As I’ve said all along, the best tournament of any of our four semesters at the Golf Academy was our final tournament of the summer at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale.
Not only was it tournament golf on an amazing and iconic Scottsdale golf course, it included a welcome banner above the clubhouse and our very own private banquet lunch after the round. Come to find out later that Grayhawk Tournament Director Tracy Hail is a GAA grad (Summer, 2010). Hail is close to passing Level 2 of the PGA Class A Certification.
It’s been eight months since our visit out to North Scottsdale, but the memory of that day is still burned into my brain. So when Tracy showed up to talk to our Tournament Administration class, I was excited to hear the behind-the-scenes description of what he does.
Believe it or not, running and operating tournaments is Tracy’s full-time job, and while Grayhawk hosts some 80,000 rounds per year on its two public courses Raptor and Talon, nearly 20% of its traffic is made up of tournament rounds.
As Tracy explained, tournaments affect just about every part of the golf facility operation from food, beverage, and catering to merchandising and even the course superintendent. Tournaments are revenue generators that can sometimes even result in these different departments making budget.
Grayhawk Golf Club is a public course with a private feel, and it still maintains that aura by relying solely on word-of-mouth advertising, not the big money ad revenue that goes a long way toward determining America’s or even the “Insert Your State Here” Top 10 Public Courses You Can Play Lists you’ve seen either in Golf Digest or Golf Magazine.
As Tracy told us, golf is a people/person business. Who you know matters, and your word matters. Networking is huge. We see it first-hand at the Academy all the time. There’s no shortage of industry professionals in the Phoenix area who are willing to come and give of their time to talk to us about their passion and enthusiasm for golf.
Tracy also told us how he tries to make every tournament outing a personal experience through signage and logos, food menu options, and tournament scoring.
Says Tracy, “At Grayhawk, we rarely say no to anything. We just find a way to get it done.” The end result is that of those 80,000 rounds per year, about 65% are returning customers. The same people keep coming back!
“People tell us all the time that our staff is the best,” says Tracy. “We’re friendly, and we genuinely want them out there. At the end of the day, golf is a hospitality business.”