacific Coast School of Golf. Three high school teams also use the course.

“The big question for most golf courses is whether or not you earn the championship designation,” Bensel said. “Conditioning, length, difficulty, esthetics…all these factors are criteria for championship status. The tournaments wouldn’t be here if we weren’t a championship course.”

Economic jitters, along with terrorism and war worries, have put a noticeable dent in Lake Padden’s business.

“It’s had a huge effect,” Bensel said. “Golf is definitely a luxury. Big-ticket items in the pro shop have been way down for the last 8 –10 months. When people get through playing, they no longer hang around for a drink or a meal. Golf is down about 15 percent nationally and the uncertainty makes it hard to budget. I’ve had to revise it two or three times already.”

Ordinarily, golf courses do well in a recession. There are other factors, however, that are taking a toll on Lake Padden’s business.

“The thing that hurt us most was the border problems following 9/11,” Bensel said. “In 1990, 62 percent of our business came from Canada. Now it’s down to 18 percent. Five new courses here in the county have had an effect and there are 12 new ones in lower mainland British Columbia.”

“Our biggest marketing tool is word of mouth,” Wazny said. “Once we get people here, we have to make sure they have a good time and are treated well. Golf Digest said we have the friendliest staff anywhere.”

The facility is friendly to more than just people. The Audubon Society has designated Lake Padden as a bird habitat course.

“Pros who play in tournaments here often bring their friends to play later,” Bensel said, “which results in a positive economic impact for the community.”

Raspberry Ridge was built in 1984 by Bill and Jeanne Robbins. The same Lynden firm that laid out Homestead designed it. John Olson and his wife Leanne lease the facility, which encompasses 50 acres.

“The course has evolved greatly over the years,” Olson said. “We’re always making improvements. Our location makes us the driest course in the county for year round play.”

Sixteen employees keep the grounds during the peak summer season.

“We have a pretty low turnover here,” Olson said. “I try to hire people who are more stable, closer to retirement age. Anybody who works here has to be as friendly and accommodating as possible. We know lots of our regulars on a first name basis and people appreciate that.”

One of the attractions of the course is consistency in pricing.

“We don’t raise the price of weekends,” Olson said. “Why should a golfer be penalized just because he has to work during the week?”

Unlike Lake Padden, Raspberry Ridge hasn’t seen much change in its Canadian business before and after 9/11.

“Most of our players come from Whatcom County,” Olson said. “People from Mt. Vernon and Burlington come in the winter because we’re drier here. We definitely have our own niche and haven’t seen much of a drop-off because of the war”

Raspberry Ridge plays host to a number of company tournaments and the Nooksack High School golf team.

“You have to be a jack of all trades to run a golf course,” Olson said. “It’s a challenge, but it’s good to be busy.”

Sudden Valley Golf Course was built in 1970 by the Sandwick Corporation as the centerpiece for the surrounding development. Architect Ted Robinson also designed the courses at Sahalee and Mill Creek. According to manager Greg Paul, the course specializes in corporate events and relies on the public to fill in the gaps.

“Sudden Valley has just come off a 12 year sewer moratorium and the community is booming,” Paul said. “Seventy five new homes were built last year and this year it will probably double that figure.”

The Sudden Valley Golf Club formed in 1980 and now has 400 members.

“We don’t depend on the public as much as other local courses do,” Paul said. “Maybe that’s why we’re so stable. It’s my job to balance the public and private uses of the course. There’s a feeling of ownership here because the course earns money for the community association. Those revenues subsidize such things as roads and security.”

Sudden Valley hosts 40 tournaments a year and a junior camp in the summer.

“In our particular niche, we don’t try to compete with other courses on rates,” Paul said. “We may be busy some days and weekends, but it’s not crazy all the time. That’s very much a part of our identity.”

Like his colleagues at other courses, Paul has to wear a lot of hats.

“You have to be a teacher, an organizer, a diplomat, a manager and a retailer,” Paul said.

One of his toughest challenges is getting, and keeping, assistant pros.

“It’s tough to make a living in a seasonal business like this,” Paul said. “Pros have to serve an expensive apprenticeship and the pay is not great. They have to love the game.”

Like Lake Padden, Sudden Valley uses top dressing to keep the course playable for a longer period of time.

