Tilma: Sandpiper Bay Golf & Country Club is a 27-hole Dan Maples-designed public facility. We are located inside the Sandpiper Bay Community of 374 single-family homes and 312 condominiums and have an active membership of 280 individuals.
Opened in 1987 during the Myrtle Beach and Sunset Beach golf and real estate boom, the club is owned by North Star Carolina Corporation, based out of Kansas City, Missouri and Los Angeles, California. I have been the PGA of America General Manager for 17 years and manage all aspects of the company. I supervise four key department heads: Accounting, Maintenance, Golf Operations and Food & Beverage.
As a PGA of America Member for the past 35 years, I cherish my role as the team leader/cheerleader. With direction from the facility ownership, I communicate the overall direction of our company to our staff and represent the company to the Myrtle Beach golf market, the Golf Tourism Solutions Co-Operative and the Myrtle Beach Golf Course Owners Association, of which I am on the Board of Directors.
We employ about 60 staff members who maintain our facilities and provide southern hospitality and customer service to our members and guests. We are a busy operation and host approximately 60,000 rounds per year that include member rounds and golf package players from our lodging and promotions partners.
Sandpiper Bay is also a member of the East Coast Golf Trail, which is an association of 24 area golf courses that share a common commitment to host local public golfers at our group golf courses.
Tilma: My entry in the golf business has a unique twist to it. After graduating from Alma College in Alma, Michigan and leading the tennis team to the NAIA District 23 State Championships each year from 1975-1978, I worked in the tennis industry as a USPTA Teaching Professional and Membership Director at Centre Court in Portage, Michigan. During this time, I studied motor development/skill training at Western Michigan University and got my master’s degree in 1983.
During those early 80s, tennis was booming, but it hit a lull in the mid-80s, and I felt an urge at age 28 to get into the golf business. I packed up my Honda Prelude with everything I owned and moved to Hilton Head Island and took a job with William Deck, a highly respected head golf professional at Shipyard Golf Club. After five months, he moved to the Country Club of Hilton Head. I followed him there and progressed quickly to get my PGA of America Class A certification. William, as the Director of Golf, and Randy Cottom, as our head professional, taught me the business, and Carl Tyner, our teaching professional, taught me the game. I lived, practiced and played with John Farrell (now the head professional at Harbor Town Golf Links) and Keith Goodaker (former golf professional at Danville Golf Club and Belfair Golf Club, and the current Golf Coach at Averett University).
As I grew into the business, I realized that I needed to broaden the scope of my experience besides my Hilton Head jobs, and through Randy Cottom, I got a job with Robert Harper with the PGA Tour Public Golf Division and the Golf Club of Miami in Miami Gardens. Robert became a key mentor and best friend, and after two years there, he moved to Wild Wing Plantation in Myrtle Beach. I would follow a few months later. I was glad to get back to the Carolinas PGA Section where I knew many of the golf professionals from my five years in Hilton Head.
Robert was the GM, and I was the head golf professional. With our 200+ employees, we grew Wild Wing into “America’s Finest 72 Hole Golf Reserve.” We brought a new level of quality to the Grand Strand golf market, as we had bent grass greens, were one of the first to have GPS yardage systems on the golf carts and had a golf shop that sold well over $1 million in merchandise and was the Carolinas PGA Section Golf Shop of the Year in 1995.
Robert became the Carolinas PGA Section President in 2004 and through that I was able to meet and learn from PGA of America Presidents Gary Schall and Will Mann, and Section Presidents Ron Stevenson, Mike Casto and Karl Kimball. I learned about the unique nature of the Myrtle Beach market from MB Golf Course Owners Executive Director George Hilliard, PGA Section Executive Director Ron Schmid and many others including David and Matthew Brittain, fellow golf professional Frank Monk and my own staff members Jeff Dayton, Jason Peterson, Mike Buccerone and Richard Kascsak.
