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In 2001, Argentina’s looming economic crisis threatened plans for an upscale golf center on the outskirts of its capital city, Buenos Aires. A four-year recession that had left the country debt-ridden hit its peak that December when the federal government placed restrictions on bank withdrawals, the jobless rate hit an all-time high and inflation soared. But as befits its name, Stallion Golf & Driving Range saddled up to ride out the economic uncertainty with its five owners continuing their suddenly improbable project.
Stallion Golf opened in April 2003 as a testament to its owners’ optimism and has since become the first driving range outside the U.S. to win Golf Range Times’ Best New Range Award. The South American practice facility offers 94 tees overlooking a scenic target area, as well as putting and chipping greens, a bunker practice area and a par-3 golf course that plays as either a quick six-hole circuit or a full 18-hole round. A 3,000-square-foot clubhouse with a restaurant/pub, pro shop and lounging areas is built in an Argentine Patagonian-style to complete the postcard-picturesque scene.
“The range business is growing each month,” says Ernesto Berisso, one of the owners. “We find we have a lot of repeats. Whoever comes here, wants to come back.”
An 8,500-square-foot, butterfly-shaped pond on the golf course and lush landscaping, which includes more than 50 varieties of trees as well as shrubs and flowers, including ceibo, Argentina’s national flower, are a welcome respite from nearby Buenos Aires, and from the expanding suburb in which the facility is located. Within a five-minute drive of Stallion Golf are a large mall, two shopping centers and a movie complex, all part of Pilar, Buenos Aires’ fastest growing community.
Stallion Golf—named for the adjacent horse-jumping facility that has long occupied the site—was built to take customers’ minds off the daily hustle and bustle of the region. Berisso says he and his partners have worked hard to create a customer-centric home-away-from-home atmosphere. For example, on rainy days, valets park customers’ cars. And although the restaurant’s hours correspond with those of the range and course (9 a.m. to 9 p.m.), after-hour dinner reservations can be booked. Other accoutrements include a playground (added at customers’ requests) and automatic sliding glass doors to the clubhouse and a wide path from the main entrance to the tee line to make it easier to carry clubs in and out of the building.
There are a lot of simple touches like these, all with customer comfort in mind. Berisso says the partners are still fine-tuning and honing the facility’s offerings, and there’s no doubt they’re on the right track.
“We think it is very warm and comfortable,” says Berisso. “We are very happy with what we have in terms of the facility. I think our patrons are, too.”
Creating Great Golf and Good Will
Berisso and his partners spared little expense in building a first-rate range that caters to serious golfers. Out the backdoor of the clubhouse, customers can choose from 47 artificial grass tee stations, 31 under cover, or 47 natural grass tees, part of a 160-yard-long by 30-yard-deep grass area that is regularly rotated to maximize the hitting surface.
The 270-yard-deep by 160-yard-wide natural grass landing area has six target greens ranging from 50 to 250 yards, all marked by distinctive colored flags. A semicircular man-made water trap fronts the short target at 50 yards and is just 12 inches deep to allow for easy ball picking.
An imaginative and rolling configuration of greens, bunkers and targets easily lend the illusion of golf course greens. The back of the target greens is elevated for visibility from the tee line and to allow for better natural drainage.
Berm lights hidden behind the target greens and bunkers illuminate the range from below to highlight the flight of the ball. Traditional 36-foot-tall wooden poles, matching the clubhouse and covered tee architecture, offer 1,000-watt lamps from behind and above the tee line.
Each tee station, separated by green canvas dividers, has a display showing the distances to the various targets and a support for loose clubs. There are also small wooden tables for beverages and snacks, which can be ordered from the restaurant by house phones located at the back of the bays. Wooden benches are interspersed at every other station, and transparent PVC wind and rain barriers are folded down behind players to protect them on the covered stations during inclement weather.
Like everything at Stallion Golf, the tee line is designed for customer convenience, with three Hollrock Engineering ball dispensers serving the long, slightly arched structure. The first 24 tee stations just outside the clubhouse door are covered, followed by 16 open tees. Farther down the line, seven more covered tees, built a little wider, are specifically designed for teaching.
Willie Wilks, Stallion Golf’s full-time pro, has great autonomy and works out his fees with students, generally charging US$10 for a 45-minute private lesson. Wilks conducts group clinics and junior golf lessons, as well, but he’s not the only golf instructor teaching at Stallion Golf. The management encourages teachers and pros from other courses to use the range and par-3 course as a way of building business (for both parties). Instructors can even play the course for free with a paying student.
