_May/gettingthingsshipshape.jpg "Getting Things Ship Shape")
By Kyle Darbyson
Don Goode is overseeing a turnaround at Wytheville Golf Club that has the club sailing toward smoother waters
One of the first things Don Goode did as general manager of Wytheville Golf Club in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia was pin up two pictures of cruise ships. One, which featured a severely listing and clearly sinking vessel, he labeled “before.” The other, showcasing a grand and proudly sailing high sea liner, was declared “after.”
It might not be the subtlest metaphor, but it is an apt one. When Goode arrived in 2010, Wytheville was undoubtedly a sinking ship. The club was on its third different head pro in four years. Members were fleeing, and those who stayed were growing increasingly vocal about deteriorating course conditions.
Behind the scenes, the club’s finances were even worse. “We owed about $60,000, our line of credit was maxed out, and the bank had cut us off,” Goode recounts.
Prior to his arrival, Goode was working at a nearby public course and was a member at Wytheville. A member of the board approached him about taking over at Wytheville. “From the surface, you could see a lot of things that needed fixing, and I had a lot of ideas on how to fix them,” Goode says. What he didn’t realize, however, was just how dysfunctional the inner workings of the club actually were.
“There were employees doing things they weren’t supposed to do,” Goode says. “There was a lot of theft going on, and there was just a lot of toxic politics, to be honest.”
Never one to turn down a challenge, Goode accepted the role and quickly set out to right the ship. His first order of business was to stop the hemorrhaging of cash. “Our restaurant lost $75,000 in the year before I started,” Goode explains. “That’s obviously not sustainable.”
To stem the tide, Goode dramatically scaled back the restaurant’s hours to just peak times and staggered shifts to cut back on labor costs. “We introduced some controls on purchasing and inventory, and really made a difference there,” he notes.
The biggest changes Goode made to the F&B department, however, were with the staff. “I had to fire basically everybody,” he says. Theft was happening at a “shocking” rate, so changes had to be made. The hard work and harder decisions worked. “At the end of 2011, the restaurant broke even,” he says proudly.
Away from the restaurant, Goode focused on generating cash flow to help reduce the club’s crippling debt burden. Members who paid their annual dues up front received a 5 percent discount. The club also initiated a discounted cart pass program to encourage members to take up these profitable extras. “The margins on carts are amazing, so the more use we get, the better.”
In 2011, Goode implemented a zero initiation, $100 a month membership option. “Things really started to pick up [then],” he remembers. “I bet we took on 30 new members that first year.”
While it did boost the bottom-line numbers, the discounted offerings also angered Wytheville’s 260 existing members, who were locked into memberships that cost $1,820 annually. “I explained to them the realities of the club’s finances and how this move would ultimately lower their costs,” says Goode, “but a lot of these guys have been with us for 30, 40 years, and they were upset.”
Adding to their anger was the reduction in services some deemed to be excessive. “We had to cut back on things like a cart attendant and bag guy,” Goode explains. “We couldn’t justify keeping these guys on full-time.”
In response to the outcry, Wytheville lowered tenured memberships by $200 a year—a painful move that cost the club approximately $50,000. The deeply discounted initial memberships continued, with a slight bump to $113. “Even at that price, we’re still adding about 12 or 13 new members a year,” Goode notes.
Adding members is paramount to the club’s success, but bringing in the right kinds of members is even more crucial. “We’re an old club, no doubt,” Goode admits. The average age of a member at Wytheville is 60, and only four members are under 40.
To attract younger members, Goode knew he needed a more robust offering. “Golf isn’t the most important part of the private club experience today. You need to offer amenities that are appealing to the entire family.”
Pools top the list of many young prospects, so Goode and the board at Wytheville set out to fix theirs. It was a crumbling, unsightly concrete hole with very few amenities. The club assumed some debt, found a good contractor, and replaced the old pool in just six weeks. “We added a baby pool and really spruced up the outdoor concessions, too,” Goode adds.
The club took another step forward in attracting young members by installing what Goode calls “the orange tees.” It was a move started in part by a long-time member who had passed away and bequeathed a significant sum to Wytheville. When he did so, the member asked that part of the money be used specifically for junior golf. The club honored his wishes by building forward tees suited to younger players. “You’ve got a bunch of par-4s under 200 yards from these tees,” Goode says.
Goode has also hired a social manager to inject some life into the club’s calendar. “We’re doing things like magic shows, night swims, family movie nights—just trying to get younger people out here to see what we offer,” he says.
With membership growing, finances settled and facilities upgraded, Goode has most definitely righted the ship at Wytheville. But the modest family man is quick to point out one major factor that has helped: a good relationship with the board. Without their support, Goode says he could have never implemented some of the more painful or difficult changes.
No doubt, it’s been difficult changing a club with so many entrenched members and longtime employees. “People get set in their ways and get used to things being done a certain way, so any kind of change can be difficult,” Goode says. Still, he’s convinced when everyone sees all the hard work and planning really start to pay dividends, it will be smooth sailing for all.
Kyle Darbyson is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.