The Golfbreaks by PGA Tour story starts with four lads from England, all of them “mates.” They had a vision. They started small and underground, as if in a cavern. It took a few years but they grew that vision into a near-mania-level craze that rocked the UK to its apple core.
Then they brought that craze to America. You could almost say it was a British Invasion.
Sound familiar?
Yes, friends, this is the story of the Fab Four: Andrew, Guy, Daniel and Steve.
Whom did you think we were talking about?
While “Andrew, Guy, Daniel and Steve” doesn’t roll off the tongue as melodically as “John, Paul, George and Ringo”, the four lads behind Golfbreaks by PGA Tour have built something unique in the golf travel space. Golfbreaks by PGA Tour today is a well-oiled machine designed to make golf trip planning as painless as possible.
And if you’ve ever tried organizing a golf trip on your own, painless sounds enticing.
Golfbreaks by PGA Tour: Roll Up For The Mystery Tour
Let’s start with an obvious question: What exactly is a “golf break?
“A golf break is what we call a golf trip here in the UK,” says Golfbreaks co-founder Guy Proddow. For a country that calls a French fry a chip and a chip a crisp, that’s par for the course.
Guy is probably the Paul of this quartet. His cousin, Andrew Staley, fits the John role. Andrew officially started the band in 1998 by organizing Ryder Cup-style golf events for businesses and golfing societies – or clubs – in the UK. He started getting inquiries from his customers about organizing golf trips, er, golf breaks. Guy was working for a software company and knew a little about this new thing making headlines at the time called “the internet.”
“I told Andrew I had a friend who was a web designer so we built a website,” says Guy. “We started putting together some golf packages in the UK and northern France.”
As the entity started to grow, they reached out to another friend, Steve Hemsworth, who had experience in business travel and business operations. Since he wasn’t available during our interview, he’ll be the George, or the quiet one, of the group.
The last to join the band was Daniel Grave, so I guess that makes him Ringo.
“Andrew and Guy got this thing bubbling away and it became a bit of a runaway train,” says Grave. “Andrew told me they needed help. There’s a spark and they needed salespeople and people with contacts at golf venues. I was single at the time and figured, ‘What the hell? I’m gonna give this a go.’”
No One, I Think, Is In My Tree …
The Golfbreaks Magical Mystery Tour went from bubbling to sizzling faster than you can say Strawberry Fields Forever.
“We were generating a lot of business,” says Grave. “People were coming to us because we were at the leading edge of the internet in the UK for selling golf holidays.”
“Those were the days when collecting email addresses was this new, amazing thing,” adds Proddow. “You could collect email addresses and then send them all a message. We all went, ‘WOW! This is the future of marketing.’”
It was also the days of trying to figure out how to actually pay through the computer.
“We took checks in those early days,” says Proddow. “or direct bank transfers. We didn’t even have a credit card facility.”
During its first five years, Golfbreaks focused solely on domestic UK travel, usually weekend trips within a couple of hours of London. As the company grew, it continued collecting email addresses, which ultimately became the coin of the realm.
“We had this big database of golf travelers. Where else can we send them?” explains Grave. “We started adding new destinations like France, Spain and Portugal.”
Growth in the UK, however, had its limits.
“There are four million golfers in the UK,” says Grave. “We always had the ambition to expand, and the U.S. and Canada are the world’s largest golf market with over 30 million golfers.
“That’s seven times the size of the UK market. And we speak the same language.”
All You Need Is Love …. and the 2012 PGA Championship
You could say the 2012 PGA Championship at Kiawah Island was Golfbreaks’ Ed Sullivan Show moment. Co-founder Hemsworth visited the tournament as a guest of the South Carolina Tourism Board and watched Rory win his second major. But it was the crowd that made the biggest impression.
“He came back and said he’d never seen so many golfers in one place in his life,” says Grave. “That’s what got the momentum going.”
It was decided that it would be Grave, whose wife was American, who would move to the U.S. and lead this new British Invasion. He set up shop in South Carolina.
“We soon realized we didn’t have the budget to penetrate a market this size so we had to find some partners,” says Grave. “We developed a good partnership with NBC and with GolfNow, who had purchased an online tee time service we had set up in the UK.”
That’s about the time the PGA Tour took notice of Golfbreaks. Its New Ventures division was looking to expand into golf travel.
“They did their research and came to us as being one of the leading global golf travel players,” says Grave. “We formalized the agreement in 2019. They’re a 20 percent stakeholder in our business, and that’s when we became Golfbreaks by PGA Tour.
“That gave us huge credibility. We could utilize their marketing assets, which gave us even greater reach.”
Baby, You’re a Rich Man, So Why Use a Golf Trip Provider?
We Americans are committed do-it-yourself types. Just visit a Home Depot on a Saturday morning.
That mentality also applies to organizing golf breaks (I’m starting to like the phrase). But as it is for that bathroom remodel, sometimes it pays to hire a professional.
“Our service is to take a lot of the weight off your shoulders and make it a seamless process,” says Patrick Tarantino, Golfbreaks’ U.S. sales manager. “This isn’t used car sales where you have to put lipstick on a pig. It’s about what fits your needs and achieving that for the best price.”
