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By Steve Eubanks
The mission at Chicago-based Green Golf Partners is for every program and event to make guests reevaluate what it truly means to visit a golf course
It’s about getting the non-golfer in the door; about breaking barriers; about enticing the person who harbors all the negative stereotypes associated with the game—too slow, too stuffy, too quiet, too expensive, too snobby and way too boring—to rethink what it means to visit a golf course.
That is what animates Matt McIntee, founder and CEO of Chicago-based Green Golf Partners, these days.
“We have to tap into that non-golf market, that millennial market, the way TopGolf has,” McIntee says, the volume going up with every breath. “You have to do things like offer to rent speakers for your golf carts or let people wear jeans in the clubhouse. We operate one club where we have sleepovers with your kids. A lot of people in Chicago have seen this and are like, ‘That’s really cool,’ but there are others who tell me, ‘You’re a heretic.’
“Maybe or maybe not, but people want change in the way golf has been done,” he adds. “They want to alter the number of holes they can play; they want to change what they have to wear to play golf; they want a variety of events. They love the member-guest, but they want new stuff. They want night golf and boxing; they want an Iron Chef competition at their club. They see things in other parts of their lives that they want to adapt into their golf club life.”
Those additional (and in many ways, non-traditional) events have been one of the great differentiators for Green Golf Partners. On any given summer weekend, you might find an outdoor music festival taking place on one of the driving ranges at the 14 clubs the company manages throughout the Midwest. And in the winter, you will certainly find something different on the agenda at Belleview Biltmore Golf Club, their lone property in Florida.
“We have about a 70/30 ratio of public to private clubs under management right now,” McIntee notes. “Given our current size and the fact that we are a very high-touch company, that’s a great balance. But what we’ve found is that things like the music festivals and the ‘taste of…’ restaurant festivals, things that would appear to work better in private club settings, actually work very well in public environments, too. Now, other things, like Golden Gloves boxing, work better at private clubs where you might have an event as part of a member-guest weekend.
“Many of the programs we feel passionately about translate throughout out properties,” he continues. “Junior golf, which is our major push, translates everywhere. Music festivals translate. Night golf translates. ‘Superintendent’s Revenge’ (an event where the course is set-up ridiculously hard) tends to translate. In our private [club] setting, things like Iron Chef work better. But the ‘Halloween Spooktaculars,’ where we convert the maintenance barns into haunted houses, work great at all settings.”
McIntee’s passion for innovation is borne of experience, both good and bad. He was the vice president of golf acquisitions for Crown Golf, building that company into a Midwestern power in the industry until the Crown family decided to get out of golf.
“I was the VP of acquisitions, so I was responsible for all the growth, all the properties we bought and leased,” he recalls. “Then, in 2005, the pricing was completely out of control. Course pricing was so high that cap rates were ridiculous no matter what kind of analysis you used. Banks were also incredibly aggressive. So, the Crowns made the decision that the time was right to divest.”
McIntee stayed on during most of the downsizing, leaving just before Bob Parsons, founder of Go Daddy and PXG Golf, bought the Golf Club of Scottsdale from the Crowns.
“I enjoyed what I did,” McIntee says. “But the run-up was good and the run-down was bad. There’s no other way to put it.”
In 2010, at the height of doom and gloom in the golf industry, McIntee saw an opportunity amid the pessimism. “While everybody was running away from golf, I thought it was a great time to double down,” he says.
So, McIntee and a group of partners formed GGP on April 1, 2011, buying out the management contracts of HG Golf Properties and setting up shop with one goal in mind.
“Everyone, it seems, focused on price, but we saw something different,” McIntee notes. “We knew that people, while focused on what they were spending, also longed for a sense of belonging and for a place to have a lot of fun. So, we started Green Golf Partners with the mission of putting the fun back into golf.
“Every day, with every program we implement and every event we host, that is our number one objective: We want our clubs to be places where people—not just golfers, but people—come to have fun.”
Steve Eubanks is an Atlanta-based freelance writer and New York Times bestselling author.