Long and short tees:
The Meadows at
the Greenbrier,
White Sulphur Springs,
W.Va.
For people who don’t play the
game, joining up with the golfers in their midst can seem
like trying to get into the popular clique in high school. Players
have that golf look, they carry cool gadgets, they know all the
game’s esoteric etiquette and rules, and, well, they know how to
swing a club.
It’s a pretty intimidating scenario for
someone who wants to learn the game, yet golf often is the only
formal recreation offered during a meeting. Plus, attendees who
don’t play can miss out on some great networking opportunities. So
how does a planner make beginning golfers feel welcome out on the
course? The following will help you set up an event that coddles
the neophytes without ruining the day for the “pros.”
Group dynamics
Just following a directive to bring
more attendees into the golf fold does not necessarily mean you
should open up a long-standing event to people who have never held
a club.
The key is understanding what your
players expect to get from your outing and what kind of tone has
been set in the past. For the neophyte, you have to make the day
all about fun. If yours is a serious event, where the competition
is fierce, beginners will be lost. You should consider planning a
side event to introduce them to the game (see “Separate but Equal,”
next page).
Too many nerves come into play for the
new golfer who becomes part of such an outing, where the scoring is
the focal point. “The first thing is to take as much pressure off
them as you can,” says Dave Bisbee, director of instruction for
Seven Canyons Golf Club in Sedona, Ariz., and director of the eGolf
Group, which focuses on executive development. You have to make the
day fun for all the participants, he adds.
On course
Where the golf outing will be held can
make or break a beginner’s desire to join in. Once you’ve narrowed
your venue search, talk to the director of golf at each course.
Describe fully the makeup of your group -- how many beginners,
intermediates and experienced players will be participating -- to
help the pro determine if his course is a match for your
golfers.
When your players are a real mix, a
layout like the Meadows at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs,
W.Va., is ideal. “The golf course was remodeled in 1999 by Robert
Cupp,” says head pro Hill Herrick. The architect took the shortest
of the resort’s three layouts, formerly the Lakeside Course, and
lengthened it. “Now it’s the longest course from the back tees, so
good players have a challenge, but it’s still the shortest for
beginners [from the front tees],” Herrick says.
Other elements that make the gently
rolling Meadows user-friendly include wide fairways that allow
balls to roll, shallow bunkers that are relatively easy to get out
of and large greens that aren’t hard to reach. “There is some
water,” Herrick notes, “but you’re not going to lose balls if you
miss the fairway, and it’s not going to take you eight shots to get
in the hole from around the green.”
And there are only a few “forced
carries,” where players have to hit the ball over an obstacle --
typically a pond, a ravine or a sandy waste area. One of the
hardest things to do consistently in golf is get the ball in the
air. Beginners do best where their misses roll for a while and they
can feel like they’re moving forward, even if they make imperfect
swings.
“You want some forgiveness to the golf
course,” says Bisbee. “It’s a better way to accommodate
everybody.”
One way to do a quick comparison of
golf layouts, according to Bisbee, is to find out their slope
ratings and course ratings. Without going into a detailed
description of the process chapters of the United States Golf
Association go through to produce these numbers, suffice it to say
that the lower both numbers are, the easier the layout.
Each course is rated separately from
each set of tees. For instance, Herrick’s remark that the
Greenbrier Meadows’ layout is both challenging for experienced
players and forgiving for beginners is borne out by looking at the
course as well as its slope ratings: From the gold tees (also known
as the back tees, which are farthest from the hole), the course
rating is 72.8 and the slope is 129, numbers that indicate a fairly
difficult course. From the red tees (also known as the front tees,
which are closest to the hole), the course rating is 68.2 and the
slope is 114, indicating a pretty easy layout.
If you’re wary of putting experienced
golfers and neophytes together, book a multicourse resort like the
803-room Greenbrier (www.greenbrier.com), using a difficult layout for the
experienced golfers and arranging an outing on the easier one for
those who want the less competitive atmosphere. (The venerable
resort, opened in 1778, has three courses.)
Following are some other properties
with several options to choose from, where the ratings also are
favorable.
Elegant and egalitarian:
The Cascades Course at
The Homestead in Hot Springs, Va.
The Homestead (www.thehomestead.com) in Hot Springs, Va., offers the
Cascades, Lower Cascades and Old courses. Here, as at the
Greenbrier, Southern elegance from the 19th and 20th centuries
mingles with modern-day luxury. The 15,000-acre resort offers 506
rooms and 72,000 square feet of meeting space.
Welcoming greens:
The Mystic Rock layout
at the Nemacolin in
Farmington, Pa.
