What if you could snap your fingers and make all the problems at your golf course go away?
Too far-fetched? What if you could access a repository of knowledge that clearly illustrates why you’re having problems, and it provides tips on how to solve them?
That’s exactly what Mike Suglich, founder and president of Greenlight Advisors, wants to do.
Suglich started developing national benchmarks for municipal golf course operators in 2022 by gathering data points from courses across the country.
The resulting study was published to give courses benchmarks against which they measure their success (or lack thereof). Every subsequent iteration of the study has gotten more respondents, and more data means more granular, actionable information that courses can use to make improvements.
The latest 2024 study included the National Golf Course Owners Association, Troon and Landscapes Golf Management as partners, and involved courses from Salt Lake City, Orlando, Chicago, San Antonio, Cincinnati and many more in between. Troon and Landscapes Golf Management are both certified partners of Greenlight Advisors’ GolfClubBenchmarks.com service.
The results of the study have allowed Greenlight Advisors to construct a “Best-in-Class Report Card” for any course which compares 11 specific metrics between a given course and the national average. In some cases, that comparison can also be done on a regional level. This kind of enhanced granularity is exactly what Suglich is hoping to get.
“I take the averages on income, revenue and expense line items and show how they compare against industry averages, where they’re up or down,” Suglich said. “If they’re down, I put a red traffic light [on the report card], and tell [course owners], ‘You’re not meeting the industry average in revenue,’ or ‘You’re not meeting the industry average in expenses. You’re higher than the average. If you were able to get yourself back to average, you would make more money.’”
Justification for budgets
Making more money is all well and good by itself, but for a municipal course, showing profitability is also important for your overlords: the city itself.
Matt Kammeyer, golf division director for Salt Lake City, said all six of the city’s municipal courses participated in the 2024 study, and the resultant data is incredibly helpful when it’s time to pay the piper.
“It helps me tell a story to our city council, for instance, when we’re doing a…
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