352: Grand Cayman Golfing w/ Jeffrey Sauvage, GM of North Sound Golf Club

Transcript

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Interestingly enough, we just recently in the last two and a half years started recruiting our golf professional staff, primarily from the UK, and that has been hugely successful.

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Primarily before that it was mostly American kids that were coming down and although that represents most of the tourist traffic, our membership is very diverse from around the world and actually very few Americans, and so we wanted the professional staff that was more representative of our membership base.

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We have a lot from the UK and so we brought a couple over from England.

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We've got two kids that have recently come over from Scotland.

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They've all been hugely successful and it just made us more diverse and I think the membership base and the golfers are appreciate that.

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Hey everyone, welcome back to Private Club Radio, your source for news, trends, updates and conversations all in the world of private golf and country clubs.

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Whether you're new to the industry, welcome.

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Or a seasoned professional, welcome back.

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I'm your host, denny Corby.

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Thank you all for being here joining us listening.

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In this episode I get to chat with general manager of North Sound Golf and Country Club and I chatted with Jeffrey Savage, the general manager of North Sound Golf Club in Grand Cayman.

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I was going down there for a little R&R, for a little scuba trip, and I reached out and he welcomed me and said come on in.

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So I got to do a fun interview with him as we drove around the course.

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So I miked us up, took out the camera, so if you're listening you can go online and watching.

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If you're watching, obviously you're watching, but we drove around the course and just chit-chatted about life management and what it's like being one of two golf courses on Grand Cayman.

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It's the only public one.

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The other one is private and it's a part of the Ritz.

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So this is Cayman's premier 18-hole golf course.

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So come right along with me and Jeff Savage.

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So you're not from Jersey, but you were out there.

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Yeah, I spent five years in Jersey, originally from the Pacific Northwest, just outside of Seattle.

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Okay, so much better weather here.

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Much better weather, yes, very fortunate to be down here versus the Northwest, but it has been.

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I moved out of the Northwest kind of in the late 90s, so it's been 25 years since I lived up there.

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I still have a bunch of family up there so we go back every year, and you've been here for how long?

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First, came in 2013.

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We were here for about five years.

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We left for a couple years and realized how good we had it down here and have since returned.

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Why did you leave in the first place?

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I mean, did you get a little jaded, Like was it?

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You're kind of like, all right, this is.

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A couple of reasons.

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One we've been here for five years and in my career I've never worked more than one place for five years, so I was just ready for kind of a new challenge.

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And at the time my girlfriend who is now my wife she didn't have rights to live and work on the island so she would have to come and go on a regular basis, and she's from the Northwest as well.

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So we just decided to go try something different.

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And she's a big diver, so she loves this place.

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And then we realized how fortunate we were to be here and we decided to come back.

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And now does she have to go back and forth?

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No, now that we're married, she has rights to live and work on island and she's a very successful project manager for a corporate services company on island, so she's doing remarkably well.

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And what did you have to do to get like officiated, to be on here?

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Yeah, sure, everybody, all the expats that live on the island.

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They have to get rights to work.

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Basically it's a permit to work.

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So I have a grant permit that allows me to live and work on the island.

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And how long does that last?

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They're two-year permits and then you reapply for a permit every two years and we have the ability to stay on island up to seven years with a two-year extension.

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So we could stay here up to nine years without trying to get a permanent residency and then at the end of that nine years, if you don't try to go for permanent residency, you have to leave island for at least a year and then you can come back and that time picker starts all over Is that the states, or is that the island?

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That's the island.

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Okay, yep States doesn't care.

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No, they don't Just get out, keep paying your taxes, exactly, exactly.

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And now is this uh, is it always fairly consistently busy here?

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yeah, it is um, we'll do about 40 000 rounds, uh, throughout the year, so they keep us pretty busy.

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It's a little bit busier in the season, which is really kind of november to kind of may-ish, so we're at the tail end of the busier season.

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But primarily we're a members club.

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We have 500-plus members and they support the club year-round.

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They're the ones who most live and work on the island.

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Some are retired, so they keep us pretty busy throughout the year.

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Member-owned, private-owned, privately-owned yeah, which is great.

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I've worked at a couple of several member equity clubs and this structure here is it is preferable.

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So we're driving around the front nine now.

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It will kind of end over on the back nine, which is on the north sound.

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I'm sure you'll make it out to stingray city uh, we did not.

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No, we did not.

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Oh, geez, um, we did three dives.

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We were here, uh, we did, uh, what was it the something?

