.
Zac Keener is the Mother Theresa of golf.
For the past five years, he was General Manager of 2015 U.S. Open host Chambers Bay in University Place, Washington. It’s a position that’s the envy of many in the golf business. Keener paid his dues, rising the ranks over 17 years from an hourly employee to “the man.”
But as he’s approaching 40 years old, there’s yearning for more. It centered on an unwavering desire to help more golfers enjoy their experiences before, during and after their rounds. Equally, Keener wants to catalyze thousands of golf course owners and operators of all sizes and shapes to make more money with less effort.
Sans sappiness, this ladders to a grander drive to do his part to eventually leave golf in a better place than he found it.
“Where there’s a problem, there’s opportunity,” says Keener. “And the nagging issue for me was tee time cancellations with no cogent strategy for re-booking.”
A Google Sheet of waitlisted golfers for pro shop staff to e-mail and / or call them when time allows is frenetic and inefficient. That tactic is only a mere cut above the days when reservations were recorded on paper by a No. 2 pencil with a gigantic eraser.
Then there’s the analogy of restaurants telling people to check back with them to see if their desired time to eat opens due to cancellation. For crying out loud, the onus shouldn’t be on the customer.
“There are golf courses I know with 20% of their tee times cancelled, even with a cancellation fee, and only 10% to 20% of those are re-booked,” Keener says. “Golfers would frustratingly search clubs’ websites and call pro shops incessantly to see if their desired tee times opened.
“Did I mention the cancellations issue was forever nagging?” half-jokes Keener. “My mandate was to find a better mousetrap.”
Serendipitously, last summer, he was introduced to newly minted and Accenture Ventures-schooled young buck Jake Gordon. He and partner Dathan Wong, a former Microsoft whiz kid, started Noteefy, a company that developed tee-time waitlist software that seamlessly jibes with all tee sheet providers.
Colloquially, it’s the OpenTable and Resy product for golf.
Here’s how it super-simply works: Through courses’ websites, golfers desiring tee times already taken receive real time text and e-mail alerts when those slots open due to cancellation. They then book tee times online per the normal process.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about Noteefy and automating the waitlist process,” says Keener. “I said to Jake after our first conversation: ‘just send me the invoice and let’s get going’.”
Six months later, Chambers Bay realized more than $500,000 in incremental revenue through Noteefy. That’s probably a $750,000 swing given a sizable portion of the cancelled tee times, most within 48 hours, would’ve been difficult to re-fill. Golfers are obsessed with Noteefy.
Better yet, Chambers Bay re-booked them at a premium. That’s akin to playing more for a Delta flight you need to take tomorrow versus booking it two weeks prior.
The secret sauce is in Noteefy’s simplicity, says Keener, and what’s a better and easier process for the customer is the gateway to optimizing starting times.
That’s where Mother Theresa comparison is fitting.
“This may sound strange, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Noteefy, day and night, as a proven industry solution that doesn’t discriminate based on greens fee levels,” he says.
So, what did he do? As of early March, Keener joined Noteefy as Director of Partnerships and Strategy. He’s leveraging his knowledge of tee time management and golfer behaviors to operators about how to elevate golfer satisfaction and how golf courses can re-coup lost revenue without staff legwork.
“It’s amazing that more than 300 course are utilizing Noteefy in less than a year since the company launched, and the results are staggering” he says.
What was daunting and difficult – i.e. finding the right tee time for the right person at the courses they want to play – is now automated.
Keener may not look like the Nobel Peace Prize winner, but he’s out to spread the gospel of golf’s Next Big Thing for players and owner-operators alike. This, friends, will help sustain golf’s growth for current and future generations.