Outside instructors aren’t allowed to recruit students on-site, and management has adopted rules to keep things orderly among teachers waiting for students at the range. The unusual system, Berisso says, seems to work well.
“It helps us get people here,” he says. “We have 10 or 15 teachers who come out here regularly. The only thing we ask is that we have a register of all the teachers so we have some control of who is coming to give lessons.”
Additionally, Stallion Golf offers three putting and pitching greens on the site, next to the clubhouse and behind the tee line. The 40,000-square-foot area includes a 12,500-square-foot TifEagle putting green and two Tifway greens (totaling 6,500 square feet) targeted for approach practice and shots from two surrounding sand traps. The entire area is fenced in and lighted by three 36-foot-tall poles with halide lamps. For US$1.50, customers get 75 balls and 45 minutes to practice.
Another slightly smaller area with another putting green is available at no charge for customers who want a quicker practice or who are readying to play a round on the course.
“We are describing ourselves as a golf training center,” says Berisso. “Here you can really learn and you can improve your skills because you can work on every part of your golf game.”
One of the most talked-about parts of Stallion Golf, though, is that versatile par-3 golf course just behind the tee line and clubhouse. Golf course architects Estudio Caprile & Capdepont designed the layout and Carlos Thays landscaped the course, which is built on a natural elevation, one of the highest points in Pilar. The designers and landscaper enhanced the land’s undulations and slopes, drawing dirt from what have since become two man-made ponds, one of which is in play on three holes.
“We built this course as well as possible and people are saying it is very fun to play, for experienced players or for beginners,” says Berisso.
Berisso is also proud that the drainage on the course is so good that even when rainy weather closes many other larger area courses, Stallion Golf’s par-3 is playable.
The most interesting part of the course, though, are the six greens with three alternative tees, which allow golfers to play from a six-hole 633-yard course to a 1,906-yard 18-hole circuit. The holes range from 50 to 155 yards long.
Playing the longest six holes, some 785 total yards, a golfer can complete a six-hole “round” in 45 minutes, a great practice option for serious players. Greens fees are US$8 for a full round and US$3 for six holes during the week and US$4 on weekends.
The Argentine Golf Association, which has approved the golf course for handicap scoring, played a large role in the par-3’s development.
“The AGA helped us mainly through introducing us to local golf course builders, landscapers and golf course contractors,” explains Berisso. “We actually made our choices from their listings.”
In addition, AGA gave Berisso access to its downtown Buenos Aires range, and Stallion Golf hired AGA experts as advisers in several key areas.
Rolling the Dice
Three of Stallion Golf’s owners, including Berisso, worked for Pilkington, a large British flat-glass manufacturer that has factories in Argentina. The other two owners were an insurance broker and the general manager of Makro in Venezuela, a Dutch chain of wholesale stores. A 25-year-long friendship brought the five men together in 2001 for an investment opportunity using a 35-acre tract of land owned by one member of the group.
Stallion Jumping, a horse-jumping training school and family-owned horse farm, already occupied 10 acres, leaving 25 acres for development. A golf range and small course seemed a good idea to the partners, four of whom prefer to keep a low-profile publicly, though they’ve all contributed to Stallion Golf in various ways.
“We had five different backgrounds,” says Berisso. “And we fought a lot and argued over some things because we became so involved in the details. But we were accustomed to working with big projects [at Pilkington] and we treated this as a big project, just with our own funds. That made it even bigger for us.”
The partners agreed on some basic tenets, most importantly that they all desired a first-class facility that delivered high-quality customer service and satisfaction. In the spring of 2001, the friends started researching golf range development online and conducted a feasibility study for the site.
While surfing the web, Berisso ran across Forecast Golf Group’s “Developing Your Golf Range” manual and quickly bought it. Much of the rest of the partners’ initial planning and spending was literally by the book.
“We followed all the tips,” says Berisso. “We read it and read it and read it and tried to follow all the suggestions. If you do things right the first time, in the long run you save money.”
Berisso and another member of the partnership also traveled to the U.S., specifically to Miami and Chicago, to visit golf ranges and meet with distributors. On the way to one range, they spotted another facility and decided to pop in. That range, Golf Park des Plaines, is part of the Chicago Park District, and General Manager Mark Caster turned out to be an unexpected resource.
“We just stopped in and ended up staying there for three hours because [Caster] was so helpful,” says Berisso. “He answered our questions and was helpful in terms of helping us contact suppliers.”
Once the partners were back in Argentina, the project continued to move forward, though one of the partners demanded an outside company conduct market research to complement the feasibility study.