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The the not wreck wreck kitty wake?

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Yeah, yeah, we did that.

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Uh, another one over there.

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Then we did the actual wreck um the one boat that they dropped a couple years ago, yeah, um, and then we did a night dive, oh wow, on saturday.

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Um, yeah, so, nothing crazy.

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What's, uh, what's some of the challenges?

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Steve, how are you?

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Yeah, absolutely Just checking up on the golfers out here.

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Devin, how are you?

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What are some of the challenges of being the only game in town?

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Yeah, which congrats on having so many reviews, and so many good reviews, sure meaning for being the one of the only games in town.

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It's very easy to slip, or I shouldn't say slip, but it's very easy just to go, ah, whatever sure so to have so many reviews and so many good reviews.

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Yeah, well done, yeah uh well, thank you for that.

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We're very fortunate.

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Uh, being the only 18 hole course on the end is certainly, I tell people it's a blessing and a curse.

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It's nice to be the only game in town, but also people hold you to a different standard being the only game in town and I always felt that some type of competition, another option for golfers would be great, because then I think people would, they would have a different reference point when they kind of compared us to maybe some other courses.

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Yeah, and then also, if we ever want to market this place as a golf destination, we need some more golf product on the island so that nobody comes here for golf.

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It's a diving, you know, like you came here for diving, nobody comes here to play golf and it's really kind of an afterthought once people get here oh there's a golf course, oh, we'll go play when.

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If we were a golf destination and had multiple products, then we could market to some of that golf destination travel.

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Ten years ago when I first got here, I thought, okay, we're going to focus nothing but the cruise ships and then after about six months of banging my head against that door that there was literally no business driven from the cruise shippers, we realized that probably the best thing to do is focus on the locals and the membership base, and so we've doubled the size of the membership in the last 10 years, really, yeah, damn that's awesome.

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Yep very proud of that fact that we've been able to grow that piece of the business and really that is the main source of our play is the membership, and the membership rounds are augmented with the visitors stay over visitors throughout the year.

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But primarily we're a members club.

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500 members will do 40,000 rounds.

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Probably 80% of those rounds will be from the members and the tourists are primarily here in the off season, although we get a few tourists from the texas market in the in the summertime when they're trying to beat the heat.

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But so our membership keeps us busy throughout the whole year so we don't quite experience that seasonality that you might maybe up north, where a lot of the clubs have to shut down in the wintertime concert golf Partners is changing the game, one club at a time.

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You guessed it Concert Golf Partners.

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Why do you think the cruise ship stuff failed?

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Because that sounds like it would be, like all these people, these older people on the cruise ship.

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Oh, of course they would like to come and do a couple of holes nine holes while the wives go do whatever Interesting.

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It is, and it's been a huge learning experience for me.

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I think a couple of challenges.

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One is they're usually only here for six to say nine hours, so that you know by the time you get off the boat and there's not a dock so they have to take tenders in.

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By the time you get off the boat, get here, it's a it can be a full day event.

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And then also a lot of those cruises are, I don't know, seven to 700 to a thousand dollars for a-night cruise, and if we're going to charge an appropriate fee with rental clubs, you could pay upwards of half the value of the total cruise.

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And so my sense is the cruise industry has changed.

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It's a little bit more of a kind of a value excursion now than it used to be.

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You know, I would say 25 years ago it was a luxury experience where now it's a little bit different.

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And so I just think the market, the travelers on those big ships are not really looking for that kind of that high-end, expensive excursion that they may have, say, 25, 30 years ago.

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Yeah, so I think those two things is really we'll see a couple, you know, we might get throughout the year.

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We might get 150 rounds from the cruise ships, but that's a nominal figure when you're doing 40,000 rounds.

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Well, and they're probably making more money off selling other stuff Yep.

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Getting higher commissions Yep.

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And we talked to several cruise lines and tried to work something out, but by the time they wanted to add in their excursion fees and you know, oh yeah, the prices were exorbitant.

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So just, it was never really a starter for us from the get-go.

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At least you tried.

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Yeah, absolutely, absolutely that's the one thing.

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Uh, it's been a common theme, a common uh topic on, on and with.

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You know, clubs and people and managers.

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Management is you have some that are always about change and others that, heaven forbid, they try something new and it doesn't work.

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Oh my goodness, yeah, exactly so now we crossed over, we're on the back nine.

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These are holes 15 and 16 here.

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So now we crossed over, we're on the back nine.

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These are holes 15 and 16 here, do you?

