Experience matters for every kind of event, but the impact of a great — or potentially awful — experience is amplified when the average customer only attends once per year.
That is one of the challenges the PGA Tour’s operations team faces at every event, according to Director of Strategic Insights Zach Carlson.
While the PGA Tour is hosting nearly 50 tournaments in 2026, the average golf fan only attends one per year, and many will only visit the course for a single day. This differs from sports like hockey, baseball or basketball for which it’s common for fans to attend multiple games per season because they have more games to choose from.
“So if a fan does have a poor experience on site, chances are you’ll get another chance to make that right,” Carlson told CX Dive. “We don't really have that opportunity, so it puts a lot of pressure on us to make sure that everything is as good as it can possibly be and makes them want to come back next year.”
When events are few and far between, the experience has to be great from start to finish. The demands range from getting everyone where they want to be in a smooth and orderly fashion to efficiently resolving the problems that do crop up.
PGA Tour events host a wide range of fans, from families to businesspeople, according to Carlson. Some are there to watch their favorite golfers play, others just want to hang out with friends. As a result of such a varied attendance, the goal is to eliminate as much friction as possible for as many people as possible.
A lot of fans take a shuttle to the course, so the experience starts before customers even arrive at the golf course. From there, clear navigation and teams quickly acting on real-time feedback are essential to smooth operations.
The PGA Tour also makes sure it closes the loop whenever a customer reaches out to report a problem.
“Don't even listen for feedback if you're not going to do anything about it,” Carlson said.
It starts with navigation
Getting a crowd of fans to a golf course, then guiding them to the right hole on acres of land, can be a challenge.
“We've thought about that experience from start to finish,” Carlson said. “A lot of times you're taking a shuttle in. By the time you get to the main gate you're ready to go, and so signage is extremely important for making sure when you walk in that you have an idea of where you should go to find that experience you're looking for.”
A shuttle ride can be a key part of an experience, according to Shep Hyken, a customer service and experience expert. While the average person understands that a golf course doesn’t have the parking space to handle 20,000 fans, that doesn’t make a 10- to 15-minute bus ride feel like any less of a hassle.
The PGA Tour handles its shuttle rides well, according to Hyken.
Hyken knows from personal experience, too. While he was initially hesitant to attend a local event, the trip was smooth enough that it didn’t detract from the overall event experience.
“I dealt with it, and I was pleasantly surprised,” Hyken told CX Dive. “There weren't long lines to get on the bus. It was not difficult to get in and out.”
A lot of thought has been put into layouts and signage fans see once they arrive at the course, according to Carlson. Since customers have already spent time traveling on a shuttle, they should face minimal friction getting to the part of the course that interests them.
Technology has been a huge boon for the PGA Tour’s wayfinding efforts, according to Carlson. Signage is great for general guidance, but the PGA Tour mobile app can help fans track where their favorite golfers are on the course.
Always close the loop with customers
A good feedback loop provides customers a way to get in touch with the brand, which will then confirm when they’ve resolved the issue.
The PGA Tour tries to ensure every experience is smooth, but some problems are inevitable. The PGA’s goal is to minimize issues while correcting any inconvenience for the fans.
“Early on in the tournament week, you may not have the best idea from an operations standpoint of which concession areas need the most manpower,” Carlson said. “Obviously, you plan for it, but sometimes you'll notice this one particular beverage tent behind hole 17 is getting completely overloaded with fans because that's where they want to be for the day.”
It’s a poor experience when a fan has to wait in line for 15 minutes just to get a beer, Carlson said. To address such points of friction, tournament sites have QR codes that let fans submit feedback directly to the PGA Tour through its mobile app. The codes are “thoughtfully placed in the areas where people would most likely need them.”
“It goes directly to an operations team member who is sitting there seeing what comes in — seeing what needs attention, and making sure first and foremost they go and take care of it not only for that fan, but for all the fans,” Carlson said.
In the case of an overwhelmed concession stand, the first order of business is to get more people working that tent and reorganize the line to get the areas flowing again, according to Carlson.
The fan is kept in the loop as well, Carlson said. The PGA Tour confirms that the operations team has received their feedback, and once the problem has been resolved they let the customer know and might even offer a bonus to make up for the poor experience, such as a free beer.
“Any opportunity you get to close that loop with the people submitting feedback and show them that they were heard and something was done about this — that just encourages that process to continue with more fans and help improvements scale on each other,” Carlson said.
Customers want problems solved now
Golf courses cover a lot of ground, but rapid problem resolution remains essential even in the remote corners.
TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, is a particularly large course, according to Carlson. During a tournament earlier this year, operations missed routine service on the lone restroom behind the fourth hole — a location that would become extremely busy once the top players got there.
“It's actually a fantastic place to watch golf, but yeah, that's about the only restroom that you have in proximity to you for quite a while,” Carlson said. “So if that one is out of shape, that's just a really poor experience for everybody involved.”
Thankfully, the operations teams received a few requests early in the morning and solved the problem before the problem could get out of hand, according to Carlson.
Speed is one of the top priorities for any CX problem, according to Hyken. U.S. consumers are conditioned around speed, from travel times to delivery windows — and when it comes to bathrooms, there is no leeway for delays.
“If we have to wait to go to the bathroom because there aren't enough bathrooms, that's friction,” Hyken said. “If there's a problem, it needs to get fixed. I have a five-step process for managing a complaint, and No. 5 is ‘act with urgency’ because that's what restores confidence. Fixing it means you're back to normal. Acting with urgency shows that you had a desire to take care of the customer.”
The PGA Tour’s operations team job doesn’t end at the final hole.
After an event, the PGA Tour gets a head start on improving the experience for its future tournaments through its Voice of the Gallery program, a standardized post-event survey built in partnership with Qualtrics, according to Carlson.
The program helps the PGA Tour standardize data from tournaments at different golf courses and use it to create smooth experiences across all of its venues, according to Carlson. It also ensures customers who didn’t run into friction during the event get to share their feedback.
“I think the post-event survey is the first way that we tell fans, hey, we cared about what your experience was today,” Carlson said. “We want to hear from you.”
