TEAM #OP36GOLF

Founders, Ryan Dailey and Matt Reagan team up to start a long-term junior golf development program at Keith Hills Golf Club in Buies Creek, NC. The goal was to increase family participation at the golf course with a focus on developing the juniors as athletes as well. They wanted to break the mold that golf was just something that a junior attended one time in the summer. So they set up a program where golfers could come once a week for 8 months out of the year. They started with 3 juniors which grew to over 20 in just the first year.

It became clear that without a plan or curriculum for golfers or parents, there was no purpose to the program. There was no way to measure if golfers were improving or having fun. Ryan and Matt began studying "game design" and "curriculum design" to develop their first curriculum. This started as a 10 level curriculum. Each level mapped skills and goals for golfers to learn in classes. This evolved over the next 3 years into a 6 level curriculum with 12 goals in each level. They set the end goal of the curriculum to Shoot Par (36) for 9 holes. Each goal was described in a book and juniors were given a sticker on their bag tag when they accomplished a goal. Classes became fun and educational!

In the first 3 years their program grew to 80 golfers coming once a week for 8 months out of the year. Ryan and Matt were recognized for their efforts and received the 2013 and 2014 Carolinas PGA Youth Player Development award. They thought all was going great, until in March of 2014 where 40 of their juniors didn't sign up for the program again. Why? It became apparent that the golfers never played golf outside of the program, and their interest faded. This led Matt and Ryan on a one year journey to find the most effective way to get a beginner on the golf course and integrate "Playing Golf" into the program.  To keep a long-story short, The Operation 36 Model was born. Start close to the hole, try to shoot 36, and back up! It is fun, it is timely, and it is great experience for any golfers learning the sport. Ryan and Matt made the decision to center the entire program around it as they learned Playing Golf is the most important part to any program to create a golfer. The program was renamed to "Operation 36".

Many Golf Professionals began reaching out and wanted help with their programs. Maggie Simons, Jason Sutton and the team at Carmel Country Club in Charlotte persuaded Matt and Ryan to let them be the first Licensed Program. Maggie kicked it off at Carmel with great success! However it became apparent to help save professionals time, keep costs low, and enhance the entire delivery experience, we would need to build our own software. On a bootstrapped budget, the Operation 36 team launched their first version of their software platform in March of 2016, with a focus on giving professionals the tools necessary to run the program successfully. The program grew to over 450 facilities in 2019. 

After growing to over 450 locations and 28,000 participants, Operation 36 has learned a lot. The program evolved to becoming a standard in how beginners (adults and juniors) are introduced to the game. Golf Facilities now have a fun and structured plan to introduce a golfer to the game and technology to support the entire experience. The Operation 36 software was built with a purpose. We wanted to be able to measure our impact. In August of 2019 everything was in place to launch our network goal of introducing 1,000,000 new golfers to the game over the next 5 years! This number is not fabricated, it is actually being measured with our technology at every program location and displayed publicly. "Golfers Created" is the core metric that will drive us moving forward. We couldn't be more excited for the future of the game of golf.

Golf Genius Software announced that it has acquired Operation 36 Golf, developers of a beginner golf development program with a unique coaching model that is driving the goal of “1,000,000 Golfers Created”. Operation 36 provides a proprietary software platform and teaching curriculum now in use by nearly 600 golf facilities in 14 countries, and will operate as a division of Golf Genius. All employees of Operation 36 will join Golf Genius.

To read more about the merger with Golf Genius - Click Here