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have to be a member to own it, or do you have to be a member to own a house?

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Nope, they're completely separate.

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This is a completely separate development.

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What's membership cost here?

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There's a few different levels of membership.

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There's the all-in, where you don't pay any additional fees, and that's about $8,000 per year.

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That's in the US figure.

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And then there's a membership where you pay a cart fee each time you play.

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That's about $3,500.

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It's about $4,000 plus the cart fees.

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And then we sell seasonal membership, six-month consecutive, which is about $2,200.

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Oh, that's not bad, plus card fees.

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So yeah, it's fairly reasonable.

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You know it's not.

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I wouldn't say it's comparable with the other prices on this island.

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It can be quite high, as we discussed a little bit.

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Yes, I think there's pretty good value, particularly for that all-in membership.

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If you're playing a couple times a week, you know that per round cost is quite low and I would say reasonable to other markets that I've worked in yeah, and now is the Ritz open to the public.

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They're primarily a members club and open to the resort.

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I do believe within 24 hours.

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If you make a phone call over there and they have open inventory they would book you a tea time.

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But primarily it's a private club over there, with resort guests and members only Gotcha.

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Has a whole island been this expensive?

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Has it always been super expensive?

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We've been to so many, for whatever reason.

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If you say something whatever, I can just cut it out, but I don't think we're going to get any crazy discussions.

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We've done all the the islands except for this one and we're like holy fuck, like it's really expensive.

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Um, it's always been.

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As far as I know now, my, my reference point only goes back to 2013, when I first arrived on island and I did some research and and it was, you know, one of the most expensive places, uh, in the world to live at that time.

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Yeah, you know, comparable to new york and tokyo and san francisco and switzerland and other places like that.

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Um, now me, as an american, we're, we don't pay taxes.

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We still have to file taxes.

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There's a, there's a foreign in earned income credit that, uh, that we can utilize.

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That we don't pay taxes on the first, whatever amount that is, and in the golf industry, obviously, we don't come close to that threshold.

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So we're very fortunate that we're able to save a few dollars.

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Even though it is an expensive place to live.

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The fact of not having to pay any income tax is certainly a benefit for us, yeah, and it helps to have both of us working to defray some of the costs as well.

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Yeah, so what's the golf association that you guys have on the island?

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So it's the Cayman Islands Golf Association.

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Their job is basically to promote golf on the island.

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They do a lot of the Just promote, you Just promote me guys.

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They run some events throughout the year and they support the national teams that go play in the regional events.

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Every year there's the Caribbean Amateur and Caribbean Amateur Junior Championship.

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They're involved in that, supporting the national teams.

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They put together some competitions where some of the locals will qualify and go play in the Caribbean Championships, and then again, promoting the game on the island is a big piece of what they do.

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Well, and you guys had a junior win something right a few years ago.

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2022?

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Yeah, Something, yeah, Some major award.

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Yeah, sure, a big award.

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Aaron Jarvis won the Latin America Championship a few years ago and that qualified him to get to play in the Masters the Open Championship.

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So that was wonderful to see.

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Just recently we had another kid that kind of came up through the ranks.

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His name is Justin Hastings.

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He's playing for San Diego State right now.

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He played in the Puerto Rico Open a few weeks back, sponsored by Grant Thornton.

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And then we have another gal that's currently playing at the University of Oklahoma, holly McLean.

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So for such a small island, there's some very accomplished kids.

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Yeah, I call them kids.

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They're young adults now that have really, you know, we've known them since they were 10 years old and now they're traveling the world playing these golf courses.

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It's, it's, it's pretty, pretty amazing to see.

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It really is, and and they're wonderful golfers, but they're better people.

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All, all of those kids.

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They're such good kids, good people.

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They come from good families.

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It's neat to see that.

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It's impressive for such a small place it is Producing so much talent.

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Yep.

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Then we have a fair few of the local golfers that haven't done the college thing that play here.

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Aaron's brother is another one.

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He's a very accomplished golfer.

00:18:44.718 --> 00:18:53.660
He's won the Island Championship several times, has also played in the Latin America Championship, so there's quite a few good golfers on this island.

00:18:53.660 --> 00:18:57.094
So this is the.

00:18:57.094 --> 00:18:58.699
We're driving up on the 11th green.

00:18:58.699 --> 00:19:01.297
Coming back this way is number 12.

00:19:01.297 --> 00:19:02.635
This is our signature hole.

00:19:02.635 --> 00:19:08.182
It looks out to the north sound, Stingray City, Rum Point, East End.

