Watson, Carolinas Golf Group Back on Course

 By PATRICK JONES

When it comes to making a name for himself in golf, both as a player and a businessman, High Point native Roger Watson has nothing left to prove.

With a club in his hand, he was an All-American at High Point University. Watson won back-to-back National PGA Club Professional Championships in 1974 and 1975, including a sudden-death playoff win over Sam Snead in the ’74 event. He won the Carolinas PGA Championship in 1975 and 1976. As a non-exempt player, Watson has strolled fairways in PGA Tour and Senior PGA Tour events with many of the game’s greats.

With a club under his management, Watson, who turns 60 this July, has been a force for decades among North Carolina’s golf course owners and operators. He has been involved in the construction, management and ownership of some of the most successful courses in the Triangle and other parts of the Carolinas.

Watson made his arrival on the Triangle scene in the late ’60s at Cary’s MacGregor Downs, where he spent more than a decade in various capacities. His forays into ownership have included several partnerships, most notably the Carolinas Golf Group (CGG), which came into existence in 1990.

CGG purchased Lochmere in 1990, constructed and opened Devils Ridge in Holly Springs in ’91, purchased Nags Head Golf Links in ’93, built and then opened The Neuse in Clayton in ’94, built Advance’s Oak Valley Golf Club in ’95, constructed The Currituck Club on the Outer Banks in ’96, and opened the Kiskiack Golf Club in Williamsburg, Va., in ’97.

After an intense and successful run, the CGG sold interests in all of its properties to another golf ownership group for $60 million in ’98.

Watson had nothing left to prove to anyone – except, perhaps, himself.

He could have easily chosen to call it a career and found a lot more time to work on his game – most likely at Wildwood Green in North Raleigh, the family-owned course he still operates with his son Chip, who serves as general manager and director of golf.   

But after a short stop at the turn, Watson decided he was energized enough to take another tour of the business side of the golf layout.

“I had no intentions of permanently getting out of the golf business,” said Watson. “I had been looking for opportunities and I felt like the golf market was going to get overbuilt and there would be a lot of opportunity to get back in in the future at some point.” 

That time came in 2001.

“I kept looking at different opportunities and scenarios and last fall a lot of things started happening in the golf business where the big operators were not doing very well,” he said. “With the consolidations, they began to sell off their portfolios. Also, some individual operators – who got into the game, put a lot of money in and did not realize the amount of competition – began to look to sell.”

Waston wrote a business plan, picked up the phone to his former partners, and Carolinas Golf Group, the sequel, was born. The management group includes his 35-year-old son Chip, David Brooks, and consultants Ralph James and Roger Willis.

The CGG’s first forays back into the golf business were on the construction side. The company, working with architect Rees Jones, built Old Chatham in Chapel Hill. They also were key in the renovation effort of Pine Hollow in Clayton and constructed Skybrook in Charlotte. South Harbor on Oak Island is their latest course currently under construction.

In recent months, the CGG has become the management overseer for Myrtle Beach courses Carolina Shores, Cypress Bay and Colonial Charters. Wake Forest Golf Club and the family-owned Wildwood Green are now also under the CGG umbrella.

One of the signature elements of a CGG course is its adherence to the Total Quality Management (TQM) program. It is an operational philosophy created by the company that applies proactive principles to customer service and staff management.

Watson and James, a director of FMI Management Consultants in Raleigh, came up with golf’s version of the TQM philosophy.

“Ralph and I started talking about how to apply better customer satisfaction to the golf business,” said Watson. “We realized it is an ongoing process. It’s applying logic to your customer service to get customer satisfaction. It’s stating that this is what I’m going to give you for this amount of money, doing what you say you are going to do on time, every time and with no defects. That’s the process.”

Watson got his start in the industry under Buck Adams at the Country Club of North Carolina in Pinehurst. Adams was known for being, in Watson’s words, “one of the leaders in placing young men in the golf business, training them and then putting them in head golf professional positions across the Southeast.”

Adams trained his underlings to smile, remember names and to effectively deal with people.

“Many parts of what Buck taught us in his training are in our Total Quality Management program today,” said Watson.

With its TQM system in place, CGG was chosen by the Carolinas PGA as having the section’s best management practices.

“We realized it was good when I got back from the Carolinas PGA meeting and had phone calls from about 50 people who called wanting to know more about our system,” said Chip Watson.

The younger Watson called the TQM system “proactive” management on both the customer side and on the staff management side.

“On the customer side, we are constantly getting input from sending out surveys, doing customer evaluations, and then following up with customers,” he said. “We have charts to monitor our progress. For example, if we get rated poorly on our greens one month, it’s charted and posted in our foyer right out front for everybody to see and steps are in place to correct the problem.

“We do customer feedback evaluations every day,” he added. “If there is a problem, we call the customer within 24 hours and talk to them about it. By following up, you can pinpoint if there is a real problem that needs correcting and you can turn a bad comment into a loyal customer. Customers will know that you care about them and your course is where they’ll choose to continue to play.”

Misplace a pitching wedge at a CGG course and the staff will do everything but call out the National Guard to help you retrieve it, according to Eric Stevens, the head professional at Wake Forest Golf Club, the CGG’s most recent addition.

“A lot of courses just stack up lost and found items,” said Stevens. “We make every effort to make sure that the customer gets it back. That’s somebody’s $80 club. We have a lost and found board where we write down everything reported lost. We get the customer’s name, address, phone number, e-mail address, description of the item, where they might have left it – things like that. 

“When we find it, we’ll call them up and maybe even make the extra step to hop in the car and drive it over to them at their business,” added Stevens. “You show people that you care and you’ll go the extra mile for them, they’re going to come back and you’ve won a customer. That’s an example of the Total Quality Management system on a very small scale, but something as simple as that can make a world of difference.”

On the staff side of the TQM system, “everyone is accountable,” according to Chip Watson. “We have a checklist system of everything we do in a year, broken down by employee areas. It covers everything from checking the mail to doing a depreciation schedule to setting up the employee Christmas party.

“All the checklists are posted on the wall,” he added. “You can check if something has been missed and solve the problem before the cat is out of the bag.”

One of the company’s driving philosophies is to provide the highest quality golfing experience at a price point that the playing public can afford. You can read that line verbatim from their marketing brochure. But they also seem to embrace it and live it.

It’s also good business.

 “The CGG’s goal is to produce a cost-effective golf facility that gives you a $200 course experience for $35 to $45,” said Stevens of Wake Forest Golf Club. “They’re looking to create value for your dollar. That seems to bring people back and they’re bringing their friends and guests. That’s what it’s all about. It’s about treating people nice and knowing them and giving them a little extra bang for their buck.”

That’s a nice perspective to any golfer who has ever received a $35 to $45 course experience for $200. It’s another way CGG has tried to separate and differentiate itself from the competition.

“Carolinas Golf Group has been almost everything in the golf business,” said Roger Watson. “We are a little bit of a unique golf company. We have built and managed our own construction processes, we have put together development deals, we have leased golf courses, we have joint ventured and we have acquired. We’ve about done it all.”

When it comes to the game that has defined much of his life…so has Roger Watson.