Welcome to Issue #21
"Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golfers become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five.”
John Updike
What’s on my mind this week
Loved the mic’d up players at The Players, my money is on Jupiter in the TGL Finals, Cam Young’s 375-yard bomb was ridiculous, Rory goes for beef or salmon, The Lion’s Den is high energy, only 20 days to the Masters (and you can now download the app).
In the news
Why it matters: Accenture has signed a six-year agreement to become the Official Business and Technology Consulting Partner of The R&A. The deal represents the first major strategic pillar established by CEO Mark Darbon since he took the reins.
Our Take: This is an evolutionary leap for The R&A. Whilst the previous decade was defined by expanding golf's global commercial footprint and modernising the game's competitive framework, this new phase is about building the digital architecture to support that scale. By bringing in Accenture, Darbon is ensuring the organisation has the technological horsepower to match its global stature. It is less of a pivot and more of an acceleration, taking a healthy, prestigious institution and equipping it with the AI and data tools needed to engage a younger, digital-native audience. For the industry, this partnership confirms that golf's governing bodies are successfully transitioning into sophisticated, tech-led global enterprises.
Why it matters: Old Tom Capital recently published its 2026 investment thesis, identifying five specific categories for strategic capital deployment: Retention Infrastructure, Creator Economy Tools, Indoor Golf Operating Systems, Travel/Hospitality Platforms, and Unified Fan Data Layers.
Our Take: This is a roadmap of what sophisticated investors believe are the high-value structural gaps in the sport. The thesis highlights a critical friction point: whilst participation is at record highs, beginner churn remains at roughly 75%. Old Tom is betting that the real value in golf is not in manufacturing more hardware, but in owning the operating system of the player experience. By targeting fragmented sectors like YouTube golf monetisation and simulator interoperability, they are looking to build the connective tissue that has been missing from the golf economy. For operators, this confirms that the next wave of wealth in golf will be created by those who solve friction, not those who just sell fairways.
Why it matters: The Fortinet Founders Cup marks the full rollout of the LPGA's new broadcast standards, with every round televised live on linear TV, 50% more cameras, and quadrupled shot-tracing capabilities via the FM/Trackman partnership.
Our Take: This week is the proof of concept for the LPGA's aggressive 2026 growth strategy. After a 2025 season that saw record-breaking viewership, the tour is betting that availability equals value. By eliminating tape delays and streaming-only rounds for domestic events, the LPGA is removing the primary friction point for casual fans. For sponsors, this week's production quality is the new baseline. If the Founders Cup delivers high-engagement numbers, it justifies the investment from brands like Ford entering women's golf partnerships. The LPGA is no longer positioning itself as developmental content; it is delivering a Tier-1 media product capable of commanding premium broadcast terms.
Pic from Old Tom Capital
Worth your time
Website: Masters Vault Warning! You could end up on here all weekend. Search for any shot from the 1968-2025 Masters Final Rounds – Possibly the greatest website feature of all time.
Watch: Chasing Sunday gives fans an unfiltered, hard knocks-style look at The Players Championship, with unprecedented, week long access to Tour pros who agreed to be mic’d up during all four rounds of competition.
Go To: GolfClubber If you happen to be in London 11th- 12th April, check out the UK's first golf lifestyle festival featuring Masters screenings, live talks, golf tech, fashion, food and DJs.
Tech: Arccos Air is a compact AI wearable, smaller than an Airpods case, that slides in your pocket. Built-in motion sensors and GPS detect every shot automatically. No need for sensors on your clubs.
Feature story
Golf courses aren't real estate anymore. They're subscription businesses that happen to have grass.
Pic from Concert Golf Partners
When Bain Capital acquired Concert Golf Partners in November 2025, the press release highlighted the usual private equity language: "operational excellence," "strategic growth," and "enhanced member experience." What it did not say was more revealing.
Bain looked past the 39 private clubs to acquire a software-enabled subscription platform. The grass and the 18 holes are the product delivery mechanism. The business model is something else entirely.
This distinction explains why institutional capital is flooding into golf whilst family-owned courses struggle to stay solvent. A club's technology stack increasingly influences its valuation alongside the quality of the golf itself.
Golf operators have spent the past decade talking about "growing the game." The smarter ones stopped talking and started building software companies.
