Originally Posted by brianl99
i know, we don't need another thread to complain about golf course conditions.
Maybe a thread dedicated to solving, instead of complaining would be productive?
Here's my contribution:
Dear mr. Craig and mr. Leininger,
i'll admit to being a complainer about golf course conditions. It's not fair to just complain, without offering potential solutions.
Personally, i think we need one central umbrella for maintenance … or perhaps 2, one for championship and one for executive courses. I understand the complications of changing cdd operations and putting them in an entirely new business, so the challenge is to find an alternate approach, that's likely to produce the similar, if not better results, with a minimum of change to the existing infrastructure or responsibilities.
In the construction contracting world, we have "hold back" on most every sub-contractor's agreement. The drywall company gets paid only 90% of their contract price, until we're sure everything is done properly and per code. They get enough of their contract paid to insure employees and suppliers are paid, but have to wait for some of their "profit", until the general contractor is sure the work was properly completed.
With golf course maintenance, this is a tough approach, as a determination of "complete and proper" is a subjective conclusion.
So what to do and how do we fund the solution?
Herewith my "fantasy" golf improvement plan suggestion. It will cost the championship course owners, zero dollars. It will cost the cdd's, zero dollars. It will cost golfers a mere pittance.
Beginning on july 1st and ending on june 30, a "bonus" structure is put into place, along with a "golf surcharge". The surcharge is $1/round on championship courses and 50¢ on the trail fee/round on executive courses. Total yearly revenue from the surcharge, will be approximately $1.2m for championship courses and $1.5m for executive courses.
What do you do with the money?
You pay bonuses! $500,000 to the championship golf course contractor who maintains the best course conditions, throughout the year. $300,000 for 2nd place, $200,000 for 3rd place.
In the executive division, $150,000 for #1 and moving on down the line, to pay the top 10, a significant bonus.
Or make it a $2 & $1 surcharge and double the payouts.
One of the critical components, is the plan has to run from july 1 to june 30th. That puts the contractors intent on winning a bonus, in the position of needing to work extra hard during the last 6 months of the program (january-june), if they want to win. Why do we want them to work harder during those months? Those months are high season, with heavy play and sometimes challenging weather conditions.
Be prepare to allow the contractors some discretion, if a course needs to be closed for a few days or a couple of greens need to be replaced with "temporaries", while specific problems are addressed.
Wait, you might say. We're back to a "subjective conclusion or rating system", aren't we?
No, there's a solution for that too and functionally, it's almost in place already. We use the online golf reservation system to quantify the quality of experience at the various courses.
Every time someone books a tee time, a "window" pops up and asks them to "rate" their golf experience and course conditions, the last time they played golf. The system already knows where they played, so it's simple to collate the data. Are there some logistical issues to work out with the "rating system"? Sure, but nothing insurmountable. (i haven't yet figured out how to use the "rating system", when one person books a large group of players.)
the other way to do it, might be to require contractors to maintain at least a 75% "approval rating" in order to get paid their full contract amount, but i've always found that "bonus programs" are more motivating than "punishment schemes".
So when you're ready, just let me know and i'm ready and willing to help with the details and implementation.
Thank you
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