Copper Hill Golf Academy & Driving Range seems a marvelous contradiction. It’s an old-school learning academy in a postcard rural setting that’s making its way largely thanks to some new-age, high-tech marketing.

Credit owner and head PGA pro Paul Banks as the visionary behind Copper Hill. Banks is not only putting that PGA teaching card to good use; he’s showing off a degree in software engineering that’s making Copper Hill a viable business model for how the Internet can be leveraged to the benefit of the golf range.

“We’ve grown our [instruction] program here each year since I’ve been here,” says Banks. “I think my background in computers has been a key part of that.”

Banks worked in computers for three years before trading in his briefcase for a golf bag and a job at noted PGA pro training ground Grand Cypress Academy of Golf in Orlando, Fla., in the late ’80s.

In 1994, he built Copper Hill in East Granby, Conn., and today oversees a hugely successful junior golf program in northern Connecticut. Little promotion is needed for the wildly popular junior programs and camps—word-of-mouth has generated many registrants, as have e-mails Banks sends to his growing list of regular customers.

Meanwhile, online sales of golf merchandise at Copper Hill’s web site are a bigger revenue stream than traditional sales in the facility’s pro shop. Banks has become adept at drawing business to his web site and offering competitive prices that appeal to online shoppers. The bricks-and-mortar pro shop isn’t as fully stocked, but then again, golfers who venture out to Copper Hill aren’t disappointed by the experience. The facility remains a popular destination for serious golfers and students despite its somewhat remote location and the absence of lighting.

“My hope, and I think I’ve accomplished that, was to establish a place where people could come practice golf in a relaxing setting,” says Banks. “Plus, I wanted to provide the highest possible quality golf instruction that you could get in this area, and I think we’ve done that, too.”

Junior Achievement
The real foundation of Copper Hill’s success is the facility’s burgeoning junior golf program. Banks offers instruction for juniors as young as 5, and he has some sort of program running the entire summer, from the day school lets out to the day it begins (Sundays excepted).

“We get kids who have been in the program since they were 5 all the way until they’re 16,” Banks says. “In any given year we put through between 250 and 300 kids.”

The local junior golf program was actually in existence when Banks leased the land in East Granby and built his facility. The 10.54-acre range is adjacent to an unaffiliated nine-hole golf course, Fox Run at Copper Hill, once leased by Banks’ father-in-law Vic Svenberg. A life member of the PGA, Svenberg is now one of four instructors at Banks’ range who use Fox Run for students’ on-course training, particularly during summer camps.

“He started the program there in 1979, though it was much smaller and much different from what we have now,” says Banks. “I can’t take full credit for starting the thing off. He really laid the groundwork.”

Today, Copper Hill offers three levels of junior instruction, beginning with a Future Pros program for children ages 5 to 8, followed by Tiger Camps for ages 7 to 10 and Junior Golf Camps for ages 9 to 16.

The Future Pros is a one-hour, six-session introductory program designed to build an interest in golf through noncompetitive games, drills and fun learning exercises, rather than technical instruction. As part of the program, students use SNAG equipment, a line of colorful, kid-friendly oversized clubs and balls developed by former PGA Tour players.

Shorter versions of a full-day camp, Tiger Camps run three days a week from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and include lunch. The shorter format keeps the students more interested, yet still allows time to teach full swing fundamentals in the morning, followed by short game work and skill-building contests and games. The final day of camp is spent on the Fox Run golf course.

The Junior Golf Camps are “the springboard” for everything else Copper Hill offers, notes Banks. This past summer, Copper Hill held nine different four-day camps for juniors, ages 9 to 16. Typically, the camps run from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., and blend instruction on the range with time on the nearby Fox Run course. In addition to the hands-on training, at lunch, students either watch golf-related videos or discuss rules and etiquette. After lunch, juniors go to the course and play a tournament format, which offers increased challenges each day. The final day includes tournament play for trophies and prizes.

“I’d say more than a quarter of our business is from our junior golf program,” says Banks. “We offer a lot of programs, and we have a lot of the same kids stay with us.”

Banks started the camps with about 50 students in 1994. He credits collecting students’ contact information—and using it—as one of the primary ways he was able to grow the program. Banks does a couple of big mailings a year and also uses e-mail to great effect to promote junior instruction.

E-mail is fast, seamless and isn’t labor-intensive, he says. “Each year [the program] has grown to the point where this year I didn’t even do the spring mailing. I did a couple of e-mail blasts and the phone started ringing.”

Copper Hill also has great working relationships with local recreation departments in East Granby, Granby and Suffield. Those agencies regularly refer people looking for golf lessons or recreational opportunities to Copper Hill, and that’s another way the youth program has grown.

