Sydney. The readers of one of America’s most popular travel magazines, Travel + Leisure, once again named it the “World’s Best City” in 2005. Maybe they are golfers?

Sydney has more than 70 golf courses, including a handful of the country’s finest, with a history and pedigree to match. The city has played host to 28 Australian Opens since 1904, including six won by Jack Nicklaus, who famously touted the event as “The Fifth Major.” The event has been played at three of the great Sydney courses: the Australian, the Lakes and Royal Sydney.

Moore Park Golf is another of Sydney’s world-class attractions and is a clear leader when it comes to golf practice and instructional facilities. Situated only minutes from the capital city’s central business district, Moore Park Golf is a complete golfing complex, incorporating a multitiered floodlit driving range, an 18-hole course, coaching services, a short game area, a pro shop and a historic clubhouse with bar, bistro and event facilities.

Four-million-member market
Bounded on three sides by arterial roads, Moore Park Golf is a short drive from the center of Sydney, walking distance from the city’s Central Railway Station and about a 4-iron shot away from a block of major attractions incorporating Fox Studios, the Sydney Cricket Ground and the Sydney Football Stadium (Aussie Stadium).

The golf complex is set in the Centennial Parklands, an 890-acre urban open space and conservation area. Dedicated by Sir Henry Parkes in 1888 as a public place for the centenary of Australia’s colonization, the park’s boundaries begin about three miles from Sydney’s central business district and spread eastward to within a few minutes of the city’s popular eastern beaches.

Moore Park Golf is believed to have the busiest range in the country, if not the Southern Hemisphere, and it’s no wonder with a market of 4-plus million people. Sounds impressive enough, but what sort of ball volume does the range really do? Oh, about a million a month, says Moore Park Golf’s Operations Manager Graham Clarke. OK, that’s impressive.

An expanded business
Moore Park Golf is the business name for the golfing assets within Centennial Parklands, which is a public property managed by Centennial Park and Moore Park Trust. Moore Park Golf Club is a membership organization associated with the course.

The club was formally established in 1920, seven years after the nine-hole course designed by Carnegie Clarke opened to the public. The course was extended to 18 holes in 1922, and the present clubhouse was opened three years later.

The driving range was built in 1995 using the natural bowl of the first fairway, accommodated by a minor course redesign. This proved to be landmark event in defining the golfing complex. The evolution from golf club to major golf complex was largely a function of municipal ownership to maximize the public benefit and use of the site. It also turned out to be good business.

The golf club pays the course to give its members a set of rights and privileges, such as blocks of hit-off times. In other words, the club is a client of Moore Park Golf, albeit a special one.

The sale of services to Moore Park Golf Club is just one of many elements of the Moore Park Golf business. The range, course, bar, bistro and function facilities are all key units that must be profitable in their own right, and which must leverage off one another to achieve that result.

Moore Park Golf sees itself as an integrated golfing complex, which recognizes the interdependence of its golfing facilities and businesses. For example, a function center that can offer golfing activities and a coaching business that can run on-course lessons are among the opportunities that come from looking at the complex as a whole rather than the sum of its parts.

Low-maintenance design
The range itself is 60 bays set over three tiers, including two bays on each level that are set up for left-handers. Groups of two or three bays can be cordoned off at either end of each level when required for group or individual lessons with one of Moore Park’s eight Australian PGA teaching professionals.

The landing area is 275 yards long, but is set over a moderate incline. Length is not a major concern, but some ball loss is beginning to take place from third-level shots. Barrier netting stands 55.8 feet tall at the far end of the range, and is being raised to 66 feet using the existing steel pole construction.

Netting on the right-hand side uses the same 55.8-foot-tall steel construction as at the rear and covers two lineal spans of 42.6 feet each. After that point, a steep hill to the right captures wayward slices from right-handers.

