Here’s How to Catch Up — This Week.

Key takeaways from the Club Caddie Chronicles webinar on how golf course operators can start using AI right now  practically, affordably, and without a tech background.

It’s 7:45 AM on a Tuesday. You’ve got a full tee sheet, a maintenance crew waiting on pin placements, three unread member complaints in your inbox, a tournament recap due to ownership by end of week, and a staff meeting in 15 minutes. Sound familiar?

Now imagine arriving at your desk and finding a clean, prioritized summary of every urgent email, your calendar for the day, weather by the hour, and a list of pending staff requests already assembled, waiting for you. No scrolling, no triage, no anxiety. Just a clear picture of exactly what needs your attention.

That’s not a fantasy. That’s what golf course operators are doing right now with AI tools that cost roughly $20 a month.

On April 15, 2025, Club Caddie hosted a live webinar Club Caddie Chronicles: How to Introduce AI at Your Club featuring Knight Schwandt (CRO, Club Caddie), Mike Hendrix (President, SMB Golf), and Stu Proctor, PGA (VP of Sales, Club Caddie). The conversation was practical, honest, and full of real examples from operators already putting AI to work. Here’s what you need to know.

First: What AI Actually Is

There’s a lot of noise around artificial intelligence, and most of it is either hype or fear. Let’s clear it up.

AI in the practical, day-to-day sense is software trained on enormous amounts of data to complete tasks that used to require significant manual effort: writing, summarizing, spotting patterns, answering questions. You’ve already been using it. Every time Netflix recommends a show, Gmail suggests how to finish a sentence, or your phone autocorrects a typo, that’s AI.

What it is not: it’s not a sentient robot, it’s not going to replace your staff, and it’s not infallible. Think of it the way Knight Schwandt framed it on the webinar: “Think of AI like a calculator. It doesn’t replace your math skills – it speeds up the work. Same idea.” The most important rule: always read before you send. AI can and will make mistakes. Human review is non-negotiable. 

Why Golf Operators Need to Move Now

Here’s the opportunity that most operators are sleeping on: golf is still very early in AI adoption. The majority of facilities are not using it in a meaningful way yet. That means right now, the first movers have a real competitive edge one that will close fast.

AI capabilities are roughly doubling every two months. Facilities that wait six months will find themselves significantly behind those who started today. The question, as Knight put it during the webinar, is simple: “The question isn’t whether AI will impact your industry — it already is. The question is whether you’re going to be the one using it, or the one falling behind.” And the tools are genuinely affordable. Most AI platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini have free tiers, with Pro versions running around $20/month. Purpose-built golf tools like Fixer (automated email replies) run about $300/year. The ROI is typically realized in the first week.

The Four Places Operators Lose the Most Time

Across hundreds of facility conversations, four operational areas consistently drain the most hours from operators’ days. AI addresses all four.

1. Administrative Triage Every Morning

Most operators start buried in email. By the time they’ve sorted through what’s urgent, checked the calendar, and figured out what needs attention, an hour is gone. Stu Proctor described connecting Claude to his Gmail, Google Calendar, HubSpot, and Google Drive to generate a custom morning briefing every day: “It’s almost like having an assistant or chief of staff giving you a briefing every morning. I asked it to make it like a newspaper – even make it funny. It does. It’s pretty amazing.” For a golf course operator, the same setup can pull urgent emails, flag form submissions from your website, surface staff scheduling requests, and include hourly weather for the next 48 hours. All of it delivered before you take your first sip of coffee.

2. Marketing and Content Creation

Marketing is consistently the last thing operators get to. It’s reactive, last-minute, and often skipped entirely. Stu demonstrated creating a full Twilight Golf promo email copy, social media post, and a tagline (“Why rush home when the best part of the day is still ahead”) in under 90 seconds. A task that would previously have taken two or more hours.

AI can also advise on strategy: the best times to post on Facebook or Instagram, what tone resonates with your audience, and how to stay consistent across all platforms. That’s not just a writing tool — it’s a marketing director that’s available 24/7 and never charges overtime.