The unit economics nobody discusses
A traditional golf course business model is simple. Members pay annual dues of, let's say, $8,000 to $15,000. Green fee players pay around $60 to $150 per round. Revenue is predictable. Margins are thin.
That model treats the golf course as the product. The modern model treats it as the platform.
Consider a member paying $12,000 in annual dues at a well-run private club. That subscription covers access to the course and basic amenities. It is also the least interesting part of their financial contribution.
The same member spends an additional $6,000 annually on food and beverage, $2,500 on merchandise, $1,200 on guest fees, and $800 on tournaments and events. Total annual spend approaches $23,000.
The subscription unlocks the upsells. The membership is the customer acquisition cost. The real profit sits in everything that happens after they join.
Sophisticated operators now segment members not by handicap or tenure, but by total lifetime value. A member paying $12,000 in dues but generating $23,000 in annual spend is fundamentally different from one paying the same dues but spending nothing beyond the minimum. The former subsidises operational costs. The latter consumes them.
Pic from BainCapital
Why private equity understands this better
Family-owned golf courses optimise for preserving tradition and maintaining grass. Private equity optimises for EBITDA margin and subscription retention rates.
A family-owned club debates whether to invest $2.5 million in upgraded irrigation or $1.8 million in clubhouse renovations. The decision hinges on member preferences and committee politics.
A PE-backed operator models the return on a $750,000 investment in integrated software: dynamic pricing, unified member CRM, automated inventory management, predictive churn analytics, and mobile ordering.
The irrigation system saves water and improves turf quality. The software stack typically increases revenue per member by 15% to 20% and reduces operational labour costs by 10% to 15%, according to operator reports. One is a maintenance expense. The other is a profit multiplier.
Industry data suggests revenue management platforms increase green fee revenue by 15% to 25% within 12 months. The software adjusts pricing in real time based on demand, weather, booking windows, and historical patterns.
A Tuesday morning tee time in February during light rain is worth $40. The same slot on a Saturday in May with perfect weather is worth $180. Dynamic pricing captures that difference. Fixed pricing leaves money on the table daily.
The member-as-platform model
The most significant shift involves redefining what a member represents.
Traditional clubs treat members as customers who pay dues in exchange for access. Modern clubs treat members as nodes in a network whose value compounds through engagement, spend, and referrals.
High-value members share common behaviours. They attend social events, bring guests, purchase premium food and beverage, upgrade equipment annually, and engage with the mobile app. Low-engagement members pay dues, play golf, avoid the clubhouse, and generate zero ancillary revenue.
Both members pay the same dues, but one generates four times the profit. Clubs with integrated CRM systems can identify, prioritise, and retain the high-value segment whilst managing out low-engagement users who consume resources without contributing margin.
Predictive churn models flag members at risk of resignation before they consciously decide to leave. A significant decline in playing frequency over 60 to 90 days triggers automated outreach from leadership. Retention improves not through better grass, but through better data.
Pic from Toptracer
What institutional capital actually buys
When Leonard Green acquired a 60% stake in Topgolf and Toptracer from Topgolf Callaway Brands in November 2025, valuing the entity at approximately $1.1 billion, the investment thesis focused on data infrastructure rather than driving range real estate.
Toptracer tracks every ball hit at participating facilities, generating millions of data points daily on player behaviour, skill progression, and spending habits. The technology creates network effects. Each additional venue strengthens the platform.
The same logic applies to course acquisitions. When institutional buyers evaluate golf properties, the critical questions are operational: Does the facility utilise cloud-based revenue management? Are databases integrated? Can the platform predict member churn? Does the mobile app enable frictionless payments? Is irrigation networked with soil sensors?
Courses operating on legacy systems trade at significant discounts. Technology-enabled assets command premiums because they generate better margins and scale more efficiently.
When an operator manages 50 facilities on a single cloud platform, centralised pricing adjustments deploy across the portfolio simultaneously. These efficiencies are invisible to members but material to investors. The difference between a 12% EBITDA margin and a 22% margin determines whether institutional capital considers the asset investable.
The automation frontier
Labour represents 50% to 60% of total costs for most facilities. Autonomous mowing technology has transitioned from experimental to standard at premium courses. GPS-guided equipment operates without human riders, enabling night mowing that eliminates disruption and reduces labour costs by up to 30%.
Capital investment is substantial: $400,000 to $600,000 for a full fleet. Payback period is typically under three years when factoring in reduced labour, improved scheduling, and lower fuel consumption.