Tilma: Mr. Yasumasa Kusumoto, the President of Wild Wing Plantation, and Blair Tanner, Owner and President of Sandpiper Bay have both been very diligent in demanding budgets and forecasting for revenues, expenses and cash flow for the companies that I have served as general manager. I thank them for the opportunity to do so, as it makes me a better manager and more valuable to their company.
As a result, I have had to do very detailed budgets for several multi-million dollar companies. Budgets are goals for the company, and I measure these goals at the end of each month with variance reports explaining the shortfalls or overages and do a re-forecast for the rest of the fiscal year, especially if there has been an unusual month due to weather or other factors. Ownership needs to know the impact of such issues and the strategy you may develop to overcome the situation.
I enjoy the record-keeping that goes along with measuring goals and the attitude that you must “adapt and adjust” to the ever-changing golf marketplace. For example, the pandemic created many challenges. Talk about re-forecasting! However, we got through that, and golf became popular as a safe outdoor activity and actually grew in participation numbers during and after the virus.
Tilma: There have been many trends in golf in the past few years. Post-COVID, we have seen a large influx of beginner golfers and more specifically women golfers. Our Monday women’s clinic, which used to get 12 ladies, now gets three classes of 12 ladies. We also have a Wednesday class of 12 for a total of 48 beginner and intermediate ladies learning the game from our PGA Associate Head Golf Professional Richard Kascsak.
Online technology continues to be industry-changing, as more golfers are making their tee times via third-party golf promoters like GolfNow.
Inflation has been a trend that affects all of us and hits our golf courses just like everyone else. Costs of all the goods that we buy have gone up, and some items, like fertilizer and chemicals, have gone up drastically. The price of golf maintenance equipment has increased this year at Sandpiper by 22 percent, and we have had to wait for many pieces to arrive due to slow delivery chains and transportation issues due to port closures and accidents.
Labor has been an issue in the golf business for a long time, and the immigration crisis affects this as well. We have to document new workers to make sure they are eligible, and the scarcity of good, hard-working laborers has driven up wages. At Sandpiper Bay, we are using an employment agency to fill some maintenance department openings. It costs a bit more at the front end, but you save some of the accounting costs by not having to pay their social security and unemployment taxes.
Tilma: I am always on the lookout for education and new ideas to make our game better, and to make the club I manage better for our guests and more profitable for the owner.
As a Board Member of the Myrtle Beach Golf Course Owners Association, I attend and lead monthly meetings that deal with new strategies in our industry. Recently, a young man named Jason Cohn came to our Board with his fascinating new program of using biological treatments administered through an irrigation system to make turf healthier and more resistant to disease. Golf courses in California that use his systems have reduced water usage, their chemical expenses and the frequency of aerification. Things like that are making me a more informed golf professional and a better manager for the owner.
Being an effective manager requires many skills, some involving business know-how, but many involving people management and motivations, empathy and how to administer praise and criticism. In these areas, I rely on my faith and my compassion for people and try to use the Golden Rule to treat others as one would hope to be treated themselves.
Tilma: As a former Bill Strausbaugh Award Winner for our Carolinas PGA Section, this question hits home for me. That award is given to a Section golf professional who has mentored and taught staff members and apprentices and led them in their professional pursuits. At Wild Wing Plantation, and now at Sandpiper Bay, I have had the privilege of hiring many assistant golf professionals and have seen them progress to PGA Membership and then move on to head golf professional positions and beyond.
My advice is to work hard, go above and beyond to provide service to your members and guests and foster relationships with as many other golf professionals as possible. By developing a network of people in the industry, you become aware of opportunities and possible career moves that lead you to a desired goal.
And as Scottie Scheffler said when asked what his goal was when he participated in the 2024 Olympics - HAVE FUN! This attitude produced a gold medal for him!
Tim Tilma, the 2009 Carolinas PGA Section Bill Strausbaugh Award winner, is a Quarter Century PGA Member and the PGA of America General Manager at Sandpiper Bay Golf & Country Club in Sunset Beach, North Carolina.