00:19:08.182 --> 00:19:13.519
This is kind of the money shot on the golf course.

00:19:14.060 --> 00:19:14.883
And it's a challenge.

00:19:14.883 --> 00:19:20.403
It's usually right into the wind and it can stretch out to about 230 yards from the back tees, par 3.

00:19:20.403 --> 00:19:24.601
So it's a beautiful hole, but certainly one of the tougher holes on the golf course.

00:19:27.010 --> 00:19:31.001
We were at dinner Sunday night at Blue Cilantro.

00:19:31.001 --> 00:19:41.479
There was a guy I don't know if he was here with maybe one of his work people with that conference or something, but this dude would not stop talking and he was talking about the winds here on this hole.

00:19:41.499 --> 00:19:41.558
Wow.

00:19:46.431 --> 00:19:47.335
Yeah, this is a shot.

00:19:50.090 --> 00:19:55.939
So I don't know if you can see, but kind of off to the left just a little bit, you can see two or three boats kind of together.

00:19:55.939 --> 00:20:00.798
That's Stingray City, Okay, that's where folks go out, and there's a sandbar.

00:20:00.798 --> 00:20:03.317
It's, you know, three, four feet deep.

00:20:03.317 --> 00:20:05.916
You can stand there and stingrays are swimming all around.

00:20:05.916 --> 00:20:07.260
That's cool.

00:20:07.260 --> 00:20:12.470
So yeah, if I'm ever having a tough day, I'll drive out here.

00:20:12.651 --> 00:20:13.695
There's not a lot of tough days.

00:20:14.431 --> 00:20:16.157
Living and working in Cayman, trust me.

00:20:16.157 --> 00:20:22.196
But this is really a tranquil, peaceful Kind of puts things into perspective.

00:20:23.790 --> 00:20:26.175
You work at an adult playground.

00:20:26.175 --> 00:20:29.723
Exactly, you're exactly right, very fortunate.

00:20:29.723 --> 00:20:32.338
I forget who said that once to me on a show.

00:20:32.338 --> 00:20:35.137
We work for an adult playground.

00:20:35.137 --> 00:20:36.020
Like it's hard.

00:20:36.020 --> 00:20:40.240
The worst days, yeah, have any kids?

00:20:41.082 --> 00:20:41.423
I don't.

00:20:41.423 --> 00:20:47.461
My wife has an adult son, so it makes it a little bit easier on us to be away from the family.

00:20:49.130 --> 00:20:50.797
It was never part of the plan.

00:20:52.009 --> 00:20:52.872
That's a good question.

00:20:52.872 --> 00:20:56.759
I think when I was younger it was, and then just kind of things happen.

00:20:56.759 --> 00:20:59.523
Life happens and I focused on my career for many years.

00:20:59.523 --> 00:21:06.263
I just got married for the first time three years ago, so it's been kind of a new experience for me.

00:21:06.263 --> 00:21:11.382
So just kind of things happen, I guess, for whatever reason.

00:21:13.451 --> 00:21:15.357
No, I didn't mean to ask in like a personal area.

00:21:15.458 --> 00:21:15.739
Oh no.

00:21:17.753 --> 00:21:18.154
How about you?

00:21:18.154 --> 00:21:18.615
You got kids.

00:21:18.615 --> 00:21:20.622
Nope, nope, not really.

00:21:20.622 --> 00:21:22.316
So that's sort of why I asked too.

00:21:22.316 --> 00:21:25.720
I was like, oh, because it's like what's not really a priority for us.

00:21:25.720 --> 00:21:27.876
It was never like a thing.

00:21:27.876 --> 00:21:28.740
So.

00:21:30.411 --> 00:21:32.415
I have six nieces and nephews.

00:21:32.415 --> 00:21:33.779
That that's plenty.

00:21:33.779 --> 00:21:36.976
Yep absolutely Love spending time with them.

00:21:36.976 --> 00:21:39.355
You can give them back.

00:21:39.355 --> 00:21:43.124
Exactly Fill them up with sugar and give them back.

00:21:45.711 --> 00:21:46.674
How big of a team do you have?

00:21:48.058 --> 00:21:50.836
We have about just over 30 full-time equivalents.

00:21:51.097 --> 00:21:57.195
Okay, you say 4,000 rounds of golf, or 40,000?

00:21:58.157 --> 00:21:59.642
40,000.

00:21:59.642 --> 00:22:00.343
It's interesting.

