Jamie Komancheck, a past Philadelphia PGA Section Assistant Golf Professional of the Year, is the PGA head professional at RiverCrest Golf Club and Preserve in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

Like many private clubs, RiverCrest Golf Club and Preserve has an extensive yearly schedule of tournaments. For the majority of these tournaments, we either provide merchandise or golf shop credit as prizes, which has led to over $50,000 in annual sales just from tournaments. Strong participation in the tournaments is vital to a successful golf operation for many facets. To drive participation, we try to provide a few unique events that are a little outside the box. The membership enjoys the casualness and variety of these events, which emphasize fun over competition. One of our most popular events is the Professional’s Revenge, which kicks off the schedule each year. It is a fun ABCD scramble event where the tees and hole locations are set up in unique places, and several staff members from various departments play along with the members.

Within the entry fee is $25 that is allocated to tournament prizes. We typically get 72–90 players in the event. We promote it as a fun event and guarantee every player to win a prize. The catch is that we pick out the prizes from the golf shop and they are not returnable. Over half the items are gag gifts of items that haven’t sold in the past year. When passing out the merchandise I make jokes about the gifts, which provides a lighthearted start to the season. By playing with the members, making the format fun to play and humorous during the award ceremony, we get the season off to a great start. And we clear out around $2,000 of merchandise that may have taken a while to sell.

If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly, please email jak@rivercrestgolfclub.com

Editor’s note: The above comments reflect the opinion and experiences of the submitting PGA Professional and are not endorsed by PGA Magazine or the PGA of America.