The Mystic Rock and Links courses
anchor the recreation at Nemacolin Woodlands
Resort (www.nemacolin.com) in Farmington, Pa. The property has
three hotels and an inventory of condos and homes for rent. Its
function space includes four ballrooms, a 200-seat lecture hall and
25 meeting rooms.
Teaching women to play is the specialty
at Pine Needles and Mid Pines
golf clubs in Southern Pines, N.C. (www.pineneedles-midpines.com). The two layouts are
served by two golf-outing-sized hotels: the 110-room Mid Pines Inn
and the 72-room Pine Needles Lodge.
Northern links:
The Tradition Course
at Treetops
At Treetops Resort in
Treetops Village, Mich. (www.treetops.com), the Masterpiece, Premier, Signature
and Tradition courses welcome golfers of all abilities. The
238-room property also offers a nine-hole, par-three course where
experienced players can practice their short games and beginners
can find out how it feels to get off the driving range and onto the
fairways.
Wet, wild: Disney’s
Magnolia course, Orlando
Another enclave with several
championship layouts and a short course is Walt Disney
World Resort (disneyworld.disney.go.com) in Orlando, with
five full courses and a nine-hole junior layout called Oak Trail.
Choosing where to stay is the hard part. Five of the hotels that
have use of the courses are the 372-room Disney’s BoardWalk Resort,
with 20,000 square feet of meeting space; Disney’s Contemporary
Resort, with 1,008 rooms and 115,000 square feet of function space;
the 1,912-room Disney’s Coronado Springs Resort, with 220,000
square feet of meeting space; Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort &
Spa, featuring 867 rooms and 40,000 square feet of function space;
and Disney’s Yacht & Beach Club Resort, offering 1,197 rooms
and 73,000 square feet of meeting space.
SEPARATE BUT EQUAL
Barton Creek’s
Crenshaw Course"Golf is not necessarily related to how coordinated you are; it’s a series of skills that are learned,” says Jack Bickart at the 300-room, four-course Barton Creek Resort and Spa (
www.bartoncreek.com) in Austin, Texas, where he has helped groups set up outings that separate out the beginners and immerse them in learning the game.
One option is to keep new golfers on the driving range, with several pros teaching them how to swing, or have them play only nine holes on their own instead of all 18, says Bickart, Barton Creek’s vice president of sales. To spur competition, conduct a chipping-and-putting contest in the short-game area, which also gives newbies a feel for working around the green.
Planners can run a Golf 101 program at the 56-room Lodge and Spa at Cordillera (
cordillera.rockresorts.com) in Vail Valley, Colo., which offers three championship links and a nine-hole short course. Similarly, the two-course Wild Dunes Resort (
www.wilddunes.com) in Isle of Palms, S.C., offers the Discover Golf clinic. Players stay at the 93-room Boardwalk Inn and in 365 villas and homes.
Another idea: Bring beginners to the resort a day early, a ploy used with a group of attorneys by Dave Bisbee, director of instruction at Seven Canyons Golf Club in Sedona, Ariz. -- S.B.
Putting fun into
play
Sometimes mixing beginners with
seasoned players is the right thing to do. Charity events,
team-building tournaments and client outings easily can be designed
so everyone out on the course has a good time.
“You have to come up with a format that
doesn’t put the newbie in a position to fail and have his ego
bruised,” says Bisbee, whose club, Seven Canyons, services the
220-room Enchantment Resort and 77-room Sedona Rouge Hotel &
Spa.
Shambles and scrambles are the most
popular scoring methods for groups where the talent ranges from
good to bad. In a shamble, all players in the foursome tee off, and
then everyone plays from the spot of the best shot, finishing out
the hole with their own ball and recording each score. For
tournament purposes, you can either enter a number for the team
using an average for each hole, the best score for each hole or
adding up everyone’s scores for an aggregate total. “People can
still play the course, but they don’t get left behind,” says Roger
Caldwell, president of Great Golf Events in Mission, Kan.
In a scramble, as with a shamble, each
player in the foursome tees off on every hole, then everyone plays
their second shot from where the best drive landed. Unlike a
shamble, however, this process is repeated until the hole is
completed; for example, once all four balls are on the green, the
golfers all putt from the spot of the one that landed closest to
the cup.
But it’s the interesting variations on
these formats that really can add enjoyment to the day. “You can
play a string-and-scissors event,” says Steve Harker, manager, golf
sales and performance, at Walt Disney World. Each team gets about
50 feet of string and a pair of scissors, Harker explains. They can
use lengths of string to move the ball and save as many shots as
they can, until all 50 feet are used up. “It’s a lot of fun to
watch people debate over it,” he notes. Many charity events collect
extra donations by selling a few “mulligans,” or “do-overs” to use
when players botch a shot.
