Gearing Up for
GROWTH
Despite a historically shaky collective reputation, management and
contract maintenance companies are positioned to grow.
BY MARISA PALMIERI
You could say that golf course manage- ment companies’ reputations precede them. Whether it’s based on personal
experience or hearsay, many industry members
– especially golf course superintendents – have
their minds made up about the third-party
firms that manage entire golf operations or
single departments, such as maintenance.
Regardless of their collective reputation,
management companies serve a niche in the
industry. With a down golf market and a recession in the U.S. economy over the last 20
months making the operating environment
even more challenging, these firms are poised
to grow, according to data provided to Golf
Course Industry for the Top Management
Companies List.
CHANGING PERCEPTIONS
Anecdotally, many say that the negative perceptions about management companies are
tales from the past and peoples’ opinions about
them are improving.
“Management companies’ reputations have
improved,” says Terry Buchen, CGCS, president of Golf Agronomy International. “There
was a lot of anxiety when they first became
prominent on the scene, but it has subsided and
there is a more positive attitude about them in
recent years.”
GCI research shows that half of superintendents’ perceptions of management companies has not changed over the last 20 years.
Twenty-eight percent say their perceptions
have improved; 22 percent say they’ve gotten
worse (see page 22).
Steve Gano, vice president of operations for
Championsgate, Fla.-based International Golf
Maintenance, says good companies have been
able to dispel negative perceptions through
proven track records.
“We’ve made some significant headway,” he
says, adding that it helped that 2008 GCSAA
president Dave Downing, CGCS, is an executive in a management company. Plus, high-pro-file superintendent and past GCSAA president
Bruce Williams, former director of golf courses
and grounds at Los Angeles Country Club, this
month started in a development role with ValleyCrest Golf Course Maintenance.
Greg Pieschala, president of ValleyCrest Golf
Course Maintenance, Calabasas, Calif., says battling stereotypes is not an issue for his company,
though that wasn’t the case five years ago.
“At that time we were encountering ambivalence among superintendents, but that’s a thing
of the past,” he says “Today when we have an
opening, we’re blessed with a lot of very high
quality people who want to work with us.”
Pieschala attributes ValleyCrest’s ability to
overcome the perception obstacle to several
internal programs, including training it conducts through the GCSAA and structuring an
incentive program that rewards superintendents for actively participating in the GCSAA
and achieving and maintaining certification.
He also believes that ValleyCrest benefits
from being a contract maintenance firm vs. a
traditional management company.
“If you’re a superintendent, that makes all
the difference in the world,” Pieschala says.
However, GCI research shows that 50 percent of superintendents don’t differentiate between the two types of companies and, in fact,
36 percent have a more favorable perception of
traditional management companies than contract maintenance companies (see page 22).
Critics of third-party operators say they
don’t always do what’s best for the golf course
and take away the superintendent’s autonomy.
Upon the arrival of management companies
they see their operating and capital improve-
ment budgets shrink and feel pressure to
deliver the same conditions with a reduced
budget while answering to someone who may
be off site.
“I can only really speak for KemperSports,
but when superintendents become part of our
system, there’s a lot of tools and support,”
says Steve Skinner, CEO for Northbrook, Ill.-based KemperSports. “From peers, to regional
support personnel and from a technical and
agronomic basis.”
As for autonomy, Skinner says KemperSports
believes in the brand of the individual golf
course and the local staff’s expertise.
“They’re the ones who understand the desires of the local golfers and our customers,”
he says. “We give them the tools and support
to rely on, but we don’t look to tell them how
to do their jobs. They’re high qualified and well
trained and they have the authority and responsibility for producing a quality product.”
Gano shares a similar philosophy.
“There are a hundred ways to get the job
done, and we’re all for guys doing it their own
way, but when we know a job can be done more
efficiently, we absolutely provide that idea to
the superintendent,” he says. “All of our ideas
come from our superintendents and we share
that idea with the rest of our clubs.”
One assumption is the belief that when management or contract maintenance companies
come in, the existing staff will be fired.
“Too often we hear about that negative
perception, but in reality we’ve saved guys’
jobs,” Gano says. “There are superintendents
who haven’t been given the right tools, the
budget isn’t what it needs to be and we can
convince the board that they’re not providing superintendents with the right resources.
The superintendent on a property knows the
history. That’s a huge piece of the puzzle, so
we’d be crazy to automatically get rid of the
superintendent.”
Unfortunately, some clubs have used management or maintenance companies to make
changes at the superintendent level so they
don’t appear to be the bad guys, Gano says.
“And that gives us all a black eye,” he says. “If
we have the sense that they’re only talking to us
to change the superintendent, we won’t allow
a club to use us to do that because it doesn’t
translate into a long-term relationship.”
KemperSports doesn’t systematically fire
superintendents or other managers when it
brings on a new facility.
“We look to retain and retrain as much as
possible,” Skinner says. “We go in and interview
