The Old Course's digital journey, and rapid startup growth for a golf tournament software company
A double dose of digital for you in this week's newsletter, as we look at developments at the Old Course and the young software developer building a successful business around a tournament app.
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In this week’s newsletter:
The Old Course embraces the new
The software developer and his punchy golf tourney software startup
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St Andrews go digital for a fairer queuing system
It may not be quite as old as playing golf at St Andrews, but queuing for a spare tee-time at the Old Course at the Home of Golf has become something of a tradition in its own right over the decades.
Unlike other exclusive clubs and courses around the world, St Andrews has rock-sold democratic values: the famous course, with its start and finish right in the middle of the town, is still closed most Sundays when the course becomes open ground for walkers and wanderers, while the ability to rock up as a single golfer the day before in the hope of landing a spare tee-time alongside pre-booked groups of two and three is well established.
So well established, in fact, that it’s become something of a norm for lengthy queues to form — with some hopeful golfers being known to sleep outside overnight in unfavorable weather conditions for the opportunity to tee it up at the Old Course.
That won’t be happening any more after the launch of a new digital system to manage the queues and present a quicker and more equitable solution to everyone hoping to grab a once-in-a-lifetime slot on their stop-off in Scotland.
The Old Course Singles Daily Draw system was being rolled out from today (March 12).
Individual golfers are required to enter their details in person at the Old Pavilion next to the first tee of the Old Course or at St Andrews Links Clubhouse between 9am-5pm the day before they wish to play.
Then, at 5pm, a random draw will take place, and those who have been successful in landing a precious tee-time will be given a window of time to accept the slot — all from the comfort of a hotel room and a mobile phone, and without the need for waterproof sleeping-bags.
Those who are unsuccessful will receive the most disappointing text message of their lives shortly after 5pm, but fear not … they will get a numbered place in the wait-list in case some of the lucky few drop out, and if worse comes to worst they can always enter the draw again tomorrow.
While golfers can only enter the draw once every day, there is no limit to the number of successive days they can enter, so if you’re willing to camp out in St Andrews for as long as it takes, the Law of Large Numbers means you’re effectively guaranteed to get a round. Eventually.
The previous in-person queuing system has been in operation for at least three decades, catering for single golfers — from locals to starry-eyed visitors passing through for the one time in their lives — to enter the ballot.
This openness to all is just one of the traditions that makes St Andrews, where golf has been played for more than 600 years, unique.
It was also, however, and maybe inevitably, a victim of its own success.
The capacity to walk up and put down one’s name for a following day’s play, and perhaps also the rise of remote working which allows more and more people to do a day’s work from anywhere in the world, saw queue numbers swell to such a point that it was proving difficult for staff to manage effectively.
As the controversial-but-influential Silicon Valley venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has argued, there is no material problem that cannot be solved by technology (including problems caused by technology in the first place) so it should be no real surprise that software was the solution to the emerging challenges of the St Andrews daily singles draw.
And in the end it looks like a fairly simple solution, with a built-in identification mechanism to make sure only people who are actually in St Andrews can register for the draw.
The solution was developed by ClubUp, a golf technology firm that’s now part of the Troon Golf group.
It’s the second St Andrews project in quick succession for ClubUp, which was contracted last year to develop a caddie scheduling and communication system across all seven courses at the Home of Golf.
In the media release, ClubUp’s Chief Operating Officer Michael Rose was quoted as saying:
“At ClubUp we pride ourselves on delivering innovative digital solutions for golf resorts and are delighted to have worked with St Andrews Links Trust on the Old Course Singles Daily Draw.
“From the beginning the brief was to retain the opportunity for single golfers to join pre-existing groups on the Old Course but in a way that would mitigate the need to queue for lengthy periods, deliver an experience befitting of the Home of Golf and maintain the integrity of the singles queue.”
