The 2005 winner of Golf Range Times’ Best New Range Award proves that father does indeed know best. Bill Pollock wanted a business that he and his two sons could enjoy together, and thus was born 84 Golf Center in Eighty Four, Pa. Opened last May, the facility has quickly become an indispensable part of the golf scene in Western Pennsylvania.

Embodying the feel of a large country club, 84 Golf Center is a plush, spacious escape for area golfers looking for a place to practice all phases of the game. From the bentgrass hitting tees to the custom-tailored short game practice area, 84 Golf Center is a first-class facility catering to the golf enthusiast.

“We wanted to build the kind of range that we would want to use,” explains Scott Pollock, the center’s operations manager. “Business has been good. Every single day in the summer and into the fall we were seeing new people come through the door.”

And they don’t go away disappointed. The center offers top-of-the-line instruction from the Ed Vietmeier Golf Academy and through the use of ModelGolf, an advanced video teaching tool. In addition, the center offers club fitting and repair as well as a full line of products in the pro shop, where becoming their customers’ source for custom clubs has also been an important part of the business plan.

The key to the center’s success, though, may simply be the setting.

“We wanted to create the feel of a country club,” says Bill. “We had the perfect piece of land, the right topography and an ideal setting. People can come here and feel like they’re getting away from everything.”

A Family Affair
The elder Pollock purchased a 90-acre tract of land in Eighty Four 17 years ago as an investment. Three years ago, with the deed still in hand, Bill, the owner of a successful multi-industry consulting business, was looking for a business his sons could sink their teeth into when the subject of golf came up.

“It was funny,” recalls Chris Pollock, director of the facility’s Club Works custom club and repair center. “We were all sitting around the table one night talking about ideas, and someone mentioned managing a driving range. And we looked at each other and said, ‘Hmmm, that sounds like a darn good idea.’ We said, ‘OK, now what do we do?’ The next thing we know, we’re filing for permits and three years later, here we are.”

“Chris and Scott are both golfers and I wanted to find a business they were passionate about,” Bill says. “The property is ideally suited for [a range] because we have over 300 yards facing north and it needed only a minimum of site work to develop.”

The center rests on 30 acres of that original tract, a rolling expanse that simulates the kind of fairway found at a country club golf course. Trees surround the immediate area, and the foothills of the Appalachians are visible in the distance.

Nestled into this bucolic setting off a long access road, 84 Golf Center truly does seem “away from everything.” The truth is, though, that the center is in close proximity to an affluent residential section, much light industry and commercial development. The corporate headquarters for 84 Lumber—and 700 potential customers—is only a half-mile away. Several smaller manufacturers are also located in the area just off Interstate 70, and 84 Golf Center is within a 30-minute drive of downtown Pittsburgh.

“We’re in the center of the county, and the county population is over 200,000,” says Bill. “Within a 35-minute drive we have close to a million people. With that population and the reasonable driving time, it gave us a good base to draw from.”

And he would know about such things. Bill still runs his consulting business full time, where he compiles numbers and demographic information for a living.

Chris and Scott were working in their father’s company, too, but ultimately both felt consulting careers weren’t their long-term future. “Sitting in front of a computer all day long isn’t too much fun,” says Chris.

Their passion for golf, though, has served the brothers well. One thing that surprises most novice range operators is the long hours. Chris and Scott have an advantage there, because they don’t waste any time commuting. Both live across the street from the center, settling into houses on another part of that 90-acre tract.

“That’s something you have to get used to—the long hours in the summer, just having a business open 80 to 90 hours a week,” says Bill of the time commitment required to run a range.

But the Pollock boys aren’t alone in their efforts. Their mother, Joan, handles a lot of the bookkeeping and often works the counter. Bill also chips in and loves to get his hands dirty working in maintenance when he has the chance.

Chris’ wife, Laurie, is another integral part of the center. With a master’s degree in accounting, she set up the facility’s financial system, including a QuickBooks-based point-of-sale system.

“She’s a computer whiz,” says Bill. “We have bar code scanners and we wanted to make it simple to keep track of everything. We print all our prices with bar coding, and the scanners make it all go right into QuickBooks. Our finance and accounting is very simple.”

Simplicity is a theme that runs throughout the facility. Obviously, the Pollocks did their research thoroughly—a family trait—and they’ve set themselves up to succeed.