CCR com Argentina was contracted to do the research and again the numbers looked good. Twenty-five golf courses are within a 15-minute drive of Stallion Golf, according to Berisso, and Pilar is teeming with condominiums and residential growth.
“One thing we found out was that the largest concentration of golf courses in Buenos Aires is here, and also one of the highest standards of living,” says Berisso. “This area is also still growing and growing fast.”
But about the time the partners were preparing to begin construction, the Argentine economy took a downturn. High unemployment, inflation and the sudden economic instability suddenly loomed as the partnership’s biggest obstacle.
“This is the worst the economy has been ever but these things have been very cyclical in Argentina,” says Berisso. “We figured things would be better sooner or later. It’s the moment for investing when things are real bad.”
Berisso says the economic climate was advantageous in at least one regard. Stallion Golf was able to contract builders at lower prices than forecasted and, he says, prices across the board are still about a third of what they might be in the United States.
New Ideas, Same Old Service
With the economy steadily improving, Stallion Golf is looking to the future. Though the most avid golfer in the group now lives in Venezuela, the other partners meet weekly to keep the facility rolling. There are plans to add a convention center, and possibly a hotel, on an unused portion of land near another man-made pond. One of the owners is pushing to also use that pond as part of a fly-fishing facility, catering to another popular hobby in the region.
“We’d ideally like to have a hotel on one side and a convention center on the other,” says Berisso. “A place to have weddings or have conferences or lectures or whatever public activities people want. If you’re having meetings, then when you break at noon or early in the evening, you could come out and use the [golf] facilities.”
Stallion Golf already hosts some small events in the clubhouse. A pro shop and restaurant/pub are on the main floor, and there’s a small TV and Internet room upstairs above the pub. On Thursday nights a jazz trio plays for diners, and already the restaurant has become known for its blend of international and local cuisine in a casual atmosphere. A covered patio overlooking the golf course pond and the back of the tee line is another highlight.
Berisso admits, as is true at so many golf centers, that the food and restaurant portion of the business is the toughest on which to get a handle. The partners are still finding their way to see what works best and may make changes as the facility evolves.
Food service “is just a whole different business,” Berisso says. “We are looking for the food service to be a complement of the driving range, and we’re not there yet.”
On the other hand, Berisso and his partners have been pleased by the surprising success of the pro shop. Located in the heart of the clubhouse, part of a warm, friendly open area, the pro shop has been a natural draw for customers. Top sellers include balls, clubs, bags and gloves—the usual items—but Berisso says shirts have also been a popular item and have caused Stallion Golf to expand its selection.
“We opened [the pro shop] up because we thought we had to have one, but we didn’t expect the pro shop to do this well,” admits Berisso. “Now we’re really starting to pay more attention. I think that once people feel comfortable in a place, they are much more open to spending money.”
Stallion Golf’s main mission these days is making the facility known to more customers and letting them know what the facility has to offer, a task made a little easier by the affluent suburbs surrounding the facility. Still, Stallion Golf’s owners have found there’s no quick way to build a large attendance, though more and more local residents again have the money to spend on leisure activities. It’s a matter of marketing and targeting those messages to the right demographic. Berisso learned from his research that golf range customers will drive 20 minutes to use a quality facility. So he hopped in his car for a 20-minute drive in each direction.
“We drove a circle around the facility to see what is our potential area we need to reach,” he says. “That’s where we are trying to focus our activity.”
That activity includes weekend tournaments on the golf course to draw in new business and an innovative program in the local public schools to teach golf as part of the curriculum.
“The schools would use our range to teach golf as part of the physical education training,” for 9- to 14-year-olds, says Berisso. “[The idea] has been well received by the schools. We might present the program in two quarters, ensuring they’d get so many hours.”
Currently, Stallion Golf is looking for a potential sponsor to cover the cost of teaching high school and junior high students. In this way, the schools wouldn’t have to pay anything to start the curriculum, and the program could begin as soon as next year.
“Rather than calling it ‘Stallion Golf School’ we would like to name it after our sponsor’s name,” says Berisso. “There are a lot of possibilities that the recognition we are receiving has created.”
In addition to being named 2003 Best New Range by Golf Range Times, Stallion Golf’s investment as a new business venture in the community was highlighted in La Nacion, one of Argentina’s leading newspapers. The article ran in the Economy and Business section and commended the owners for starting a new business in trying times.
“We’re very proud of the recognition we’ve received,” says Berisso. “I can’t tell you how good it feels to see what we’ve built here where once there was nothing. I think people can appreciate that feeling, too, and they like what they see here.”
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