Freeing Up Time for What Matters
The most consistent benefit professionals report from AI tools isn’t about automation. It’s about time.
“Let’s say AI saves you two or three hours a week,” Williams says. “That’s two or three more hours you can spend on the lesson tee, on the golf course or, most importantly, at home with your family.”
That time dividend isn’t theoretical. Williams recounts how AI allowed him to launch a new short game school in just an hour – creating a full event outline, a marketing email and a social media campaign using Google Gemini, which is a free AI tool available to all PGA of America Members. By the end of the day, both the original and a second short game session had sold out, generating $1,500 in new lesson revenue.
“I’d always shied away from group instruction – not because I don’t enjoy doing it, but because I don’t enjoy the prep work it takes to put the outline of the lessons together, then do the marketing of it,” Williams says. “Once I have five people in front of me for a short game event, I love it. I just hated the ‘getting started’ part.”
Williams received a PGA Coach email suggesting ways to use AI, and the light bulb went on.
“I plugged it into Gemini: ‘Give me a three-hour short game school timeline and an agenda that covers these topics, splitting the areas into about an hour each,’” Williams says. “Then I asked it to use that outline and create a marketing email for me. The whole thing came together with less than an hour of prep time, and I had an image to promote the event, a social media post and an outline for the day. I posted it to my PGA Coach profile and sent it to my members at 2 p.m. By the end of the day, all five spots had been filled and I decided to open up a second short game school that immediately filled up.
“It was like I found $1,500 that had fallen out of a tree. It wasn’t that I wasn’t capable of doing any part of it, but the idea of spending three or four hours of prep work to go teach for three hours was holding me back. Now I can make more money per hour in instruction because the prep work and marketing is so much more efficient.”
AI has also changed how Williams responds to member inquiries, crafts newsletters and creates social posts. In the past, those tasks could take hours or even days. Now they’re done in a fraction of the time, allowing him to focus on members, lessons and improving the club experience.
PGA of America President Don Rea Jr. sees the same value. “First and foremost, utilize apps like ChatGPT and Canva to make it a lot easier to communicate with your customers and create flyers and social media posts,” says Rea, a PGA of America Master Professional and the owner of Augusta Ranch Golf Club in Mesa, Arizona. “These AI- driven tools help us look a lot more professional. As a small business owner, they make us look like we have more people behind us than we actually do.”
Rea also emphasizes the importance of using AI to support customer relationships.
“Technology opens up so many opportunities for PGA of America Golf Professionals to get out of the office and do the things that can’t be done by an AI tool or an app: Walk the range, play golf with members, greet people on the first tee. People still want interaction with real people, they still want high-fives and smiles from their golf professional when they do something good.”