Preparation and Club-Fitting Education
Once the Pollocks settled on a business idea to pursue in 2002, they were relentless in their preparation. “The first part was the business research, and that’s what I do with my consulting practice,” says Bill. “I’m very good at looking at businesses and finding best practices on a global basis. And so I started researching all the leading golf and practice learning facilities at that time and the things they were doing.”

The Pollocks traveled around the country, visiting ranges and making mental notes about the things they liked and wanted to implement at their facility. The overwhelming impression the Pollocks came away with was the closer the range approximated a country club, the more successful the facility.

“The leading businesses closely resembled a true course in the [tee area] lie and in the facility,” says Bill. “The leading ones were also focused on helping the golfers improve their game in all aspects, including the equipment selection, the clubs and the fitting.”

The Pollocks determined their golf center would offer a full line of products in the pro shop, and they’d stress fitting and customizing to appeal to the avid golfer. The topography of their land lent itself to creating interesting shot opportunities. Slight slopes and elevations allow practicing players to try their luck in different lies in the spacious teeing area.

The Pollocks put in artificial turf grass from Putting Greens Direct (now SYNLawn Golf) on about 150 feet of the tee line, in the covered areas and the highest-use areas immediately on each side. The resilient and realistic turf surface allows customers to actually tee into it to hit.

“It’s not on concrete, and you hit your irons off of it just like you would a fairway,” says Bill. “That’s been quite popular with our customers.”

The synthetic turf, a new product, came in rolls, and the Pollocks and Church Construction handled the installation, as well as construction of the clubhouse. There are no dividers on either tee line, artificial or grass, creating the feel of a real golf tee. At a higher level to the left of the clubhouse, there are seven tiers of bentgrass tees customers can use for an additional $2. At any one time, as many as eight grass tees are available, and those tees are free of charge to customers who have a prepaid E-range electronic debit card. Customers hit to an immense landing area, seven artificial turf greens surrounded by a custom ryegrass blend, brought to the facility by a local golf course groundskeeper the Pollocks hired as an adviser for all grass-related matters. (Consultants know how to find other good consultants!)

“Fortunately [the grass] was very drought tolerant and heat tolerant, because as soon as soon as we opened, it almost stopped raining,” says Bill. “And we had the hottest, driest summer we’ve had. We hadn’t put in a sprinkler system, thinking we wouldn’t need it, so the first thing we had to deal with was that hot weather and no rain.”

The thin-blade ryegrass blend began to shrivel, and the Pollocks quickly installed an “emergency” sprinkler system to temporarily save their range. The 100-foot-deep well on the property couldn’t supply enough water to keep all the grass areas in good condition, so the Pollocks pumped in water from a nearby stream to “flood” the landing area.

“We originally felt we wouldn’t need a sprinkler system, but seeing the variability of the weather, we now feel it’s going to be important to keep the facility in the condition we want it to be in,” says Bill. “We’ve designed a fairway sprinkler system that we’re going to install early this year, so we won’t be at the mercy of the weather.”

Although the grass was drying up last summer, business was streaming in. Chris and Scott spent much of their preparation before the facility’s opening becoming fully schooled in club fitting and in learning how to educate customers in the importance of using the right clubs and irons to improve their game.

“For every customer who came in, we went through our whole spiel of exactly what we can do for them and how important it is to get custom fit,” says Chris. “Doing that, we saw a lot of [positive] response from people.”

Chris says the results weren’t always immediate. After hearing their options, customers would often go home to mull it over and then pull the trigger on custom clubs or a complete refitting during a later visit.

“It stuck in the back of their mind,” he adds. And at their next visit, if customers were having trouble, they considered how a launch monitor session would help their swing. “By the end of that session, they had a lot more confidence because we found a shaft that fit their swing, their tempo and release. They could see they really had more control.”

The byproduct of improving one or two golfers at a time through custom clubs quickly became apparent to the brothers. Scott estimates they’ve fitted approximately 40 customers so far.

“The word has really spread,” says Scott. “A guy gets in his foursome and he’s hitting the ball 20 yards farther than his buddies after a refitting—the word gets out.”

Pursuing the Perfect Pro
Catering to the specific needs of area golfers goes beyond club fitting, though, and the Pollocks wanted to position 84 Golf Center as the premier teaching facility in the region.

They began asking around, looking for the top teaching PGA pro they could find. Their PGA contacts said they should put an advertisement on the PGA web site and they did, but soon found they had cast too wide a net.