00:22:00.343 --> 00:22:12.381
When I first got here in 2013, it was the rule of 18s we did about 18,000 rounds, we had about 180 members and the revenue was about 1.8.

00:22:12.381 --> 00:22:18.982
Just to see the growth over the last 10 years, it's been remarkable.

00:22:20.009 --> 00:22:21.356
What do you attribute?

00:22:21.356 --> 00:22:22.796
What do you think some of that comes from?

00:22:22.796 --> 00:22:23.425
You can be selfish.

00:22:23.425 --> 00:22:24.532
Yeah, sure, I work for Troon Golf for about 13, 14 years.

00:22:24.478 --> 00:22:25.648
Attribute what do you think some of that comes from?

00:22:25.648 --> 00:22:27.005
Yes, and you could be selfish, yeah, sure, no, I I do think.

00:22:27.005 --> 00:22:43.076
Um, so I worked for true golf for about 13, 14 years, yeah, and I learned the business of golf working within that company, and so we took the model and brought it down here and and treated it as a business, but also one that was focused on the service experience.

00:22:43.076 --> 00:22:57.423
So we combined those two things, and I'm not sure that they'd really seen that down here before, and the ownership group has always been hugely supportive of what we try to do.

00:22:57.423 --> 00:23:02.882
They provide us the resources and the tools to execute that vision and that strategy.

00:23:02.882 --> 00:23:08.502
And then we've been able to recruit some very good quality associates.

00:23:09.210 --> 00:23:24.556
You know, working in a management company, you meet a lot of people and you get some pretty good contacts, and so you use those contacts to contact their contacts, and so the reach within the industry is quite broad and we brought down some really, really good quality individuals.

00:23:24.556 --> 00:23:37.690
Interestingly enough, we just recently, in the last two and a half years, started recruiting our golf professional staff, primarily from the UK, and that has been hugely successful.

00:23:37.690 --> 00:23:55.767
Primarily before that, it was mostly American kids that were coming down, and although that represents most of the tourist traffic, our membership is very diverse from around the world and actually very few Americans, and so we wanted the professional staff that was more representative of our membership base.

00:23:55.767 --> 00:23:59.116
We have a lot from the UK and so we brought a couple over from England.

00:23:59.116 --> 00:24:03.035
We've got two kids that have recently come over from Scotland.

00:24:03.296 --> 00:24:17.903
They've all been hugely successful and it's just made us more diverse and I think the membership base and the golfers appreciate that I was just going to say to come here and to have such an eclectic golf community and group around you.

00:24:18.163 --> 00:24:21.680
Yeah, and we've never had any females on staff.

00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:36.609
The pro from England and one of the pros from Scotland are both female and they've again provided tremendous value for not only the operation but to represent the female lady members.

00:24:36.609 --> 00:24:43.558
They appreciate that even though they do lessons for guys, kids, the whole very broad reach there as well.

00:24:43.730 --> 00:24:47.059
From what I read, you guys have a nice ladies community that's growing as well.

00:24:47.340 --> 00:24:47.560
Yeah.

00:24:47.560 --> 00:24:53.192
Yeah, we have a pretty active ladies golfing group In season.

00:24:53.192 --> 00:25:09.118
We'll do a regular event every Tuesday morning for them and they always appreciate that In season we get a lot more of the seasonality visitors that are retired more because primarily most of our members still work and so they mostly play on the weekends.

00:25:09.118 --> 00:25:14.882
But the seasonal visitors are have a little bit more flexibility in their schedule so we'll have a good group on tuesday.

00:25:14.882 --> 00:25:19.999
We've the tuesday ladies are out there this morning all the there's only, I think, two or three groups out there this morning.

00:25:19.999 --> 00:25:33.336
Most of our seasonal visitors have since gone back north, kind of of around Easter is when they start heading back to the north northern part of the states and Canada is where most of our seasonal members will come from.

00:25:33.396 --> 00:25:36.363
All right, sir, appreciate you.

00:25:36.462 --> 00:25:40.520
Oh yeah, Anything else you want to say I think that's good.

00:25:42.631 --> 00:25:43.675
Hope you all enjoyed that.

00:25:43.675 --> 00:25:46.798
I had a fun time chatting and driving around with jeff.

00:25:46.798 --> 00:25:48.854
Jeff, thank you so much for everything.

00:25:48.854 --> 00:25:50.037
Really appreciate it.

00:25:50.037 --> 00:25:52.342
Hope you all are enjoying the content.

00:25:52.342 --> 00:26:03.013
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