For groups interested in getting more
women out on the course, Harker suggests holding a Three Kings and
a Queen or Three Jacks and a Jill event: “This makes the men go
hunting for a woman to join them, and quite often it turns out that
she’s a beginner,” he says.
Another way to lighten up the day is to
challenge everyone to hit trick shots. “We’ve done events where
everyone had to hit a gag shot at each hole,” says Herrick, a
23-year veteran of the Greenbrier. “On one hole you might putt a
tennis ball; on another, you might get a throw; you might have to
hit left-handed; you might have to hit off your knees.”
Bisbee likes setting up what he calls a
step-aside scramble, where the person whose shot you use has to
skip a turn on the next shot; their ball can’t be used twice in a
row. “If you have a strong player,” he says, “you only can use his
ball every other shot, but there’s no pressure on the
beginner.”
To involve new players in a way that
doesn’t slow down the entire group, Disney’s Harker also suggests
having them play from the 150-yard markers instead of playing the
full length of the course. This way, they still get to ride with
the better players and experience the full golf day.
Another option is to tell beginners
that during the tournament they will be putting from a spot marked
beforehand on each green. “If the team gets to the green in four
shots, but the beginner holes out in three putts, that’s the score
that is recorded for the team,” says Harker. “If they hole out in
one, we’ll even give them one of our hole-in-one plaques. That’s a
great way to engage the beginners.”
Paired up
While attempting to mix and match your
players can be quite a challenge, especially if your group’s
abilities run the gamut, it’s best to take the time to arrange fair
pairings. The head pro or director of golf can help you manage this
task.
Usually, golf events work best when
every foursome is made up of that mix of abilities. When people are
allowed to form their own foursomes -- which, particularly when
clients are involved, can be unavoidable -- good players tend to
choose each other, leaving the beginners to scramble around the
course together, possibly slowing down the rest of the group.
Using a handicap system with a scramble
puts golfers of all levels on an even playing field and ensures the
more inexperienced players will get the opportunity to contribute
to the team’s final score.
“We’ll really work with the meeting
planner on their pairings to make sure each team is made up of
several skill levels,” says Harker.
As a way to find out everyone’s
handicap, ask for the information up front right on the
registration form, and include a place for beginners to indicate
that they have no rating yet. Foursomes made up of an A, B, C and D
player should be finalized several days before the outing.
The welcome mat
Once all of the elements firmly are in
place -- the date, the course, the format -- it’s time to invite
the participants. The way to get beginners to join in is to
emphasize how you have thought of them in the planning.
Talk about how much fun the day will
be, underscoring that the format will allow neophytes to
contribute. Describe the course and how playable it is for golfers
of all levels. Reassure them that good rental clubs will be
provided for those in need.
“Make sure you say beginners are
welcome,” says Disney’s Harker. “Assure them there will be no
formal scoring, and explain how the format works and that everyone
will get a chance to hit.”
Also, you can play up the business
advantages of learning golf. If you’ve
set up a special clinic or separate event for those just learning
to play, for example, highlight it so the information doesn’t get
lost in an invitation that
also is geared for the experienced player, who will be signing up
for a more traditional outing.
Golf Gifts For
Beginners
Cheat sheet. Give beginners a dogleg up
on the game and the fine points of its etiquette by handing out
Shortcut to Golf Rules ($9.95), a concise summary of
official rules 1 through 28 and easily packable in any golf bag. www.shortcutbooks.com
Buy the book. The new edition of
Golf for Dummies, by CBS golf analyst Gary McCord
($21.99), is a quick, easy and fun look at the game. Here are swing
tips, advice for playing with the boss, information on golf
workouts and more -- a good read even if you’ve evolved beyond
“dummy” status. www.dummies.com
Welcome to the club.
To neophytes who get jazzed by the game, give the first club in
their bag: a putter. A hot one to try is the Heavy Putter from
Boccieri Golf, available for $199. (800) 546-2952; www.heavyputter.com
Shoe business. Golfers spend a
lot of time walking, so set a beginner off on the right foot with a
great pair of shoes. FootJoy, a leading golf-shoe brand, offers
custom-made footwear, allowing buyers to choose the style, size,
width and color combination. Personalize a pair with up to six
characters or a logo. Costs range from $140 to $190; shipping is
free. www.footjoy.com -- S.B.