The Taylor Made horse farm has no relation to the golf club equipment maker, but when the opportunity arose to buy a neighboring golf club, a plan was hatched to create a new income stream by using it to help spur interest in thoroughbred horse racing.
As part of its efforts to promote thoroughbred racing, Taylor Made, a horse farm in Jessamine County, Ky. now plans to incorporate a neighboring golf course into its public tours, the Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader reported. In the process, it is also taking steps to raise the profile, and profits, of the former High Point Golf Club in Nicholasville, Ky., which Taylor Made bought at auction last November for $407,000 and has now renamed Thoroughbred Golf Club at High Point.
Taylor Made, which has no relation to the golf-club equipment maker of the same name, is a leading consigner of thoroughbreds sold at auction, the Herald-Leader reported. Last year, the company closed a deal to buy 30 percent in California Chrome, the 2014 Horse of the Year. In addition, American Pharoah, the 2015 Triple Crown and Breeders’ Cup Classic winner, spent time as a yearling at Taylor Made.
Taylor Made is a member of Horse Country Inc., a nonprofit coalition of Central Kentucky farms, clinics and others that have joined forces to promote the development of fans in thoroughbred racing, the Herald-Leader reported. This has been the first full year in which Horse Country has had tours, and since February nearly 1,000 people have booked to tour Taylor Made, Duncan Taylor, the horse farm’s president and CEO, told the Herald-Leader.
Now Taylor sees the golf course, which is across a Kentucky state highway from the horse farm, as a kind of launching place for where people can start their tours. “The tour guides can go over there, meet the people, and they can watch a video on the farm while they’re waiting,” he told the Herald-Leader. “And then they’ll go from there to the farm to tour. If they’re waiting here at the [farm] office, we don’t have a place where they can get a snack or a Coke or a beer.”
Taylor also sees the golf club “as another income stream,” the Herald-Leader reported. The golf course, built in a subdivision of 44 upscale homes, opened in 1993 and was previously owned by a company called Even Par Inc., whose president was an Evansville, Ind., surgeon named Dr. Cary L. Hanni.
After buying it at auction, Taylor Made brought in Chris Boysel, a former golf pro at Duckers Lake Golf Club in Franklin County, Ky., to manage the club, the Herald-Leader reported. And Boysel, a 33-year-old native of Nicholasville, is making changes to attract the general public to the newly branded Thoroughbred Golf Club.
Jessamine County already has a wealth of golf courses, including Connemara Golf Course, Lone Oak Golf Course, Golf Club of the Bluegrass and Keene Trace Golf Club (the combined Keene Run and Champion Trace courses), the Herald-Leader reported. And plans were resurrected last fall for a long-delayed Jack Nicklaus-designed course near Wilmore, Ky.
But the Thoroughbred Golf Club is not on a major artery, so it needs to do a little more marketing to try to set it apart from competitors, the Herald-Leader reported. To that end, Boysel said he is trying to have more scheduled events and tournaments, “rather than just sitting here hoping that people will call and make tee times.”
He’s also incorporating suggestions from a PGA of America guidebook to improve the playing experience for all golfers, the Herald-Leader reported. “We’re not telling you what tee to play from,” Boysel said. “You play where you want to play from. We want men to play from the forward tee and ladies to play from the back, if that’s what’s enjoyable for them. America is a free country; you can do that.
“At the end of the day, this is entertainment and this is fun, so that’s what we need to be here for,” Boysel added. “We’re trying to make it as fun as we can for everybody.”
Physical improvements are also being made to the course, which has increased its budget to control weeds and fertilize, the Herald-Leader reported. There are also plans to put a bar and grill at the pro shop. (In a 2009 precinct election, voters approved the sale of alcohol by the drink on the golf course property.)
“It’s always been a fairly nice course with character,” Bill Nicodemus, 61, who has played the course since it opened, told the Herald-Leader. “But they’re basically making it a little nicer and trying to do some things to help the fairways. It’s a course that every level can play from different tees. They’ve got it set up so that no matter what level you are, you can play this course. So it’s a challenge to everybody, but also fair to everybody. That’s what I like about it.”
Other changes will reflect the new owners, the Herald-Leader reported. For example, Boysel said there has been talk of naming each hole for Taylor Made’s famous horses.
And Duncan Taylor mentioned the idea of putting a mobile phone-readable bar code at each hole, so a player could get information about each horse and the hole. “We were thinking about how are we going to make our tour more entertaining, and we were thinking about some of those QR codes,” Taylor said.
It perhaps made sense for Taylor Made to get into the golf business, the Herald-Leader reported, because, as Duncan Taylor noted, many people already get the horse farm confused with TaylorMade golf clubs.
“It’s funny, because even before we had a golf course, people would say, ‘Are you the golf clubs?’” Taylor told the Herald-Leader.
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