Doug Breen admits he bristles when someone refers to GolfNorth as ClubLink Lite or as just an operator of mid-level golf courses.
“I’ve heard them all but we’re more than that now,” says Breen a regional vice-president and chief agronomist for GolfNorth. “I don’t know how many LPGA events we have to host before people stop thinking of us in those terms.
“We have 33 courses; 21 we own and 12 we lease and three of them are in the top 50 in Canada.”
Breen is quick to point out, however, that their roots are in mid-level golf courses.
“We have a great stable of mid-level golf courses and we’re not the least bit embarrassed by that. Some of our mid-level golf courses are our most profitable. They’re excellent and they’re a lot of fun.”
With 33 golf courses GolfNorth is the largest owner/operator of pay-as-you-play/semi-private golf facilities in Canada.
That makes them a very major player in the sport in this country.
GolfNorth has been criticized, many would say unfairly, as being just in it for the money, for picking up courses simply so they could be developed into housing, for not being members of Golf Ontario and Golf Canada and for keeping a low profile.
In a long sit-down with Pro Shop Breen addressed all of those issues and talked about the past and the present of the company and where he sees it headed.
As for the concept that they buy golf courses simply to put houses on them Breen says ‘not so’.
“There are companies out there who are unapologetically land development companies that happen to have some golf courses right now,” says Breen.
“We’re not looking at future development of the land as the first reason for buying. We’re trying to make money in golf.”
Breen says they make no apologies for trying to make money, either, and he thinks that criticism comes from the public’s natural distrust of corporations.
“We’re trying to accumulate assets and create a return for our stakeholders and we’re trying to give people the
Breen admits they’ve had a bit of a love-hate relationship with the governing bodies of golf and for a time they and their golf courses were not members of Golf Canada
It’s not just GolfNorth that has had a problem with Golf Canada, he points out.
There was a time when virtually all golf courses in this country were private clubs and people who ran Golf Canada came from those clubs and reflected the values of private club members.
Today, however, the vast majority of golf courses in Canada are owned by individuals or corporations and are not private clubs yet when the new board of directors of Golf Canada was introduced at their AGM in February they were still virtually all from private clubs.
“There are things about Golf Canada that I have found incredibly frustrating over the years but I honestly believe that the best thing you do is get involved,” said Breen.
And because of that all of GolfNorth’s members are back in the Golf Canada fold.
GolfNorth was founded by Al Kavanagh in 1994.
“He was in the investment business,” explained Breen. “He would buy and sell property and he was always looking for investments for other people.
“He stumbled upon this little nine-hole golf course in Acton called Acton Meadows and he pitched it to the people he was working for. When they weren’t interested, he asked if they would mind if he did it. That’s literally how it got started.”
Before long Kavanagh added investors and they started picking up more and more golf courses.
One of the investors was Jim Balsillie. He and Kavanagh were neighbours and played hockey together.
Balsillie made his fame and fortune developing Research In Motion, the creator of the Blackberry.
Over time Balsillie bought out almost all of the other shareholders including Kavanagh.
“Operationally, we grew really, really quickly,” said Breen. “I came on board in the spring of 1998 and they had just bought two courses, and in the fall, they bought five more.”
Eventually, GolfNorth went from strictly owning courses to leasing them and their approach to that has been somewhat revolutionary in Canada.
Breen explains that in traditional golf leases the owner takes on the risk and just pays the management company.
“What we offer that is different from everyone else is that we take on the risk,” he says. “We’ll play you a flat rate per year and you will still own it.”
Looking to the future Breen says there’s no question they will continue to grow even as more and more golf courses in Canada continue to go under because of the over-supply.
He also noted that their biggest goal has to be to grow the game.
(Publishers note: the original interview with Doug Breen was done in the early spring before Covid-19 hit. Pro Shop went back to him in October to ask how the Pandemic affected GolfNorth.)
“When the government shut us down, we fully understood why they were doing it,” said Breen. Heaven forbid we would host a tournament and 50 people get sick and a number of them die.
“But as soon as they did shut us down, we started working on the safety protocols that we would need to operate safely and be in the first wave of business that could re-open.”
Breen said once the Golf North courses were allowed to open the pent-up demand has meant that they’ve had a very busy summer.
Golf has been good and if golf was all we did it would be a pretty solid year but food and beverage has been terrible and our courses that have banquet halls have literally has zero events.
