As a broke college student, I am always looking for the most bang for my buck. My financial dismay forces me to spend every single dollar wisely. If I had the money to bet on it, I would wager that there are plenty of people out there in a very similar situation. Additionally, since I love playing golf regularly, my lack of money makes it difficult to find affordable venues to play. I can always find a course that is exceptionally cheap, but chances are I will be swinging on burnt out grass and dirt for 18 holes. Doing so is almost worse than not playing at all. Or I could simply give up the game until I find a steady income to fund my addiction (thank goodness for the Nextgen Collegiate Membership). It is a real struggle to find a quality place to play that is affordably priced, where I will not walk off a dust bowl of a course saying, “That was a waste of 5 hours and $50.” Then head back to campus and drink away my sorrows, thus wasting more money...just kidding. Thankfully there is a organization that has come to my rescue that is giving college students and young adults A VOICE, find out how:
Before writing this, I was perusing about the internet looking for a source that provided an in-depth ranking of golf courses that I could actually play. I was stunned with the lack of results I found! Everywhere I searched I found rankings for “Best Courses in America”, “Best Courses in the World”, “Best Public Courses in America”, “Best Resort Courses” etc. While I’m sure these rankings are very accurate and thought out, how do they help me, a near-broke college student trying to play somewhere near campus on the weekends? They don’t…other then maybe giving me a cool picture I can use as a background on my laptop (for tips on how to market your golf courses, see our free course marketing guide). Even the one or two sources I found that rated public courses in my state that I could actually play ended up having very few (if any) ratings that didn’t provide me nearly enough of the information that I was looking for. Not to mention, if a course did in fact have a rating or two provided, how do I know how reliable this rating was? Anyone who went on the site was eligible to give a rating with one click, meaning that any given rating could have been provided by a person who dealt with a rude groundskeeper or someone who shot 138 who was bashing the course out of emotion. Alternatively, what’s stopping the course pro from giving his or her course a perfect rating to get a little extra business? Seems a little bit flawed, huh?
So all you golf courses out there, take a look at the ways Nextgengolf can help drive new revenue to your facility by increasing rounds played by 18-29 year olds.
Long story short, there are simply not enough in-depth ratings for golf courses that the general public - specifically young adults- can actually play.
As a college student who loves golf, I would benefit greatly from a large archive of golf courses with accurate ratings from multiple reliable sources. It would make playing the game on a limited budget much more enjoyable for me. I would be able to hand pick a course that looked appealing to me, as opposed to guessing on a random course and hoping I was not going to be wasting my limited money.