Three years ago, Banks started offering online registration and now the majority of his junior camps fill via that route, eliminating costlier mailings and the need to spend much more on advertising and promotion.

“I think that’s been one of the best things about the way things have worked here,” he adds. “We’ve gotten most of our advertising simply by word-of-mouth and people coming back to us. I think that says a lot about us.”

The Virtual Pro Shop
Banks is also using the Internet to boost retail sales. He offers a full pro shop online and uses links in his e-mails to direct regular customers—a list 1,000-plus strong—to the site. Surprisingly, though, Banks finds most of his online equipment sales are from out-of-area golfers scouring the web for the best bargains.

“We did a lot of business this winter—I was surprised,” Banks says. “Probably 80 percent of it is people who had no previous contact with us. People buying golf equipment online are very savvy. They’re really looking and searching hard for the best deals.”

By offering competitive prices on merchandise, Banks has encouraged some repeat business from his online customers. Among the most popular items he offers are U.S. Kids Golf clubs, lightweight clubs designed for children, a point of emphasis at Copper Hill.

“We offer anything U.S. Kids sells,” says Banks. “The other thing we sell a lot of are training aids.”

Items for sale either come from Banks’ own inventory, or if it’s a special or custom order, the manufacturer will fill it and either drop-ship the product or send it to Banks for shipping. “I usually will order a certain amount of inventory with standard items at the beginning of winter so that the items can go out quicker and I have greater control, particularly with training aids,” he says.

Banks designed the Copper Hill web site, including the store, and does free-lance site-building work for other companies in the winter, a time he always reserves to enhance his computer knowledge and skills.

“A lot of setting it up was trial and error,” he says of Copper Hill’s clean and easy-to-navigate site. “I spent a lot of time myself looking at what I consider to be very good web sites. Anything that caught my eye, I fashioned it after that.”

The Titleist site was one he particularly fancied, and the manufacturer’s equipment is one of several brands that can be accessed through Copper Hill’s web site.

Banks also hasn’t been afraid to use outside technical expertise to expand his online offerings. He brought in a company to set up his online registrations three years ago but has since taken over the process himself, further streamlining operations.

Taking the virtual experience one step further, customers can buy a “range key” on the Copper Hill web site, have the key shipped to their home and then can use the key—an electronic debit mechanism—at one of Copper Hill’s Range Servant America ball dispensers.

“We program the keys for the amount they want, and basically, there’s the potential people might come here to hit balls with a newly purchased key and I won’t even meet them,” Banks says. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I like to meet everyone, but a lot of people like the convenience.”

Online, customers can also buy gift certificates for lessons and even get virtual instruction through the Internet Golf Academy. Copper Hill uses the V1 Golf video system and uploads digital recordings of students’ swings to the academy, which resides on V1’s site. Students can then access their recording and get a personalized streaming video lesson and assessment from Banks, though not many customers use that option.

“I haven’t promoted it that much because it’s so time-consuming from my end to deal one-on-one like that,” he says. “I get so busy with lessons here, I’m afraid I can’t offer a good product online yet, but that’s the next wave, I think.”

Banks foresees a day when he can webcast group lessons and reach more people through the medium. “A big step is getting your customers to utilize the web,” he says. “You have to educate them. We always send links to our web site in any of our e-mails because that eliminates a step for them. You can send them right to what you want them to see on your site with one click.”

Off the Beaten Path
A Maine native, Banks and his wife, Robbin, moved back to her home state of Connecticut when they were looking for a good community to raise a family. From a business standpoint, Banks found a good location to open his own golf range, and he was ready after working at Grand Cypress and designing and opening GolfSchule (Golf School) Murhof in Frohnleiten, Austria, in 1991, where he continued to work during the next three summers.

Banks had met several investors while working at Grand Cypress who invited him to get their Austrian venture under way, and he maintained his winter job in Florida all the while. The overseas experiences in building a practice facility from the ground up were invaluable.

“I had the opportunity to work with architects and builders in Austria and that helped me get an idea of what I was looking for in a property,” says Banks. “It seemed a lot easier then, though, spending someone else’s money to build.”

By the time Banks was ready to invest his own money, some $100,000, in opening a new facility, he found what he was looking for in a lease arrangement next to the small golf course his father-in-law was leasing.

“I had learned a lot about the shape of the land you need,” Banks says. In Austria, “we had talked about the ball flight, where most people hit shots and where you should have fencing and set your targets.”