Neil Coulson, the Chief Executive of the St Andrews Links Trust, which operates the St Andrews courses, added:
“The significant growth in the number of golfers utilising the singles queue in the past decade has been such that we felt it was impacting the customer experience and becoming increasingly challenging for our dedicated team to manage expectations.
“For many golfers, playing the Old Course is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and the new singles daily draw will ensure golfers successful in securing a tee time can enjoy the experience having had a good night’s sleep while maintaining the practice of allowing single golfers to join pre-existing groups of two or three.”
A separate ballot system, which caters for groups of two, three or four golfers, is drawn 48 hours in advance and is not impacted by the new singles daily draw system.
For anyone interested in seeing how the St Andrews daily singles draw will work in practice, this video walks you through the experience.
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Live Tourney, the brand new golf software which jumped to $18,000 in revenue in January
ClubUp started out life as an independent golf software company in 2016 before being welcomed into the Troon Golf ecosystem following an acquisition for an undisclosed amount in the summer of 2022. (Scottsdale, Arizona-based Troon is a golf administration giant, with golf properties and brands located in more than 30 countries, more than 30,000 employees across the group and estimated global revenues of $1.8 billion in 2023.)
And while there are a few hoops to jump through between here and that, the sky might just be the limit for Live Tourney, the SaaS (software-as-a-service) application launched by software developer Matt Robinson in 2023 which is growing rapidly after some successful enrolments of clubs around the world.
The software, which promises to “save hours of time and thousands of dollars”, offers a range of features that allow clubs to manage tournaments more effectively, while also offering a better experience for participants with live scoring functionality, league tables and event schedules.
Robinson, a 29-year-old software engineer based in Seattle, has worked with a number of tech companies, including Seattle-based Microsoft, and according to his LinkedIn profile is currently employed with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, as a Senior Software Engineer.
But he could be looking at even bigger and even better things after spotting an opportunity in his chosen sport of golf.
In an piece on Starter Story, the website dedicated to all things startups, he wrote (emphasis ours):
I started playing in tournaments at my home course and wished that I could see how I was doing during the event instead of having to wait until it was over.
I knew about the industry standard, Golf Genius. After talking with the head pro at the course, I learned that they didn’t use it because the product was incredibly expensive and difficult to use.
Other players at the course shared that they had tried using Google Sheets as a live leaderboard in the past, needless to say, that wasn’t a great solution.
This sounded like an exciting problem to solve!
Making the bold decision to avoid the conventional route to market — a mobile-specific application that users must download from the app stores — he decided to “build everything on the web and optimize it for mobile”, meaning clubs and players could access and use the software simply through the browser on their smartphone.
“Players would simply scan a QR code or access a link via text or email and immediately have access to the leaderboard. This also meant I could move much faster since I only had to build one platform that would work for all devices.”
For business development, the company uses the simple combination of LinkedIn, the professional social network, and Apollo, a platform that provides contact details and email addresses for executives and staffers globally, allowing their clients to “find and close your next deal”.
As for the all-important element of launching a successful business — revenue and its big brother, profit — things have been looking good for Live Tourney since the first paying customers in early 2023.
Customers pay $2000 for an annual license to use the software, and the company’s costs are exceptionally low — outside of once-off setup fees, the founder reports that currently expenses are running at just $100 per month.
January 2024 saw a spike in revenue to over $18,000 for the month, which the founders report owed much to the expiry of customers’ annual deals with competitor Golf Genius and deciding to seek out alternatives.
Whether Live Tourney can consolidate this growth and build a sustainable, scalable business, only time will tell — but early evidence certainly suggests they’re onto something.
Maybe Troon Golf will be knocking before long.
Here’s the Live Tourney brand video:
Thank you for reading. The Wedge is a reader-supported publication. If you enjoy these articles and would like to support independent media focused on the business, money and mystique of the world’s greatest game, please consider a monthly or annual subscription or gift a subscription to someone who might value what I’m putting out here.