Allan Belden, the 2008 New England PGA Section Merchandiser of the Year for Private Facilities and the 2007 Massachusetts Chapter Golf Professional of the Year, is the PGA head professional at Worcester (Mass.) Country Club.

For our Member-Guest Invitational, we use a giant calligraphy scoreboard near the golf shop to update scores during the tournament, which features seven 9-hole matches. Because the 9th and 10th holes at our club are nowhere near the clubhouse, a lot of players in the tournament had no idea where they stood after matches despite the fact that we go around and collect scorecards throughout the tournament to update the big board. During the off-season, the committee posed the question whether we could add two scoreboards on opposite ends of the golf course to make sure that everyone saw the scores much quicker. The problem with this was that rewriting scores and additional staff is not efficient, and putting scoreboards out where there is not sufficient shelter would be a huge problem with bad weather. Our solution was to create a Twitter account and post a picture of the big scoreboard for each individual flight, so that players knew where they stood throughout the round. With a large field of players who almost exclusively operate off of their smartphones, the scores were much easier for everyone to see. What we found is that people who were leading signed on and followed our account as the week went on to find out where they stood. This also helped for our Men’s Club Championship, as friends and family would follow us to find out how everyone was playing.

For us, being able to efficiently update everyone’s score via Twitter is just another service and an added benefit that makes our tournament great. We have 128 spots for the Member-Guest and it gets sold out with a waiting list every single year, and having this scoring feature adds more excitement to the event. The Invitational is the highlight of the season for our members and their guests and this service helps us to raise the bar and ensure that we are exceeding expectations year after year.