Week 5: Hardwork and Dedication

In today's economy not many industries are doing very well and struggling to keep their head above water week in and week out.  It just so happens that the golf industry has been one of the hardest in the sports industry.  At Pipestone we have not got by without being scathed by this recession.  Which is why lately I have been called upon to cover multiple jobs the are crucial to the function of the golf course.  While earlier in the summer I was mostly in the pro shop or doing behind the scenes work, now I have been picking the range, washing golf carts and even doing some food and beverage jobs.  It has been more work on my part, but it is more cost effective for the course to have myself do multiple jobs, rather than have 2 or 3 other people spread out doing three different task.  It is understandable for my supervisor to do this, and honestly I would have initiated this much earlier in the summer to help out the bottom line.  If there has been one thing that I have learned in this past week is that in a small operation such as Pipestone is, you must have dedicated staff members willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.  This speaks true for every one of my co-workers, we all work very hard because we realize if the course were to get into money trouble each and everyone of us would be out of work.  I just hope when I get into my first supervisor role that I have employees as dedicated as the ones at Pipestone.

Week 4: Inventory

This past week was the end of the month of July and the beginning of August, which means the course must file paperwork with the city and Kemper Sports on the monthly revenue.  Part of this monthly revenue report has to do with how much appearal and equipment we have sold and have left to sell in our pro shop.  This report is extremely important because we have to know how many things are missing and how much money was made off the items sold.  We first start out by counting every item that we have in stock in the shop.  This includes items such as shirts, sleeves of golf balls and all the way down to golf tees that we sell.  After counting every item in the shop we have to go into the FORE! system where we have the last count of every item the month before.  After going through and editing the numbers from what we counted, the computer goes through and analyzes the numbers you put in compared to what has been rang in and sold.  When it is done it prints out a report with all the variances in the number of items we counted and the actual number we should have. If there are any instances where the counted number is different from what the computer says we should have, we must go back and count to make sure we did not miscount.  This happened this month one time and it was with Under Armour golf Polo's.  We were missing three Under Armour Polo's, and we had no clue where they were.  After searching around the shop and offices we had found the tags to the shirts on the Head Professional's desk.  What we found out had happened was he had donated the shirts to a fundraising outing at the course two weeks earlier.  This was really the only speed bump we ran into through out this long process.  While this may be a long and dreadful process, it has to be done in order for the course to make sure items are not being stolen and the city of Miamisburg and Kemper Sports know how much we are making off equipment and apparel sales.

Week Three: 9 Dine and 9

This past weekend we held one of the most unique golf outings we will host the entire summer, and it is called 9 Dine and 9.  It is unique in that this is an outting that originated from the club and is not another groups outting that we house.  It is also unique in that part of the nine holes is in the day time and the other nine holes is played in the dark with glow golf equipment.  As well, dinner is served to all the participants between the two nines, and this year we had a full field of forty participants.  There was much detail that needed to be accomplished so this event could go on with out a hitch.  These details included making sure that we order enough glow sticks and glow balls for all the participants.  We then ended up buying over one hundred and twenty glow golf balls (three per person)and over two hundred glow sticks and necklaces to light up the holes for directional purposes.  Thereafter the group completed the first nine holes the Assistant Golf Professional raced out on to the course to start putting glow sticks on the tees, fairways and flag sticks.  This was the key part to pulling this off because we only had about thirty five minutes before they were to start the last nine holes of glow golf.  Thankfully we finished setting up the the golf course with about ten minutes to spare and were able to get the group off for the second nine after dinner exactly at 9:30.  This was only the second time the club has ever done this event, and the overall feed back from the participants was great.  They loved the event and some even mentioned to us about possible doing a full eighteen holes of glow golf, or doing a 9 Dine and 9 once every month.  This was a huge success for the club because of the focus on the finer details.  The things that I want to change about the event is to order more than three glow balls per person, as well as order more extra glow sticks to light up the golf carts so people are easier to find and see.  Other than that this event was a huge success and we received mostly positive feed back from the participants.