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By Steve Eubanks
John Junker and Southern Golf Properties focus on the little things in every revenue source to ensure their courses remain profitable
Passion isn’t always an asset, especially in business. Unfortunately, too many golf operators got into the industry out of a love of the game and a yearning to be around tightly mown fairways and freshly edged greens—an emotional comfort bordering on obsession, with the sound of gang mowers in the morning and sprinklers in the afternoon acting as salve for the professional psyche.
Many of these men and women have never been able to see themselves living and working outside of golf. And, far too often, that zeal has led to clouded judgment and decisions that, in the aggregate, damage everyone who makes a living in the game.
Success requires a dispassionate eye, a cold, hard stare at the black-and-white realities of a balance sheet and a business strategy. That was a lesson John Junker, founder and CEO of Southern Golf Properties, learned early in his career.
“I graduated from college (at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie) in 1986 and really didn’t know anything,” Junker says when asked how a Midwestern kid, a pretty good player but not someone with a fervent desire to be in the golf business, created one of the most successful golf ownership and management companies in Texas. “I went to work for a bank at a time when the [Texas] economy wasn’t that great. They sent me down to Bandera, Texas, to find out what was going on at this golf course [the bank had taken back].”
So Junker, through an accident of timing and the fact that he had studied finance with an emphasis in hotel and restaurant management, was sent to what Minneapolis bankers had to consider the ends of the earth to work out a distressed golf property. A decade later, that property, the Flying L Guest Ranch, would become the cornerstone of Junker’s management company, a business that owned a substantial portfolio of courses in Texas between 1997 and 2007 before selling the assets at the perfect time just before the Great Recession. Since then, Junker has focused on third-party management and selective acquisitions.
“Ours is very much a word-of-mouth business,” he says. “People know what we’ve done in the past, the properties we’ve owned and managed, and the success we’ve had, so they call us.
“Unfortunately, I believe in helping people and a lot of times the best way to help someone is to tell them, ‘no.’ We don’t take on projects just for the sake of growing. If I can help—really help turn the business around and set them on the right path—then we will come in and do a good job. But if you’re in a position where paying a management fee does nothing but sink your bottom line even lower, I’m going to say, ‘I’m sorry.’”
Having cut his teeth on-site at the Flying L, an old-world, western ranch in the Texas Hill Country where the 1950s television show “The Cisco Kid” was filmed, Junker developed a firm belief that effective management requires working the details, which means being on the premises.
“I haven’t wanted to expand beyond this area [of Texas] in part because I’ve been here for a long time and I know the market,” he says. “But, more importantly, I believe in being hands-on. I’m at the clubs we manage once a week or no less than twice a month. That limits us geographically in terms of what we can take on, but it really doesn’t limit you if that’s the kind of business you want to build. And being there is an important part of how we do business.”
Junker and Southern Golf opened and managed The Club at Concan, a resort and spa owned by Kenneth and Barbara Arthur, and the company has managed Alsatian Golf Club in Castroville, The Golf Club of Seguin, Utopia Golf Course and the Golf Club of Texas in San Antonio, among others. Most recently, the company purchased Riverhill Country Club in Kerrville, a Byron Nelson design, and signed management agreements with The Club at Colony Creek in Victoria and Tierra Santa Golf Club in Weslaco.
“It’s the details,” Junker says. “Every revenue source has to be drilled down. You’re not going to make a huge profit in any single department, but if you’re profitable in all the departments, it adds up. The problem is, if you’re losing money in one area, it can bring down your whole operation.
“That’s why we really believe in building revenue streams in every department of every club,” he adds. “Our industry has been cost-cut to death. That doesn’t show up in the first year, but it definitely shows over time. When you’ve been short on cash for two or three years, it’s hard to bounce back. That’s why activity is so important.”
Activity drives spending, which in turn resuscitates or sustains the entire operation. “Revenue is the key,” Junker says. “And you have to stay on it and be detail-oriented to build and maintain those revenue streams over time.”
Steve Eubanks is an Atlanta-based freelance writer and New York Times bestselling author.