Make Your Wine and Nine Events Educational

Brian Bickford is the PGA director of golf at Val Halla Golf & Recreation Center in Cumberland, Maine.

Brian Bickford on the importance of making your wine and nine events educational:

While I was working my way through my PGA education courses, I decided to create a program to help grow the occasional women’s base at my facility. As a result, I created an educational five-week women’s Wine and Nine program. I targeted three types of women for participation: mothers, professionals and executives, and the newly retired. The program costs $89 per person and each week, we provide wine to the ladies during our session. For the first session, we don’t even touch golf clubs. I give a slideshow presentation and we discuss everything they may need to know about golf such as tee time reservations, a shopping list of what they will need to buy to play, getting around our facility, and so on. I also try to make the women as comfortable as possible and to break down any barriers as some of them view golf as a “man’s world.” We teach the ladies fundamentals on the range for the second and third sessions. For the fourth and fifth nights, we take the ladies out on the course to play a few holes, all while teaching them about course markings, the different sets of tee markers, driving the golf cars, the scorecard and where the bathrooms are on the course. The most important aspects of the on-course sessions are etiquette and safety. After each session, we gather in our grillroom to review the night and to have a social experience; many of the ladies stay for more wine and dinner. When the five sessions are complete, I give each participant a stemless wine glass with the Val Halla logo on it and a voucher for a free nine-hole round of golf.

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Joe Ferreira and Trevor England, PGA Assistant Golf Professionals at White Cliffs Country Club have found tremendous enjoyment in implementing the PGA Golf 2.0 Strategic Plan through its Get Golf Ready Program. The program has been a great success at the Cliffs. The program stresses the return to playing golf and engaging the 61 million lapsed golfers who still have interest in the game to return playing and to encourage new players to take up the game.

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