Golf for a purpose: Planning successful corporate golf outings.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Indiana Golf - Brief Article

It's no secret that lots of business takes place on the golf course, and no surprise that corporate golf outings are great for building stronger relationships with customers.

"You put the sales rep with a couple of different customers. You usually don't put employees with employees and customers with customers," says Josh Thompson, outing coordinator at Blackthorn Golf Club, a popular corporate-outing spot due to its location within a South Bend corporate park.

Does that mean that all employees at a successful business must be golfers? Not necessarily. "We'll have them ride along on the beverage cart or take pictures at a hole or maybe run a par 3 event," says Thompson. "There are several different things they can do. The main thing is for them to be a part of the event. It's a fun day."

Even the guests at a golf outing don't necessarily have to be golfers, Thompson says. "I see people who say, 'I don't golf but I'd like to try,'" he says, and what better place to give it a try than a golf outing? "About 99 percent of our outings do a scramble. If you're playing a scramble, there's not the pressure of finishing out every hole. If they don't play golf, we'll sometimes try to set up a clinic for those who want to learn."

The alternative, of course, is to make sure there are enough other activities to appeal to those non-golfers that the company wants to attract to the outing. The best draw is good food. "They'll send those people an invitation to the dinner," says Michele Zerkel, events coordinator at Woodmar Country Club in Hammond.

Ironically, as many as three-quarters of the people who've been picked by their company to plan the corporate golf outing are not golfers themselves, says Tom Floberg, pro at The Brassie in Chesterton. But that doesn't really matter. "You'll get people who do know how to play golf but they don't know how to run a golf tournament." The key, Floberg says, is to let the pro or outing coordinator do the bulk of the work.

"That's their job," agrees Thompson. "I pretty much do everything. They just give us the player's list." In a few cases, he says, he's even taken on the job of sending out invitations for corporate golf outings.

One of the biggest details to nail down is what kind of food to include. "A lot of times you see a lunch and a dinner," says Zerkel. "They'll have a barbecue on the patio with hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch, then after golf they'll come in for cocktails and a dinner of some sort. A lot of...