The left side does not have the benefit of a natural incline to capture errant shots and so the netting extends over five 42.6-foot spans. The extended netting on this side is more about protecting golfers on the course than reducing ball loss; hooks from right-handed hitters that make it past the netting and fall toward the 18th fairway can still be collected by the picker.

The natural bowl shape of the landing area is great for ball collection and reducing barrier netting requirements, but is not so great when it rains. The main part of the landing area draws water as well as ball volume, and when the ball volume is as high as Moore Park’s, the grass struggles. Turf conditions where water pools deteriorated over the years, leading to significant ball loss from plugging in wet conditions, while detracting from the visual appeal of the range in all seasons. The solution? Moore Park Golf invested in about 100,000 square feet of synthetic grass outfield and has not looked back.

The synthetic outfield appears to cover the bulk of the landing area, but in reality is only about 40 percent. A number of synthetic target greens are integrated into the surface, attracting golf ball fire from the 60-bay tee line structure. The target greens have a deeper grass pile than the synthetic outfield and will hold a crisply struck iron shot.

Fully equipped
The range manager runs a single golf cart-sized tractor with a 15-foot-wide, three-gang Range Servant picker in tow. Each of the three limbs of the picker has three ball trays with a capacity of approximately 400 balls each.

A picker of this size in a lightweight construction has been found to provide the best results over the years of experimentation. Larger or heavier pickers are too hefty for the tractor to pull over the inclined surfaces of the range and would require a bigger tractor, which would in turn cause more damage to the turf. Smaller pickers would, of course, increase picking times.

Picking and range maintenance take place Monday mornings between 6 and 10, when the range is closed. With the three-gang picker and some hand picking, this four-hour window is generally sufficient for ball collection and maintenance.

The ball dispensing equipment is a fully automated Range Servant package from end to end. Balls are dropped into a concrete pit with a decline to the ball washer and into a 24,000-ball-capacity hopper. Clean balls are then electronically directed to one of three 12,000-ball-capacity dispensers.

The range dispensers are electronically linked to the point of sale. Range customers are provided with a receipt that includes a five-digit code, which is entered by the customer into the dispensing unit for issue of the appropriate number of balls. The dispensers can also take tokens as a failsafe option if the electronic system is disrupted.

Range balls are yellow Srixon two-piece balls. The 60,000-ball system requires replacing approximately 20,000 balls every six months. This semiannual purchase is more about maintaining the quality of the balls than replacing lost balls, and is in keeping with a philosophy of being the best in the market.

Each range bay has a ProTurf octagonal synthetic grass mat. The bay dividers feature the Centennial Parklands logo, underlined with the famous Arnold Palmer quote, “The more I practice the luckier I get.” The alternate side of each tee divider is used for advertising. Most recently, the dividers carried advertisements for Shell premium fuels with some clever plays on words, such as “get more drive” and “get a little more run,” that are sure to grab every golfing patron’s attention at least once.

Beyond print ads
Moore Park Golf doesn’t believe in a lot of external advertising, but it understands its market and knows where to focus. The facility’s web site and occasional advertisements in golf magazines and local papers are there as the fairly standard, broad-based marketing tools used to raise the profile of the complex, but some more creative methods also are employed.

One of the more novel approaches is golf days that are arranged for hotel concierges. Tourist business is at the higher end in terms of value per customer and the hotel concierge is often the vital link to help access this business. Perhaps not too many driving ranges would consider themselves a tourist attraction, let alone the centerpiece of a golfing holiday, but Moore Park Golf is a destination location. In fact, many departing visitors stop to hit balls on their way to the airport, says Kylie Davis, the park’s marketing manager. Although tourists represent perhaps only 10 percent of range sales, these patrons tend to be higher value customers who provide a boost to retail sales of clothing, equipment and accessories.

The tourist market, which flows mainly from Southeast Asia when it comes to golf in Australia, requires some cultural awareness. Moore Park Golf has a Japanese- and Korean-speaking staff member on board who can provide that extra level of service and also share cross-cultural knowledge with other employees.