“We had people coming from Florida and all over,” says Bill. “We had a guy interview but our real desire was to find the best local person. By searching nationally, it actually delayed us in finding the right person.”

Local PGA contacts soon uncovered Ed Vietmeier, a respected teacher in the Pittsburgh area. By June, Vietmeier came aboard as another vital piece of the puzzle. The veteran pro established the Ed Vietmeier Golf Academy at the center and offers a full menu of lessons, many using the high-tech ModelGolf computer video system. Based on the biomechanics of the world’s best golfers and their swings, ModelGolf produces a digital, scalable, 3-D computer animation of the perfect swing and allows users to easily correct flaws in their own mechanics. The center is the first facility in Western Pennsylvania to offer this service.

“We saw instruction as a key element we had to bring to the facility,” says Bill. “Our customers have been real happy with what we offer, and they’re telling their friends.”

The Pollocks constructed a 25-foot canopy on an upper area of the tee line just for video assessment and instruction. “That’s a private level where all the assessment and teaching is done,” says Bill. “It’s hot out there sometimes so the canopy helps, but more importantly, that [covered] area allows us to avoid having to cancel appointments for assessments if we have rain.”

Vietmeier is currently implementing an aggressive winter program of lessons and golf conditioning. The facility’s total offerings in golf learning have been called “a glimpse of the future of the game,” by one local newspaper and are fast becoming the real strength of the center, according to Bill.

“We’re the only local facility still open in the winter, and we feel we still have a lot to offer this time of year,” he says. “And we’ll have even more in the spring.”

Come in and Stay Awhile
The center’s 450-square-foot clubhouse is designed for comfort and customer convenience. High ceilings and multiple windows lend an airy feel to the building, and a fireplace, television and leather chairs create a comfortable seating area.

To keep costs down, the clubhouse isn’t big, but there’s space for retail areas and a granite countertop where the Pollocks greet customers. Range customers pay for buckets at the counter, but an employee always walks to the patio with patrons to fill their buckets from the 13,000-ball-capacity Easy Picker Golf Products Inc. dispenser, unless the customer has a prepaid E-range card.

“We want to speak to the customers when they’re in the clubhouse and give them a personal greeting,” says Bill. “Originally, we had a changing machine for them to get their own balls, but we thought it was much better to give the customers personal attention.”

The Pollocks have another building across the entry road to the facility where they store equipment and excess inventory, as well as refit, refurbish and build clubs. Keeping open space in the clubhouse was a priority to offer a clean, comfortable feel and to allow for the flow of customer traffic.

A drink machine is located on a partially covered patio adjacent to the clubhouse. There’s also a glass-front refrigerator outside stocked with sandwiches, a chips-and-candy vending machine and easily accessible restrooms. One of the more popular features on the patio is a mechanized ice cream server, featuring 12 different kinds of packaged frozen treats.

The ice cream dispenser is extra service without extra manpower, another staple of the facility. In fact, the center is so easy to use that many E-range customers come early in the morning, around 6, before the facility “opens,” to hit balls. Bill estimates 60 E-range memberships have been sold, many of the sales to customers who refill their computerized cards because they like the convenience.

The Pollocks plan more conveniences this coming season, including expanding their lunch offerings around a purchase of a bucket of balls. They offered a limited package late this summer and were encouraged by the results. The local Country Cupboard Deli offers a choice of three or four basic sandwiches, and with a bag of chips and a drink, the center has an affordable lunchtime draw for area workers.

“I think that’s going to be a good promotion for us next year, giving a free lunch from 11 to 2, because we have a lot of people working near us,” says Bill. “We started it too late last year, and we offered too much. If we simplify, we can control costs and make it work better.”

The Pollocks are always fine-tuning their operations and their ideas. Though new to the golf range industry, they prepared well for their jump into the business. They’ve made it look easy, though they admit it’s not always that way.

“The best advice I can give is to be really well-capitalized when you start,” says Bill. “It’s not something you want to approach on a shoestring budget. You have to be prepared because it takes a couple of years to build the business. You get into trouble when you don’t have the capitalization up front and you don’t generate the cash flow you need to operate.”

Construction costs are always more than expected, he says, and it’s important to have budgetary reserves to cover any overruns. Developers also can’t spend enough time and money to make their grass look green, he adds.

“We have people drive by here all the time that think we’re a golf course, not just a range,” he says. “That’s what we were looking for.”