The biggest reason DIYers want to do it themselves is to save money. But Tarantino insists he can put together a golf trip for you that will cost you the same, or more likely a little less, than if you did all the organizing yourself.
Which simply does not compute.
“We find U.S. consumers assume they’ll be paying a premium if they use a service like ours,” explains Grave. “But with the volumes we do, we can negotiate great rates, include our margin and still come in at a price point that’s the same or even slightly better. We’re kind of like a wholesaler in that respect.”
“We check availability and we know maintenance dates,” adds Tarantino. “We can advise people on where and when to go.”
Golfbreaks says its most popular destinations are Scottsdale, Ariz., and Florida, with California and South Carolina rounding out its top four.
“We have kind of an 80/20 thing where 80 percent of our business goes into 20 percent of our venues,” says Tarantino. “But the only bias we have is toward value. We want to get our customers the best bang for their buck.”
You Say Stop, and I Say Go, Go, Go …
Whether you use Golfbreaks by PGA Tour, a different organizer or do it yourself, Tarantino believes it pays to look for under-the-radar destinations. If that’s that’s your cup of tea, he says don’t sleep on Alabama and the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.
“It’s 27 courses and it’s really impressive. The quality of golf, the scenery, the elevation changes, the river and lakes. I don’t think it gets as much attention as it should.”
The only downside is the courses are spread out, with two or three courses in each city. For instance, there are two championship courses and a short course at the Grand National Resort in Auburn-Opelika, then it’s an hour’s drive to the three courses at the Capitol Hill facility outside Montgomery.
“It’s not as convenient as a resort,” he says. “But as a pure golf experience, it’s pretty special.”
While Scotland and Ireland are true bucket list destinations, Praddow says there are amazing places to play outside of St Andrews, Ballybunion or Old Head.
“The Scottish Highlands have unbelievable scenery and fantastic golf that’s half the price of St Andrews and others,” he says. “Then there’s the Liverpool-Southport area, with three Open Championship courses plus 15 more hidden gems.”
“I’m a links guy and, for me, nothing touches Ireland for links golf,” adds Grave. “Something like 25 percent of the world’s true links golf courses are in Ireland.
“If I were to pick an area, it would be northwest Ireland. It’s a bit like Alabama in that you’ve got to spend two nights here and two nights there. But it’s my dream trip.”
There’s a Fog Upon LA …
There are a few destinations Golfbreaks by PGA Tour doesn’t offer. Bandon and Whistling Straits are noticeably absent from the Golfbreaks website.
“A few big-name resorts, because their season is so short, get such a high demand of direct business,” says Grave. “Those venues aren’t willing to give us wholesale rates and we wouldn’t get the availability we need because they’re so rammed full. We’d just frustrate our customers.”
You will, however, find trips to Pebble Beach, TPC Sawgrass and other PGA Tour destinations.
“We’re expanding our destinations every year,” adds Praddow. “Our big focus at the moment is the Caribbean. Jamaica came online earlier this year and we’re looking at the Bahamas, Bermuda and Barbados. The Dominican Republic is one of our main centers.”
As with any golf trip provider, Golfbreaks says October through May are its busiest months. That’s driven by northern snowbirds looking to get out of the winter. However, deals can be had if you are willing to fly south for the summer.
“There are some amazing deals in Florida and Arizona in the summer,” says Praddow. “Prices can drop 75 percent.”
“It’s the most affordable time to play the big names,” adds Grave. “As long as you don’t mind playing in 100-degree heat.”
The Magical Mystery (Golf) Tour Is Hoping to Take You Away …
The original Fab Four stayed together for eight years after Ringo joined up. Golfbreaks by PGA Tour just celebrated its 25th year in business, 23 since its Ringo (Grave) joined the band in 2000.
Currently, Golfbreaks by PGA Tour has 200 employees worldwide, 36 are here in the U.S. The company books trips for over 230,000 golfers each year. Those golf breaks (it’s catching on) can run as low as $200 to as high as $5,000. The average U.S. domestic trips runs around $1,300, while the average UK/Ireland trip averages $3,500. Pebble and St Andrews are their most expensive destinations.
Like most of the travel industry, Golfbreaks took a haymaker to the chin during COVID-19. The lockdowns in Europe meant no domestic travel for three months and no international travel for nearly a year.
“Overnight we lost 50 percent of our business in the UK,” says Praddow. “We just had to hang on as long as we could.”
But travel, like the rest of the golf industry, enjoyed a massive post-pandemic boom. Praddow calls it “revenge travel.”
“We’ve seen it on both sides of the pond,” he says. “It’s softened slightly since then but it’s still holding. People value their travel because they remember what it was like when they couldn’t.”
“What good came out of COVID?” asks Grave. “It’s what people value. They value time with family, time with friends and time away.”
And if you add golf into that time away with family and friends? Well then, baby, you’re a rich man indeed.
Because as the song says, “Goo goo g’joob.”
Which, I believe, is Walrus for “take a golf trip now.”
