High-tech golf course management and marketing systems combined to make these profiled links among the best.
Emerald Dunes is one of the country's top public golf courses. It took high-tech management and marketing systems to get it there
You've just boomed a 250-yard drive down the right center of the fairway on number 9, nicknamed the Green Monster, the prime handicap hole at Emerald Dunes. A birdie 3 would give you a 41 for the front nine and a shot at breaking 80 on this top-ranked, Tom Faziodesigned course. Alas, the hole plays 420 yards from the blue tees, and there's water all down the right side. Time for a bit of heavenly help.
You park your golf cart beside your ball, but instead of stepping off seven paces forward to the 150-yard marker, mentally computing your distance (to the center of the green) as 170 yards, and reaching for your 5-iron, as you would at other courses, you consult your electronic caddie. Suspended from the roof of your cart is a small color screen linked to satellites orbiting 11,800 miles overhead. A quick glance at a diagram of the Green Monster shows not only how far you've driven but how far to the flagstick: 153 yards. Push a button, and you superimpose a close-up view of the putting surface, which informs you that the pin is on the right front, where the green slopes back to front. You select a 7-iron and swing confidently. Your ball lands just in front of the green and rolls to within three feet of the cup. Hello, birdie putt.
What sounds like a golfer's wild fantasy is everyday reality at six-year-old Emerald Dunes, in West Palm Beach, Fla., where the satellite-aided 7-iron, courtesy of a product called Prolink (from Leading Edge Technologies Inc.), is just one of many high-tech advantages that are par for the course. Emerald Dunes is one of the most technologically advanced links in the country. "Many golfers tell us they've played their career round here," says president Ray Finch, flashing the smile of a 5-handicap golfer.
Finch has good reason to be upbeat. Golf magazines regularly rank Emerald Dunes among the nation's top public golf courses--precisely the Charleston, S.C., native's goal when he flew to Palm Beach in the late 1980s to scout sites for a high-end course that would offer a top-quality golf experience from bag drop to the 19th hole. And an essential part of what makes Emerald Dunes a jewel of a place to play a round is Finch's decisive measures in making the course a showcase of technology-driven management and marketing. The duffer and the scratch player alike can appreciate the features and conveniences that help Emerald Dunes outshine your average links: a state-of-the-art automated reservation system that guarantees prompt bookings and precise tee times, a computer tracking system that helps keep play well paced, a space-age electronic caddie in every golf cart. But it takes an entrepreneur with an eye for the cutting edge to savor the beauty of the computer-driven realm Finch commands behind the scenes, a system that allows him to deliver premium satisfaction to his customers and corporate clients while at the same time giving him greater control over his operations and expenses.
From the start it was Finch's vision to create a world-class golf course in West Palm Beach that would draw the bulk of its business from nearby luxury hotels like the Breakers; the Ritz-Carlton, Palm Beach; and the Four Seasons Resort, Palm Beach. Naturally that meant matching the exemplary service of those four-star resorts so that the hotels would promote the course when booking their corporate packages. Retaining the highly regarded Tom Fazio to design Emerald Dunes earned Finch some necessary cachet, and the course's glitz factor shot up notably with the quarter-million dollars more that went into the creative earth moving and landscaping that fashioned its signature Superdune, a 50-foot-high tee complete with roaring waterfalls. Finch readily admits, however, that his best investments have been in high tech.
"Ray is fearless," says Neil Haynie, president of Computer Golf Software Inc., of Boca Raton, Fla. "He's a good client, a laboratory. The excellence of his golf course is proof he's been right on."
Not that Haynie is an impartial observer. It was to his company that Ray Finch turned early on, in search of an automated system that would help him cut costs and run a leaner operation. Computer Golf Software had just the ticket: a soup-to-nuts software package of its own design that enables golf-course managers to generate daily revenue reports, compile point-of-sale data, streamline billing and accounting procedures, and monitor inventory. The package has a comprehensive event-management component, and it also offers regular players the benefits and convenience of an all-hours automated reservation system called Teletee. The tab? Finch says he spent about $75,000 on his comprehensive Computer Golf system, though Haynie points out that Emerald Dunes elected to purchase more hardware than most other courses. Installation costs for similar systems, Haynie says, usually break down to $25,000 for software, another $25,000 for hardware and wiring, and $10,000 for Teletee. Ongoing fees run about 10% of the software price a year and include two hours of telephone tech support monthly and an annual system update.
Teletee began paying dividends on that investment right away for Finch, who recalls that on his first visit to the West Palm Beach area he couldn't find a single public course that took reservations. "You had to stand in line, put your ball in a hopper, and wait for it to come down," he says. At Emerald Dunes there are no lines and no low-tech contraptions. Instead, golfers armed with a password can dial the course around the clock from a Touch-Tone phone and reserve tee times up to six days in advance. Acknowledging all confirmed requests is the sweet whooshing sound of a monster tee shot. (Requests for tee times also can be made by E-mail.)
