Newsletter February 2024

Golf Legend,

If you are a new member, this is the monthly GolfLists newsletter for February. We had a great response in January, every reply helps your email provider trust our emails, which helps get through spam filters; so thank you for responding. We have three prize winners this month, so don't miss out!

Perhaps to tempt you in to a reply this month, you could let me know the best winter golf course near you, the one that rarely closes and drains like a sieve. I can add these to our growing Winter Wonderland Collection. Never has this collection been more needed than this winter!

Contents

1. Monthly Update on Website and Community Progress
2. Features on our members' adventures, or any great golf deals we come across in our research
3. Feature Roadmap Overview
4. Monthly prize draw winners announced

1. Monthly Update

Metrics:

• 13.7k >> 19.3k Google Search Impressions || 407 >> 500 Clicks from Google Search
• 77 >> 104 GL Club Members || 3 GL >> 3 GL Ambassadors
• Not a metric really, but just cool that Rick Shiels retweeted a Golf Lists Tweet and mentioned it in his latest podcast on his golf struggles. Follow us on X @golflists, if you are on there!

Overview:

Welcome to our 27 new GL Club Members!

One of my favourite things about new golfers signing up to the GL Club is seeing which golf club they are a member of. As a golf course nerd, when I see members join from legendary clubs all over the British Isles it's really exciting thinking about what this network can become for you all.

To give you a flavour, with a purposeful South to North geographical spread, just this month we have had members from St Mellion, Hollinwell, Royal Birkdale and Cruden Bay join the GL Club.

I also love seeing members join from courses, which locals know are gems but many haven't come across yet.

Courses like St Anne's Old Links in the North West, a frequent host of Rick Shiels videos; as well as Orsett near me, which is a rarely found, heathland course in Essex. I have skipped a number of other notable courses in this summary for brevity. But I hope the networks that expand out from Golf Lists, support our members' adventures playing the Top 100, but also local gems.

I believe almost every golf course has some feature that makes it worth playing at least once.

Thought of the Month: Why is booking a DIY golf trip at top golf courses so hard?

I recently booked a long weekend golf trip in Hampshire and was reminded why I started Golf Lists. I often come away from this process thinking Golf Clubs actually don't want my money.

To be fair, golf is so popular at the moment, a lot of top golf clubs don't actually...

Restrictions on weekend tee times are understandable, but visitor days/times, twilight times, county card policies are different for every club; it is tricky to navigate.

If you figure out when you do want to play, you often get an unanswered phone and highly restricted advanced bookings. It is very hard to book a short weekend golf trip at "Top 1000 golf clubs"; and this is one area where Golf Lists aims to help.

In one search, you will be able to find the golf clubs that actually want your business, the times you can play, how far in advance you can book, and how much it will cost. It will take some time, but we will get there.

I used Golf Lists to find the courses to play in Hampshire and picked up plenty of self-feedback as to what works and what doesn't.

If we make this easier, I genuinely think these Friday - Sunday golf trips will become a lot more popular.

2. Member Shout Outs / Golf Deals

Member Shout Outs:

• Thanks to members who have offered to write about upcoming golf trips / course visits. I would love to publish your insights on GolfLists. Send me a draft whenever suits you.
• Congratulation to @ginger.golf on his best ever round, see if you recognise the course...
• Shout out to @1phys for getting his new Golf Lists cap on a football pitch during his physio duties. Given how many hats from different golf clubs are in your wardrobe, it's an honour.

Deals of the Month:

• Stoneham Golf Club does county card green fees for £85 in peak season. The website states it to be Monday, Tuesday and Thursday; but on booking a recent trip they have offered me that rate to me on Friday PM in September; which is great value in the context of Hampshire golf!

3. Feature Roadmap Overview

Gone live this month:

• "Green Fee Value" feature; this feature calculates the peak green fee value of all your "Played" courses.
  • So for example, our Played Course leader MichaelVerity has played 301 courses and the GFV is £30,340.
  • With guest fees etc. it is likely / hopeful the actual cost was a lot lower! But it's just a fun little feature.
• New look Navigation Menu, allows users to go to the County Ranking pages in one click direct from homepage (a bit like the old style Top 100 website). You can do this on mobile as well if you click into the "3 line" menu in the top right of the screen
  • NB: this isn't the most exciting change and was really time consuming, but it sets the site up to be a lot easier to navigate going forwards...
• New look "Lists" on web and mobile
  • The "table" style lists are being replaced with a more visual style list; where you can customise what information you want to show for a golf course.
  • This was a big decision but I know will pay dividends once we build the best UKI golf course information database in the world.
  • The key next steps to make this worthwhile are to upgrade the filters and map features and build out the database; so this becomes a really powerful resource for travelling golfers.
  • Generally, Lists are still a bit shabby and should be considered a Work In Progress!

Roadmap Development Priorities (public on our Discord page):

• Forms to allow members to incrementally update their home course information and earn Golf Lists Points
• Add more leaderboard views e.g. counties, collections, course style etc.
• Add 'newest course photos' slider on homepage
• Make homepage different if you are already a member
• Meet the Ambassadors Page
• Add Profile Photo upload option (you can send me a picture directly current)
• Enhance achievement badges and gamification on profile page
• Release basic practice facility database e.g. Top 100 England

4. Monthly prize draw winners announced

Congratulations! Our members below have all won a limited edition Adidas x GolfLists cap. Please respond to this email with your name and a delivery address and I will get them delivered to you asap. Better prizes are coming down the line also... There are no obvious GolfLists Ambassador of the this month, so swapped it for a prize for our 100th GL Club Member.

• markclelland95 has won the Contributor of the Month draw this month
  • Mark, a 7 handicap, member of Ballochmyle Golf Club showed extreme patience in helping me fix a few bugs in the Green Fee Value roll out - thanks Mark!
• EvMayell has won the 100th Golf Lists Member Prize
  • This one is fairly self-explanatory, but EvMayell is our winner, a 4 handicap, member of Orsett Golf Club in Essex. To the next hundred members!
• RLC296 has won the Random GL Member draw this month
  • RLC296, a +1 handicap, member of Piltdown Golf Club in Sussex, has won our random GL Member draw - congrats!
  • NB: To be eligible for this, you simply need to have updated your username and played courses list in the site; and the usernames are drawn at random.

That's it, thanks very much again, for giving GolfLists a try; and do contact us via the contact page or socials if you have any feedback!

All the best,
GolfLists.com