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By Kyle Darbyson
The 100-year-old Tryon Country Club faces major financial and demographic issues. But officials are focusing efforts on the unconventional in order to ensure another 100 years
Not much has changed at Tryon Country Club over the last hundred years. The private club in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains is one of Donald Ross’ few 9-hole designs and enjoys a spot on the National Registry of Historic Places, meaning there’s never been much impetus for change. But as the club entered its second century amidst dwindling membership numbers and stagnant revenues, club officials realized that change must come—quickly.
An entrepreneurial woman named Emma Payne Erskine founded Tryon in 1916. The visionary painter and author saw potential in the area as a recreational center for well-to-do East Coast families looking to escape hot urban summers in the cool Appalachian Mountains. The club has survived wars, depressions and intense competition from 18-hole rivals, but in recent years found itself ill-prepared to face the realities of the new private golf economy.
Board president Chris ter Kuile says Tryon was definitely guilty of the same arrogant attitude many clubs had during the boom times. “Like everyone else, we used to tell people to put their name on a list and we’d get back to them eventually, if we thought they were worthy.”
Today, general manager Gerald Weathers says the club needs to be agile, adaptable and savvy to garner any attention from prospects. “The days of waiting for a knock on the door are over.”
President ter Kuile agrees with Weathers’ assessment. When the long-time member joined the board, he immediately noticed shortcomings in the club’s business model. The biggest, as he saw it, was an over-reliance on board members to undertake crucial aspects of operations. “They didn’t have the time or the expertise to do a lot of the things they were asked to do,” he says.
The retired pilot says it used to be people would nominate board members because they were fun to play with, but as he set out to reshape the board, he knew that needed to change. “We needed a new model with a different kind of board.”
Fortunately, ter Kuile had a recruiter currently serving as a board member. They worked together to identify areas Tryon needed to improve to thrive in the modern environment. “We added people with experience in money management, marketing and sales.”
With the pieces in place, the board needed a strategic plan to execute on. For Tryon, that vision came about thanks to a lucky twist of fate. The club had spent money it didn’t have on a marketing consultant who promised to raise the profile of the club.
“I was really concerned we weren’t getting value out of it,” ter Kuile remembers. Then, he noticed an article in his local paper written by a retired executive on quantifying marketing efforts. Not only did the article show Tryon’s current plan wasn’t giving them a fair ROI, it also showed ter Kuile there was more effective help available to the club.
The author of the article was a member of SCORE, a volunteer organization comprised of retired experts in a variety of fields. Its mandate is to leverage its experience to help small businesses succeed. The board at Tryon reached out to the author and they worked together to formulate a plan. “He helped us understand what our priorities were,” Weathers says.
The results of their collective thinking pinpointed two areas of focus: raising revenues and maintaining the golf course. “We’d had what I’ll call a sketchy framework in place before, but working with SCORE, we created a document with action items for everyone.”
Now, Weathers and his team have a clear idea of their revenue needs. “We know we have to have 300 members to be sustainable.” Current membership counts sit at 233. “Ten years ago, we had 350, so 300 isn’t impossible,” he says.
To get there, the club is partnering with local real estate agents. “We give them a bunch of free rounds and invite them to send their clients our way,” Weathers says. A system is in place to collect data from these prospects and follow up with targeted communications. To some, this is standard operating procedure, but Weathers notes this kind of advancement is significant for a club very much mired in the past. “We’ve been slow to change,” he admits.
Changes like this have ter Kuile bullish on the future of the club. “We have so much to offer,” he says. For starters, the 9-hole layout fits in perfectly with today’s busy lives. “You don’t need five hours to play here,” he explains. “You can play in under two hours, and meet the family at the pool after your round to boot.”
Thinking long term, Tryon has also created an endowment fund so members can donate money to the club. To that end, ter Kuile has earmarked $1000 in his own will. “It’s not a general fund—members can be very clear on what they want the money to be used for.”
It’s that kind of thinking Tryon needs if it hopes to navigate through the next 100 years.
Kyle Darbyson is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.