We have some big news! In 2030, the golf world will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of Bobby Jones’ Grand Slam win by playing at Merion again.

Bobby was only six years old when as a skinny youngster he won a six-hole tournament at East Lake against Alexa Stirling, East Lake’s first champion.

“Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots – but you have to play the ball as it lies."

Golf courses are “living and breathing creatures,” it’s often said. But unlike humans and other beings, golf courses can live forever if properly nurtured.

There are some club Boards that have mastered great governance and deliver remarkable results. Yet there are others that fail miserably, creating more problems than they solve.

Years ago we adopted the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) as a management tool. That was one of the best decisions we ever made.

Only 45% of the over 14,000 golf facilities in the U.S. are “profitable.” Put another way, 55% are not.

There is a famous saying erroneously attributed to Mark Twain that says there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Recently, Ray Cronin of Club Benchmarking released an eye-opening white paper to the industry on the importance of forward-looking capital plans, strong balance sheets, and the indisputable fact that private clubs compete on value, not price.

Poor boards create more problems than they solve. Here’s what to look for.

All great boards of directors have certain qualities

A well run pro shop should earn at least a 30% gross profit.

Food and beverage is the hardest department to manage at a club. Period. End of Story.

Member retention always plays second fiddle to new membership sales. But it shouldn’t. It is just as important.

Bobby Jones Links and leadership partners have overseen the development of at least $330 million of new golf course and clubhouse construction.

A successful membership plan also has attractive plans as members age and their ability to pay decreases.

Without a dynamic pricing model, you are leaving money on the table.

Bobby Jones Links’ associates are encouraged to live by our core purpose, we make a difference. This means, as a company, at every level we are empowered to fix issues or solve problems without needing permission. Even frontline associates are empowered to solve what traditionally they think only a manager is allowed to solve.

There’s always a raging debate about the best movie ever made. Note, we did not say golf movie. The best movie, period.

If you have entertained hiring a premier club management company, we’re sure you have heard this, particularly when it relates to buying power. Which leads to one of the questions prospective clients frequently ask us, “Can you really save us money on our purchases?”

The great statistician and consultant W. Edwards Deming notably said “In God We Trust. All Others Bring Data.” Deming was a champion of using data and measurement to properly understand and quantify current performance against a standard. He benchmarked.

Our service and employee-centric culture is already pretty darn good and is one of the reasons you should hire Bobby Jones Links over the mega-management companies. But becoming really remarkable like Chick-Fil-A, or the Ritz-Carlton, is our primary focus - and is a pursuit that will never be perfected.

After considering the many others, we chose and use the Entrepreneurial Operating System at Bobby Jones Links. It’s powerful way of working on, and in, your business.

From 1916 to 1930, from Merion as a boy to Merion as a man, Bobby Jones set the golf world ablaze, playing in 52 tournaments, winning 23 of them, while more than half the time he was in high school or college.

Our motto is Where History and Innovation Play. Not only was Bobby Jones one of the greatest golfers of all time, after he sank the Grand Slam winning putt on the 11th hole at Merion Golf Club, he became a serial entrepreneur and inventor. So, how well have we done to follow in his footsteps?

Professional club management began when Robert H. Dedman Sr. created ClubCorp in the 1950’s. Dedman was famous for saying, “The club business is nobody's business because it's nobody's business.” This rings just as true today as it did then.

Clubs are a business. That may sound self-evident, but many clubs, particularly many great private clubs, still don’t approach them as one.

When we changed from Mosaic Clubs to Bobby Jones Links, we spent tens of thousands of dollars and countless days being trained by Ritz Carlton and Chick-Fil-A experts on how to create a customer service culture that was remarkable and sustainable.

This business of managing and owning a successful and profitable club today is a tough one.

Branding has been around for a while….at least 4700 years in fact. According to a Smithsonian article, Egyptian tomb artwork depicted livestock branding as far back as 2700 BC, a practice that still exists today!

It will be a long time before our clubs return to normal, or near-normal – most likely not until sometime in 2021.

Dining at private clubs will not be the same for a long time. It will be normal, someday. But for now, it will be radically different.

Isolation is extremely hard for us. We are social beings whose physical and mental health depends on connection to others and being outside in the great outdoors.

Golf, and golf and country clubs, are not going away. All this talk about golf’s demise is wrong.

Some of our young members and customers recently provided us with some very interesting feedback about how we can do better.

For nearly 100 years, the country club was the center of the social universe for many Americans. It was where business was done, generations grew up, families had fun, and members dined regularly.