USGA “Deacon” Maps Golfer Traffic and Guides Resource Management

Greater Golfer Experiences with Fewer Inputs and Costs

It’s possible for golf courses to provide better golfer experiences and at a significantly lower cost. In the conversation below, Andrew and I discuss how with Hunki Yun, Director of Business Development for the USGA Green Section.

I heard rumors of the USGA’s futuristic heat-mapping tool when I visited the Golf Industry Show for the first time in early 2020. I would come to learn that the (now-named) Deacon uses GPS tracking and software to plot golfer traffic throughout a typical round. I had the chance then to speak briefly with Hunki Yun about all of the potential, discovering key curiosities:

For a given golf course, what bunkers do golfers go to most often? What parts of rough do they travel? Where do they almost never go? The implications prove astounding. While I already knew that fewer than 2/3 of a typical golf facility’s 150 acres are actually used for the game of golf, Deacon put data to where golfers typically travel among the plotted in-play areas. If golfers never visit an area of a golf course, and yet thousands of dollars are devoted to maintaining that area, then is it creating value, or is it just making the game less affordable (and speeding the entropy of that business and its surrounding environment)?

If I’m a golf course operator spending thousands of dollars per year to maintain certain areas of a golf course that golfers never actually use (and thus don’t actually improve the experiences of those golfers), then I’m wasting resources.

Ultimately, this highlights a key challenge and opportunity in the golf industry:

Resource efficiency.

Optimizing outputs and impacts while minimizing inputs and costs.

Many golf facilities are spending far more resources (inputs, labor, and ultimately money) than they need to provide a satisfying experience for golfers. USGA Deacon creates potential for the holy grail of business strategy – “a double wedge” of decreasing costs while also improving customer satisfaction and ultimately demand.

Deacon is proven to save or reallocate maintenance costs through guiding better resource management by mapping golfer traffic and agronomic inputs. We discuss more with Hunki Yun:

Conversation with Hunki Yun, Director of Business Development for USGA Green Section

Please describe Deacon and could you walk us through the story of how it was developed?

Deacon is a data collection and communications platform – it’s a software-as-a-service (SAAS) tool that subscribers can log-in to via browser and mobile app to enter agronomic and surface performance data. It helps users understand per acre costs, ultimately so that golf courses can provide the best product possible with the fewest possible resources. This will help golf address its key challenges with both sustainability and labor, while optimizing the balancing act between cost and quality.

Image via USGA

Is that fundamentally a balancing act, or could you achieve higher quality at a lower cost?

In the past, yes. Maintenance costs have generally correlated with course conditioning and labor. Obviously, expectations on course quality differ at a typical daily fee course in comparison to somewhere like Pebble Beach. Now we can better identify, correlate, and target the specific drivers of golfer satisfaction so that resources can be managed more efficiently.

You mentioned that balance might differ based on type of facility. What types of facilities have been using this tool, and what are the barriers to entry for those not currently using it?

We’re currently offering it to anyone wanting to use it. That includes about 150 courses,  the majority of which are private – they’re the early adopters because they have the resources to take a chance on something like this.

A great example of a daily fee course applying this tool is one called Charwood Golf Club, which is in Columbia, South Carolina. It’s a small, family-owned business that found the heat-map data of golfer traffic identified significant maintenance savings.

One of the barriers to using this tool can be the apprehension of how difficult it might be to use and apply, but once we demonstrate how easy it is to use that apprehension goes away very quickly. It’s an annual subscription ($749 per year), and once users are familiar with the variables and inputs (also labor and cultural practices) it becomes fairly easy to identify drivers of satisfaction so that adjustments can be made and cost savings can be realized. We’ve found that playing conditions and especially green conditions are the biggest drivers of satisfaction. We provide an on-boarding session to help interpret the data and navigate the tool.

And I was curious about the application of this in the context of municipal golf courses as opposed to private clubs, which you say are the early adopters. Obviously, muni courses have fewer resources to try something like this, but they would also have a greater need to conserve resources, right?

We’re exploring this right now. One of the benefits to working with more municipal courses will be developing central locations where a city has a number of courses in a network (like Dallas, DC, LA, etc.). We can start to develop case studies and benchmarks pretty rapidly and accumulate data through networks of connected municipal facilities, which also helps us spread best practices. Aggregate data will also help golf compare itself with other industries on key metrics like water consumption, for example, especially in the cities where golf is under more public pressure.

Ultimately, this tool is going to help all types of golf facilities collect data more efficiently and save money.

What have been some of the key results of case studies so far?

We haven’t collected enough data points to speak to the aggregate with much certainty, but we have seen impactful studies. The Charwood case study has been one of the most impactful so far. It’s still in draft form, but that study shows an annual maintenance savings of $20,000 to $25,000, while the decisions based on the data were also able to improve pace of play and golfer satisfaction. Charwood’s now-18-hole golf course returned revenues to what it used to make as a 27-hole facility.

It's clear that Deacon can address a number of key challenges for golf facilities. What is the main challenge this tool addresses or the main solution it provides?

I think it’s both cost reduction and the quality of the product. We want golfers and people interested in golf to have the same opportunity to play golf in 100 years, which means keeping costs down without reducing quality.

Obviously, maintenance costs have a measurable financial value, but what are some possible metrics for playability / "The Golfer's Experience"?

We have looked into this, though we haven’t officially released anything! We’ll be able to get data points on golfer satisfaction to further understand key drivers.

Has the USGA considered combining this tool with other analytics platforms/tools/"smart caddies" such as Arccos or Game Golf? Could players get real-time stats on their golf performance from the GPS tracking?

Maybe in the future, but right now we’re learning how to walk and want to get our stride going.

Could this tool help more facilities become multi-functional/multi-purpose? How so?

Yes, we’re actually currently working with the University of Michigan at a high profile muni in California to identify spaces for pollinator habitat.

We also worked with Golf Ontario to use Deacon to map out cross-country skiing trails at Toronto’s golf courses.

Aerial image of Toronto’s Don Valley Golf Course via Forbes

What do you envision as the future of the Deacon Tool and ultimately the golf industry?

To tell a longer story, Deacon was named for Deacon Palmer, father of Arnold Palmer. When Deacon started working at a golf course in the 1920s, there were not a lot of data to help with golf course management. Operators ran golf courses through trial and error and common-sense decisions.  Our hope is that products like Deacon will foster the use of technology and data to help courses make more informed decisions. All the information available to facility managers, including from other tools like sensors or weather data, can hopefully be integrated and ultimately used to correlate resource inputs with golfer satisfaction.

We want golf operators to be able to use the most useful information possible in the easiest possible way.