Golf’s Revenue Problem Is Simpler Than You Think

Everyone in golf is talking about yield management, dynamic pricing, no-shows or whatever the buzzword of the week happens to be. It all sounds very sophisticated, but it completely skips the most important part.

Before we even talk about yield management, we need to fix the fundamentals, which are still very much broken in 2026.

Airlines didn’t start with yield management. Hotels didn’t either. They first built frictionless booking, clear products, and systems that actually knew who the customer was. Only once demand existed, booking worked smoothly, and data was reliable did pricing optimization start to make sense.

In golf, it’s often the opposite. Courses talk about yield management while their website barely works. Booking a tee time is slow and painful. Customer data is scattered or nonexistent. And demand isn’t being actively created in the first place. You can’t optimize revenue when people struggle just to book, and when the course doesn’t even know who’s playing.

This is why so much “pricing strategy” in golf ends up being nothing more than poorly executed discounting.

Most courses are still running their business like it’s the early 2000s. Bad websites, clunky booking flows, forms, emails, and long waiting times for basic things. Very little effort is put into driving traffic to their own site, converting that traffic, or bringing golfers back to play more often. Everything feels passive, like the course just sits there and hopes golfers show up.

If I want to play more in June, I should be able to subscribe online and start immediately. No PDFs, no phone calls, no approvals, no waiting around. This should work like any normal business in 2026.

The same applies to upsells. When someone books a round or arrives at the course, there should be simple and obvious ways to increase spend. Not hidden, not awkward, not manual. And the course should actually know who that golfer is, how often they play, and use that data to bring them back again.

None of this is complicated. None of it is expensive. It’s just not being done.

Fix the fundamentals first. Then, and only then, does it make sense to talk about yield management and pricing strategies.

And how much could a normal daily fee club make, or better said, how much are they losing today? Roughly half a million or more. Yes, here’s another article where it’s broken down: Why Your Website Is Quietly Costing You $500,000 a Year.

Interested to learn more? Just book a 30 min call with me.

Teemu
Founder
Growth Golf & Country Club
Miami, FL, USA