“Expanding our year will help us boost our shoulder season business,” Paul said. “We work at it every year.”

Greg Foster started his golf business in his garage, making custom clubs and refinishing old clubs. He’s now been in the same location next to Hardware Sales for 19 years and the business is now known as Foster’s Golf and Paintball.

“I’m the only business in town selling used equipment,” Foster said, “and we have a full repair shop here. The economy hasn’t affected the golf business that much. People still need relaxation.”

Winter weather tends to cramp his style more than any other factor, but El Nino smiled on the northwest and Foster stayed busy. It’s a one-man show.

“People come here looking for good deals,” Foster said. “I don’t really compete with the pro shops.”

He’s not happy with some of the effects of modern technology.

“The Internet has worked to kill off small businesses,” Foster said, “but they can’t offer personal service or product backup. I stand behind everything I sell and the customer service here is great. It’s tough to compete with people dumping inventory on the Internet when I have to maintain a storefront.”

Much of his business comes from referrals and word of mouth. Having been around for so many years is an asset, but Foster has also seen things change a lot.

“The price of golf is going so high, the average guy can’t afford it,” Foster said. “Most people can’t pay $50 to $100 per round. I think everyone would benefit if they lowered their prices and increased their volume.”

Kent Sisco has a somewhat different attitude toward technology, but that’s not surprising. He worked at Microsoft for five years.

“I left in 1998 because I couldn’t stand the commute,” Sisco said, “and I wanted to raise my kids in Lynden.”

One of his neighbors introduced him to golf.

“While I was taking lessons,” Sisco said, “I noticed that the pro was writing down information and then transferring it into Excel. Well, I was an Excel developer at Microsoft and I thought that I might be able to make a handheld application that someone could take on the course. I went to golfing industry shows to see if anyone else had thought of it yet and nothing was out there.”

Thus Siscosoft was born in 1999. The application Sisco developed is called Golfwits and that has since become the company name. Golfwits offers players maps of hundreds of golf courses with vital statistics about each hole and advice on how to play it. The visual display of the game allows you to track your own shots. Statistics are recorded automatically. You can review your game at a later time or take it to a pro for advice.

“We contacted 25,000 golf clubs and got 14,000 responses,” Sisco said. “So far we’ve digitized 7,600 of them. We’re also doing about 600 courses a year by user request.”

As with any new technology, there was some resistance.

“We’ve tried to overcome some of the inertia by enabling a printer version,” Sisco said, “so you can take a printout with you.”

Sisco took his product to golf shows in New Orleans and Las Vegas and began to attract national attention.

“The United States Golf Association contacted us,” Sisco said. “They wanted to use our product in their rating service. They wanted to know if we could develop a pocket rating system. We could and it’s been deployed for the past two years.”

The golf course maps are at the base of everything.

“Regional golf associations wanted to use our maps on their Web sites,” Sisco said. “We started doing sites for some of the golfing publications. News organizations got interested and we offered some of them our maps for free. That gained us name recognition. We want to be the standard for the golf industry.”

To make a long story short, Golfwits hit a hole-in-one.

“Once you buy the application, it will run on 60 different devices,” Sisco said. “Then you can go to our site and download individual courses. Type in your hit distances and it will show you how to play each hole. A PDA with 64 MB of RAM can hold 100 – 150 courses. You can now follow the play on tournament Web sites and track individual golfers.”

So far, Sisco still has the market cornered.

“The costs of starting a business like this are prohibitive,” Sisco said. “The application has to work on Macs, PCs, palmtops, pocket PCs. It’s a scary amount of work.”

The company is based on the Microsoft corporate model, project based and deadline driven.

“We have four full time employees,” Sisco said, “a bookkeeper, a mapmaker, a server person, and a software developer. We hire part-timers as needed for each project and we always use locals — no offshore outsourcing.”

Golf schools haven’t adopted the product yet, but interest is picking up.

“Once people use it, they love it,” Sisco said.

If the spring weather has you daydreaming of mashie niblicks instead of sun tanning at the beach, Whatcom County offers some of the best golfing anywhere. The courses are challenging, affordable and uncrowded much of the time. And now you can take one of the world’s slickest software applications along for the ride. FORE!