The Connecticut property is nearly perfect, though wetlands on the left side of the facility limit how much Banks can expand and what he can build there. The range is also bordered by a working farm, complete with cows, horses and donkeys, and by a dog kennel on another side, all of which adds to the rustic feel.

East Granby itself is located midway between Hartford, Conn., and Springfield, Mass. The population is just under 5,000, and the setting is mostly rural, though the golf demographics have steadily been growing, notes Banks.

“It’s an idyllic setting,” he says. “It’s in the country and there’s no busy road that runs by here. And for the better golfer, I think that makes us a bigger draw. We have a lot of people come from further away just to get here and get away from the city.”

But those logistics also mean business can be pretty sparse most days until after work hours. There’s no use opening a big restaurant on-site because there’s no surrounding big business to draw a lunchtime trade. Still, Banks offers discounted buckets of balls from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and it’s an easy proposition because the Range Servant ball dispensers can be programmed to allow for the discount on range keys used during these hours. “I think that’s helped this year, especially now that people know we do that,” he says. “Still, basically, my business is at its peak when people are on their leisure time, particularly weekends.”

There’s no nighttime play either, because Copper Hill doesn’t have lights, not that Banks is worried about that either. “My days are long enough,” he says.

And that’s why the teaching programs, the lessons and the online sales are even more vital to Copper Hill’s bottom line than to most facilities’. Copper Hill has to schedule programs and lessons to get people out to the facility.

In addition to his junior program, Banks offers Link Up 2 Golf clinics, and next spring, will begin offering ModelGolf, a cutting-edge instruction tool pioneered at Grand Cypress when Banks worked there.

Offered mostly at courses, Link Up 2 Golf is a PGA player development program encompassing clinics and facility tours, and the big benefit Banks sees is that it transitions students who have learned the basics on the range to the golf course.

“I think it’s a better program than regular group lessons because you feel like you really accomplish the goal,” says Banks of Link Up 2 Golf. “And the goal is to get them [beginners] ready to play on a golf course.”

The initiative was “a natural fit” for Copper Hill, particularly Banks’ use of technology. He linked directly to the Play Golf America site (www.playgolfamerica.com) to offer his services as an instructor, and that allowed students to easily find him. Play Golf America handled the registration, and Banks found some new golfers to introduce to Copper Hill.

This winter, Banks is making plans for a spring launch of the ModelGolf digital video system. ModelGolf combines biomechanics and computer technology, giving students a model swing to compare with their own on the computer screen, a great learning aid in correcting and improving any student’s swing.

“You can check the swing at 10 different positions, and the system is portable enough to use on the range,” says Banks.

Back to Basics
Despite all the behind-the-scenes technology, Banks has kept things pretty simple on the range. He has put money into establishing good grass for the landing area and his grass tee stations, regularly overseeding to get the right mix. The tee line isn’t blessed with a lot of space for a deep rotation of the tees (just 25 yards deep) so the combination of bluegrass, rye and fescue has to be strong.

Two small prefab buildings abut the tee line, one as a center for the teaching side of the business, and the other as the clubhouse and pro shop to serve the range. There are vending machines for food and drink, and the pro shop offers mostly basic golf equipment and accessories, though Banks does have tentative plans to expand.
“People who have come here have occasionally said to me that it looks like we spent most of our money on the driving range, not our buildings,” Banks says with a laugh. The buildings are “mainly functional.”

The rectangular-shaped landing area is 500 yards deep and 150 yards wide, bordered by 35-foot-high barrier netting on one side and 25-foot-tall netting on the opposite side (Banks bought the netting and bartered local installation services for a series of range memberships and lessons). Because of the fairway’s long, lean shape, though, Banks estimates he loses more than 200 balls a week over the net, most of which he can retrieve. For those golfers who hit straighter, they’ve got an inviting bluegrass field with five targets to hit toward. There’s also a short game area, a 3,500-square-foot chipping and putting green with a 50-foot sand bunker.

Banks thinks he’s just a chip shot away from having something truly special at Copper Hill, but his major frustration has been his inability to purchase the lease from the local owners. Though he has nine years left there at East Granby, he’s reluctant to commit to major improvements without a longer-term guarantee.

Two years ago, Banks became a franchise, assuming the lease of an existing range in nearby Suffield, just 20 minutes down the road from East Granby. He has four years remaining on a five-year rollover arrangement, and hired the previous range owner/pro to oversee operations at this second Copper Hill facility. Suffield has a similar rural location to East Granby and draws from the same demographics, but is still a work in progress for Banks.

“I would say the big thing in this business is being patient,” Banks says. “It’s not going to be something that’s an overnight success like a lot of people think. If you give it enough time, people will eventually find your place and your business will grow.”