Turning TPC Courses Into Major Players

The keeper of the Tournament Players Club icon doesn’t plan to stop redefining itself with TPC Sawgrass.

by Joe Barks (editor@clubandresortbusiness.com)
August 2007
 

Hospitality professionals who once worked at a Tournament Players Club, but then moved on to properties not owned or run by the PGA Tour, sometimes like to joke that the “TPC” on their resumes stands for “That Part (of my) Career.”
They don’t say this with bitterness or disgust; they’ll add that they enjoyed their TPC experience, and learned a lot from it. But they’ll go on to explain that because they weren’t PGA professionals—or sometimes even if they were—they felt the need to move on to a place that offered more well-rounded opportunities in club or resort management, and that the TPC club where they worked seemed to be too heavily weighted to golf, at the expense of F&B or other growth areas like fitness or spas.

Whether or not this is always valid, when it’s suggested to David Pillsbury, President of PGA TOUR Golf Course Properties [GCP], that a fair number of industry professionals seemed to have passed through the TPC properties on their way to other homes in hospitality, he acknowledges it’s an issue that needs to be addressed.
“When you churn people, you churn members and guests,” says Pillsbury, who moved into his current role in March 2006 after spending two years as PGA TOUR Golf Course Properties’ Chief Operating Officer. “And why should we be the training grounds for the industry? We should instead be the place where people want to come to work and can have a great career.”

Everyone in the Pool
Prior to coming to the Tour, Pillsbury served as U.S. General Manager for Nike Golf, where he says he learned the value of having “a very disciplined human resources planning system.” He’s working to establish the same approach within the Tour’s course management unit, so GCP can make it a priority to identify and retain talent, build bench strength and relocate people as needed to pursue the goals the Tour has for all of the TPC properties (see full list, box, pg. 26).
“We’re building towards the future with three priorities,” he says. “First, we want to reposition our physical assets throughout [GCP]—in many cases making the same degree of investment we’ve shown a willingness to do at our flagship property, TPC Sawgrass. But in other cases, this may cause us to sell, or close or take the [TPC] flag down from selected properties. We’re focused on quality [of properties], not quantity.”

“Secondly, we want to revisit and recommit ourselves to clearly defined operating and performance standards,” Pillsbury continues. “We’re going to implement a world-class training system and also take a look at all aspects of how we select, measure and reward our people, to encourage the right behavior.

“The third leg of the stool is better management of that talent, in all functional areas, not just golf,” he continues. “If an opportunity opens up in food and beverage or course maintenance, we need to have a depth chart ready to know who’s next in line to move up and help us fill that need.”

In addition to the very noticeable physical changes that Pillsbury is directing for GCP properties (and not just at TPC Sawgrass; major upgrades are also on the board for other high-profile TPCs, such as TPC Avenel and TPC Scottsdale), he’s making significant investments behind the scenes to pursue these management goals. In particular, high-level human resources professionals are being added to corporate staff to put new systems in place for recruiting, developing, and rewarding top talent.

The payoffs from these efforts can be just as impressive as what the $65 million that was pumped into TPC Sawgrass is already showing it will return, Pillsbury believes. “[The HR programs] are a critical part of our being able to create the next level of the PGA Tour experience at all of our properties,” he says. “To engage our guests on a highly emotional, world-class level, we first have to engage our own people in the same way.

“The one sustainable advantage we always have is our unique connection with the best players in the world, and our ability to get people as close as they can to what the life of a PGA Tour player is like,” Pillsbury adds. “We want to redefine the member-guest experience to match the high-end golf we offer and make everything else people do at our properties equally memorable—whether it’s shopping in our stores, eating in our dining rooms, or just walking into our lobbies.”
That’s why Pillsbury has also put a renewed emphasis on having volunteer “storytellers” at TPC properties, implementing upgraded caddie programs, and turning the walls and rooms of clubhouses and courses into “visual storyboards” filled with pieces of tournament history and connections to Tour players.

He’s also reinforced the PGA Tour’s always-strong charitable connections, driving all TPC club managers to support local, grass-roots causes as ongoing parts of their operations.

“We’re never going to have the largest portfolio; we don’t have a goal of getting to 200 properties in the next 10 years,” notes Tim Hawes, Senior VP for Retail Licensing. “Since David [Pillsbury] came here, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking and redefining what the TPC Network should be all about. The affiliation with the Tour is the one competitive advantage we’ll always have, no matter what the economy. We’ve refocused to make sure we’re doing all we can to make that work for us—not only for members and guests, but also our own people.”

And in the process, to get hospitality professionals to view TPC as The Pinnacle (of their) Careers.