Promotional activity on the range includes demonstration days for major equipment manufacturers. It is reasonably common for driving ranges to have demo days on occasion, and the benefits in equipment sales through the pro shop are well recognized. The difference at Moore Park Golf is the sheer volume of demonstration days, which run about 50 a year with a different manufacturer every week.

Like most ranges, Moore Park Golf has its more quiet periods during the daytime on weekdays, but does not discount its product by offering “happy hours” or other promotions to try to bring its evening and weekend patrons to the range during those times. Instead, Moore Park recognizes that it is generally a different sort of client who will come during those times and considers ways to raise its profile to mothers, school groups and students from the nearby universities when formulating its marketing programs.

One of the key themes in Moore Park’s marketing and promotion portfolio is internal cross-promotion. For example, if a corporate client is looking for a conference venue, the function center staff would provide all the details on the conference facilities, but would also take the opportunity to provide options for the conference agenda by suggesting lunch at the bistro, nine holes or a full round of golf, clubs and range balls during a break session, as well as reminding the client that there is a fully licensed bar for drinks at the end of each day.

The proximity of the range to the course allows possibilities such as providing warm-up balls for players attending corporate golf days, thereby ensuring that these patrons are exposed to a wider range of the available facilities. Exposure and access to all the facilities and turning a customer of one business unit into a customer of several units, ideally in the one visit, is the key objective.

Another important element in the general marketing philosophy is ensuring that all the marketable features of the complex are exploited. The distinctive Sydney skyline that serves as a backdrop to the facility’s natural scenery is a frequent drawcard, and the picturesque course is used often for photo shoots and TV commercials.

Clever coaching tactics
The coaching services at Moore Park Golf are another important part of the engine that drives the range business. The Moore Park School of Golf is represented by eight Australian PGA-registered professional golf instructors who are contracted by Moore Park Golf.

The fact that Moore Park Golf is run as an integrated golf complex, with control over all the individual facilities and businesses, provides for some great coaching opportunities. Coaching staff can take their students from the range to the putting green, to the chipping area and onto the course to play holes.

In this way, golfers can develop every aspect of their game under the supervision of the professionals, but the great flow-on benefit for the business is that the customers get to know all of the facilities and can also independently work on their game across the full complex.

A wide range of coaching services and packages are available from 30-minute, one-hour, half-day and full-day sessions, either for individuals or groups, as well as special ladies midweek group classes.

One area that Moore Park Golf has developed exceptionally well is its junior coaching programs, which cater to the beginner through to the representative level.
For children ages 3 to 6, the Moore Park School of Golf offers “Pee Wee” clinics, with class sizes of three to five children. These six-week clinics introduce the game in an energetic way and cover basic fundamentals, rules and safety, but always with an emphasis on fun.

For schoolchildren 7 and older, the Moore Park School of Golf has developed a clever approach that features various levels for the kids to work through as they develop and improve. The classes are for a maximum of eight and designed to introduce school-aged kids to the game of golf in a fun, educational and social environment. The program caters to kids of all abilities and involves various skill and knowledge tests in order to progress through to the next level.

A student who is completely new to the game will start off in at the first level with Birdies. After learning a few of the fundamental skills, the child progresses to Eagles, before graduating to Bears, Sharks and ultimately, Tigers.

New students who have played the game before can be graded and put into the most appropriate class, much the same as in swimming or skiing classes.

This approach is quite inspired as it provides a framework for junior development, which plays to a healthy degree on the competitive spirit of the kids and even their parents. The desire to learn and get up to the next level is exciting for the child, and a common set of goals is established for the child, coach and parent.

Then, of course, there is the cross-promotion as a group of mothers bringing their children to a lesson become engaged in group ladies lessons to form a virtuous circle that is good for the child/parent relationship, good for the game and good for business.

But then again, everything Moore Park Golf does is good for the business.