Troon acquires Invited’s third-party management business

Troon, the largest golf course management company in the world, acquired Invited’s third-party management business on July 1. The deal includes 18 contracts and increases Troon’s total to 579 managed courses.

Invited, the largest owner of golf courses in the world, remains the second largest operator with 199 18-hole equivalent courses, all owned.

“We have always worked well together and this allows us to focus on what we are good at and allows them to remain focused on their core business,” said Tim Schantz, CEO of Troon.

David Pillsbury, CEO of Invited, said the sale will allow his company to focus on its core business, which is acquiring undercapitalized clubs and investing the capital necessary to change its market position.

“Five years ago, we started this journey and [third-party management] was one of four growth verticals,” Pillsbury said. “Since then we have refined the private club strategy — our core business. We decided the right strategy was to focus on what we know and what we do best — which is to own and operate private clubs.”

Pillsbury inherited 16 courses under third-party management contracts when he took over as CEO in 2018. He created a new division, ClubLife, and hired Doug Hellman from KemperSports to oversee business development and grow the portfolio. Hellman, who is now at Bobby Links Golf, did not work out and left the company in early 2020. The division has stalled since then, growing by only two courses.

Moving forward, Invited will refer third-party management contracts to Troon and focus on its owned clubs. The company has been acquiring three to five clubs a year and plans to continue to grow at that pace.

Invited is also evaluating its strategy with BigShots, its golf entertainment division that competes with Topgolf.

“In this environment, we can’t afford to take capital out of our core business and put it into a non-core asset [like BigShots],” Pillsbury said.

He said Invited is very focused on the signature and premium segments of the private club market.

“We have sharpened the point on our strategy,” he said.

Seth Churi, who ran the ClubLife division, will assume the same position at Troon. Churi had been chief operating officer at Sequoia Golf at the time Invited, then ClubCorp, acquired the company in 2014. Churi then founded Redwood Six, a small privately held company with a focus on premium private club and resort destination operations. ClubCorp acquired Redwood six in 2018, and put Churi in…