Growing the Game Part 2

Junior Golf Tours
In our last blog (you can read it here) we wrote about Junior Golf Tours and how they are not really growing the game of golf. In this blog we want to focus on how Women Are the Key to growing the game.

Women Are the Key 

One of the POS (point of sale) companies we work with wrote a fantastic blog titled ‘Forget Millennials, Golf Has a Problem With Attracting Women‘. There were a number of great points in the article, here are a few highlights:

• Hire more women at your golf club (and not just for the beer cart)
• Do wine and 9 events (not just the usual Ladies Night)
• Remember Women buy events like weddings and banquets (not Men)

We have a few more of our own to add:

• Make the game more fun and less intimidating to everyone (Men and Women new comers)
• Make 9 holes available more often – Women are busy
• Make booking a tee time as easy as possible – online, app, phone – provide options
• Make your food and beverage offerings more attractive (not just 1/2 sandwiches)
• And a really out of the box one… offer babysitting services (or husband sitting if needed) for a fee

Women’s Golf Day
By now likely everyone in the golf industry has heard of Women’s Golf Day. If you haven’t, this is their mission statement, “Women’s Golf Day is a one day event celebrating girls and women playing golf and learning skills that last a lifetime.”

The 2018 Women’s Golf Day featured 1 day, 4 hours, 400 golf courses, 28 Countries and 20,000 participants. By all accounts a great day!

We ran Women’s Golf Day at a couple of the courses we work with. Not all of them did it on the “official” day (June 5, 2018). It didn’t necessarily fit the schedule of each golf course. The thing that was most interesting was the comments after the events.

Most of the comments centred around two main messages:

• The women want more events tailored to just them
• The social aspect of golf is very important

Women represent a great opportunity to grow the game. What are you doing differently to encourage their entrance to golf and to your facility. Leave a comment we’d love to hear about a great you have.

We, Jeff and Tara Ciecko of CK Golf write two blogs, one is our 19th Hole Blog where we share personal experiences and the other an Industry Blog where we comment on general business and internet marketing best practices, sales strategies and give golf industry related opinions. We have owned CK Golf  for 9 years and provide marketing, social media and business services to the golf and other industries. As of August 2016 our life and our business will be ‘location independent’. Our 19th Hole Blog is about the places we visit and the things we do. If you have any questions or comments, or happen to be in the same location as us please reach out and contact us anytime.