Smart irrigation systems cost $1.5 million to $3.5 million but reduce water usage by 20% through AI-driven moisture sensors. For large facilities in drought-prone regions, annual savings exceed $50,000 in water and energy costs alone.
Technology is not replacing superintendents or head professionals. It eliminates repetitive manual tasks, allowing skilled staff to focus on high-value activities. High-tech backend infrastructure enables high-touch frontend hospitality.
What gets lost
The transition from golf course to software platform creates cultural friction.
Traditional clubs value continuity, personal relationships, and institutional memory. Data-driven management risks reducing members to metrics. Lifetime value calculations and churn probabilities can obscure the human relationships that make private clubs valuable.
There is also the question of what golf is for. If the course exists primarily to generate food and beverage revenue and upsell opportunities, does golf itself become secondary?
The best operators use technology to enhance rather than replace human judgement. But the pressure is real. Clubs that cannot demonstrate strong financial performance face pressure from boards, members, and lenders. What cannot be measured often gets deprioritised.
The bifurcation ahead
The gap between technology-enabled facilities and traditional operations will widen through 2030. Mid-market courses with high overhead and low digital adoption face difficult economics. Rising labour costs, competition from simulators, and price-sensitive consumers mean the status quo is unsustainable.
Family-owned courses will either invest in technology infrastructure, sell to institutional buyers who will, or gradually decline as margins compress and members defect to better-managed alternatives.
The winners will be facilities that embrace the platform model whilst preserving elements of golf culture that technology cannot replicate. The clubs that survive will recognise the business has changed. Golf courses are no longer just real estate with grass. They are subscription businesses with complex unit economics and real opportunities for margin expansion through better data.
What this means
For investors, the technology stack is foundational diligence. A course with beautiful conditions but manual operations is a depreciating asset. A course with integrated software infrastructure is a scalable platform.
For operators, the decision is whether to invest in systems that generate immediate margin improvement or continue optimising through traditional methods. The market is demonstrating which approach institutional capital rewards.
For members, the shift is largely invisible until it is not. Better apps, faster service, and personalised recommendations stem from infrastructure investment. The question is whether efficiency gains come at the cost of the culture that made the club worth joining.
Golf is not becoming less important. It is becoming the product layer of a more complex business model. The courses that thrive will deliver exceptional golf whilst running sophisticated software companies underneath.
The grass still matters. It just matters less than the algorithm determining who plays on it, when, and at what price.
One thing from history
The Masters Club: The most expensive dinner you'll ever buy
Pic from Getty Images
In 1952, Ben Hogan sent a letter to Augusta National suggesting a private dinner for past champions. The idea was simple: create a sense of brotherhood among those who'd won the tournament. The tradition stuck. More than seven decades later, it remains the most exclusive reservation in sports.
Here's how it works. The defending champion picks the menu and pays the entire bill. Win a multimillion-dollar purse on Sunday, and your first order of business the following year is hosting dinner for everyone who beat you to the green jacket.
The menus tell their own story.
In 1998, Tiger Woods was 22 years old and serving his first Champions Dinner. His menu: cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, fries, and milkshakes. Byron Nelson, who'd been coming to these dinners for years, reportedly loved it because his wife wouldn't let him eat that at home.
Bubba Watson served the exact same meal in both 2013 and 2015: Caesar salad, grilled chicken, mac and cheese, confetti cake. Nick Faldo joked that it was like eating at Chuck E. Cheese.
In 2011, Phil Mickelson chose a Spanish menu, paella, machango-topped filet, tortillas, apple empanadas, as a tribute to Seve Ballesteros, who was too ill with cancer to attend. Ballesteros died the following month.
The rules are strict. Every attendee must wear their green jacket. No guests. No media. The doors stay closed, which only makes everyone outside want in more.
Augusta National doesn't market the Champions Dinner. They don't need to. By keeping the room closed, they've turned a Tuesday night meal into the most aspirational brand moment in golf. Every junior golfer on the planet dreams of picking that menu one day.
The lesson isn't complicated. Exclusivity creates value. A brand's prestige is often defined not by who gets in, but by who's left standing outside. Augusta built a room that money can't access. The only way in is to earn it.
And then you get to buy everyone dinner.
Have a good week. Until next Friday,
David