3. Member Communications and Email Drafting

Writing a professional email about course aeration, a frost delay, a tournament reminder, or a policy update used to take 20–30 minutes from scratch. With AI, the same result polished, on-brand, ready to send takes about 30 seconds. You type one prompt, review the output, and send.

Tools like Fixer take this further by drafting email replies automatically. Mike Hendrix described his workflow: “I open my email, and the drafts are already waiting. I put my eyes on it, change two or three words if I want to, and hit send. That’s real time savings.” 

For operators who prefer to write their own emails, AI works just as well as a grammar and tone checker a safety net before you hit send on anything going to your entire membership.

4. Online Review Responses

This one catches operators off guard until they think about it. Responding to reviews especially negative ones matters enormously for SEO, discoverability, and member perception. But negative reviews trigger a natural defensive reaction, and that defensiveness can produce responses you regret.

AI removes the emotion. It produces professional, measured responses and can be instructed to incorporate SEO keywords, vary tone, avoid repetition, and tailor the approach for Google, Yelp, or GolfPass. Mike’s team at smbGolf handles review responses for golf courses at scale, and AI is central to that workflow.

When You’re Ready to Go Further

Once you’re comfortable with the basics, a new tier of capability opens up. Stu walked through three advanced applications during the webinar:

• Workflow automation: Your systems handle tasks automatically scheduled campaigns go out on time, responses trigger based on member activity, posts publish without anyone logging in.
• Audience segmentation: AI analyzes your member data and builds targeted lists automatically, so you’re sending relevant communications instead of blasting your entire database.
• Operational data analysis: Export a report from your POS or management software, upload it to ChatGPT or Claude, and get instant analysis of revenue trends, peak booking windows, retention patterns, and best-selling items. No analyst required.

Club Caddie has taken this a step further with Looper AI, an AI assistant built directly into the Club Caddie platform, connected to your live course data. Instead of exporting and uploading reports, you just ask questions in plain English: “What are my top 20 members by total spend?” or “Create a marketing plan for next month based on my historical sales.” Looper AI analyzes the data, scores the opportunities, and gives you the next steps to act on them.

Your 30-Day Plan to Get Started

The biggest mistake is overthinking it. Here’s the simple framework Knight walked through at the end of the webinar:

• Week 1 — Pick one tool. Start with ChatGPT or Claude (both free to start). Use it exclusively for a week. Challenge it. See what it can do.
• Week 2 — Use it every single day. Apply it to at least one real task daily: an email, a social post, a summary. Build the habit.
• Week 3 — Bring your team in. Run a 15-minute demo at your next staff meeting. Find the person on your team who lights up about it they become your AI champion.
• Week 4 — Automate one thing. Set up one workflow that runs on its own. Fixer for email replies, a morning briefing, or a review response process. Let the results speak.

Not sure where to start? Ask the AI itself. Prompt it: “You are an AI consultant. I am the general manager of a [public/private] golf course. Give me a 30-day AI implementation plan tailored to my operation.” Stu actually did this live during the webinar  the result was a full Kanban-style plan, day by day, ready to execute.

The Bottom Line

AI is not magic, and it’s not a threat. It’s a tool an extraordinarily capable one that is available to every golf course operator today at a cost that is essentially negligible compared to the time it saves.

The operators who embrace it now will be running leaner, smarter, and more member-focused operations within 30 days. The ones who wait will be playing catch-up in a race that is accelerating every month.

The session we recorded below covers all of this in detail with live demos, real examples, and answers to the questions that came in from operators across the country. Watch it, share it with your team, and then pick one thing to try this week.

WATCH THE FULL WEBINAR

Want to see Club Caddie’s AI in action?

Looper AI is built directly into Club Caddie connecting your live course data to an AI assistant that answers questions, surfaces opportunities, and helps you act.

Request a personalized demo HERE