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Golf Business Live – Tech Talks Recap: Where Technology is now and where it is taking us

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Article by Harvey Silverman, Golf Business Live

We launched “Tech Talks” this past February, a new webcast to bring members a variety of interviews with technology leaders from around the world. In fact, we’ve set the record for the longest-distance NGCOA interview, all the way from Cape Town, South Africa, outdistancing Seoul, South Korea. So, yes, we’re “spanning the globe.” More importantly, we’re spanning a variety of new and innovative technologies for green grass golf course operators.

We had our longest-distance interview with Bodo Sieber, CEO of Tagmarshal. Bodo connected from Cape Town, South Africa (Tagmarshal has a U.S. office in Atlanta), a tidy 7,858 miles from NGCOA HQ in Charleston, SC, and just edging out Seoul, South Korea. Tagmarshal is an NGCOA Smart Buy partner and brings a data-driven GPS tracking system to a worldwide portfolio of courses, including notable ones like Bandon Dunes, Erin Hills and Whistling Straits. Tagmarshal began as a “tag” technology, a device that could be attached to a golf bag or carried in a golfer’s pocket or cart. Its purpose was to track the flow and pace of play and give course operators real-time data to improve it.

Next came the ubiquitous on-cart screens displaying GPS distances, hole layouts, and more. But Tagmarshal doesn’t want to be known as just another GPS company. Its DNA is in the data it provides and analyzes. Bodo explained to us the three metrics to consider when measuring pace and flow. The key is “average time vs. goal time.” “Average is a bad indicator,” Bodo exclaims. “It hides the outliers, both good and bad, so we work with courses to establish goal times and then measure how many rounds are faster, on pace or slower.”

In Bodo’s example, the average on a particular day might be six minutes over goal time. But drilling down in the data, it might show 20% of the rounds played considerably faster, 40% were on pace, and 40% went over the goal time. So the average round time might be acceptable, except that 40% were materially delayed with wait times – a primary source of golfer discontent. Management now has the data to enhance the flow by time of day, depending on the play volume.

Read the full article here.

ABOUT TAGMARSHAL

Tagmarshal, the market leader in on-course optimization technology, provides courses with full, real-time operational oversight and reporting, giving golf operators the tools to manage pace and flow of play effectively, resulting in enhanced player experiences, increased efficiency through automation, and additional revenue generation.

Tagmarshal’s technology has collected over 1 billion data points from more than 50 million rounds of golf and has relationships with in excess of 500 partners, including Hazeltine, Whistling Straits, Baltusrol, Fieldstone, Bandon Dunes, Serenoa and Erin Hills.

Tagmarshal partners with several golf management groups, private, daily fee, public and resort courses, including 35 of the Top 100 US courses, as well as many $30-$50 green fee courses, which are seeing excellent results using the system.

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