The Club Without a Course

NewClub's deliberate expansion says more about growth than most strategy decks do

Even though I am a recovering golfer, the headline of this article by Tim Botos in yesterday’s Canton Repository (and Massillon Independent) caught my eye. The content caught my attention.

First, the clickable headline:

Exclusive: NewClub golf business expands in Northeast Ohio

At last month’s Business Connection Live Renee Powell talked to the Massillon Chamber about the growth and investment in her family’s Clearview Golf Club in East Canton. I’m always going to read an article about growth close to home, but this one was extra interesting as it showed that the golf industry at large continues to reverse some of its pre-pandemic challenges.

Then there was the lede:

The newest local private golf club is nowhere and everywhere.

Not a new course or resident league or partnership with a single club, but rather a “club without a course.” A community of like-minded golfers with access to tee times and top clubs in Chicago, Atlanta, and now NE Ohio. Tee times without friction. Membership without initiation.

The growth of NewClub landed with me because it follows two of my closely held beliefs:

First, when it comes to change deliberate is often faster. NewClub has added a new community about every four years - from its Chicago roots in 2017, to the Atlanta area four years later, and NE Ohio today. The model relies on deep course partnerships and vibrant communities of golfers. They probably could have grown faster, and may have even faced pressure to do so, but it would have been at the expense of their customers and their experience.

Charging into something new sounds good, but often comes with the kind of false starts and uneven progress that cost time and money.

The second belief builds closely on the first. Most growth is relational, not mechanical. Even when it looks mechanical on the surface: installing a new software, automating a process, integrating AI into a workflow, there are people at each step of the way. For change to truly stick, those people need to know why things are changing, the benefit to them, and have the tools and training to work in the new way. Without that, they are likely to look for ways to work around the change and go back to the old way of doing things.

NewClub probably could have worked through the mechanics of adding new regions and courses to their network faster. But, it would have been been without the people that are the heart of the community. They would have written the procedure that no one follows.

I don’t know if Considine and Colwell ever called it strategy. Probably just felt like the right pace. But nine years and three cities later, the slow way looks a lot like the smart way.

Where in your own business have you sped past the people part to get to the finish line faster? I’d bet you already know the answer.