Hillwood CC “went on offense” to become a big hit with 250 new members and solidify its standing as a Music City favorite.
On paper, Charles Batt might appear to have all the makings of a tennis purist, and maybe even a tennis snob. The Director of Tennis at Hillwood Country Club in Nashville, Tenn., is not only from England, his childhood home was in Wimbledon, just steps from the All England Club. Not surprisingly, Batt was inspired to become a top-flight player himself. He came to Nashville in the late 1970s to play for Vanderbilt University, where he won two men’s singles championships in the highly competitive Southeastern Conference.
After briefly playing professionally, he became Hillwood CC’s tennis pro 30 years ago, and has since built a powerhouse program that now encompasses 450 families, 22 league teams, $500,000 in annual lessons revenue and 25 courts—including two grass courts that provide the only place to play lawn tennis in Tennessee, and are among the very few to be found anywhere in the South. Annually, Batt takes groups of Hillwood members on trips to tennis meccas such as Paris (for the French Open), Monte Carlo, and of course Wimbledon, for what he calls the “sacred two weeks” of tennis competition at its best.
Hillwood Country Club AT A GLANCE
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So it could certainly be expected that Batt might turn up his nose at new racquet-game alternatives like “pickleball” that other clubs with much less of a tennis stronghold are introducing, to try to create a new recreational activity for their underused courts. But Batt has not only opened his arms to pickleball, he’s fully embraced it—and in fact has become a national champion in the game that uses half a tennis court and is designed, as a cross between ping-pong, badminton and tennis, to be easier and more fun to play, especially for younger players and less-mobile seniors. Batt is now even the center of a popular and spirited competition during Hillwood’s 4th of July party, when anyone who can beat him in a five-point pickleball match earns a free drink.
“[Pickleball] is a wonderful addition to any tennis program,” Batt says. “It’s one of the easiest sports to start to play, but it’s still hard to master, which satisfies those who are more competitive. From the beginning, it’s fun for anyone who takes it up, and to watch how it’s picked up in popularity here has been quite astonishing. The only product we’ve ever sold out of in our tennis shop, in fact, has been pickleball racquets.”
Batt is equally enthusiastic about the idea of helping to develop table tennis, squash and even non-racquet sports like bocce or bowling as part of Hillwood’s recreational offerings.
“Our attitude is, if there’s interest, let’s do it,” he says. “We’ve seen plenty of evidence, especially with younger members, that if we have what they want, they won’t go elsewhere. This has been something we’ve applied successfully in our approach to our dining and club event programs, too, as well as golf and recreation.”
Solid Cores
Golf Professional Mike Lathrop, PGA, who joined Hillwood in 1982, five months before Batt, has also built up and sustained another strong anchor program for the club over the past 30 years. Golf at Hillwood has most recently benefitted from a 2011 course renovation, directed by Superintendent David Robertson, that reconstructed greens and tees, replaced cart paths and installed a new irrigation system.
“It was the right thing to do for the long run,” Robertson, who came to Hillwood as an assistant in 2005 and became Superintendent in 2008, says about the renovation. Up until then, he notes, only “piecemeal” improvements had been made to the course, originally designed by Dick Wilson on property that had previously been a livestock farm. But now, club management is aggressively pursuing a future professional tournament for its revamped course.
Lathrop is also excited by the rapid development over the last three years of what he says is now a “huge” junior golf program at Hillwood. “We’ve tripled [junior participation],” he says, “by offering more weekend clinics, getting more active in arranging inter-club matches, and just generally finding more ways to show how golf can be fun. I love how it’s made everything about our golf program more vibrant.”
Fitting Everything In
Around the pillars provided by the core offers of golf and tennis, other Hillwood departments have been developed to help ensure that members will want to make full use of all of the facilities and services that are made available on the property the club has occupied on the west side of town since the mid-1950s.
In 2001, Executive Chef Perry Seal came from the historic Hermitage Hotel, a five-star property in downtown Nashville, to bring what he’s described as a “large-establishment mindframe” to Hillwood’s culinary scene (“Seal of Approval,” C&RB, May 2012). In the 12 years since, Seal and his team—which boasts a strong combination of youth (average age in the mid-30s) and long tenure at Hillwood (average service of eight years)—has successfully put that philosophy into action.
The F&B team’s tireless drive to keep finding new ways to distinguish not only daily a la carte presentations (which account for 70% of the club’s F&B volume), but also Hillwood’s many elaborate special events, where attendance often exceeds 800 people, now thrives on the momentum that’s generated by members’ continuously enthusiastic response, Seal reports. “Our members are so supportive of what we do, as long we keep creating new things,” he says. “It really makes a difference when everyone knows they are being given a creative canvas to work with on a regular basis.”
That approach has become infectious among Hillwood employees, too, Seal adds. “Our Director of Maintenance, Melvin Stewart, is really an artist at heart, and it shows in how he and his staff help us build special displays for holidays and special events,” he says. “Even when there’s a lot of work involved, it becomes a labor of love for everyone, because of the encouragement we’re given to take an artistic approach both in terms of food and presentation, and then the appreciation we receive for what we’ve done.”
Seal has also sustained excellence, and kept the creative juices flowing, by making sure he’s never relaxed the requirement that he, and his staff, must always gather for 15-minute afternoon meetings, no matter how hectic things may get. “We go over nightly specials, the current events schedule, a few housekeeping things and a couple of ‘global’ thoughts on trends or bigger issues,” he says.
Being diligent in requiring attendance for the meetings, and then making sure they are productive and always provide meaningful content, has helped Hillwood maintain kitchen cleanliness standards reflected by exemplary health-inspection scores, Seal says. And besides, he asks: “If you can’t make it to 15-minute meetings, how can you hold yourself up to the highest culinary standards?”
The Final Fit
The latest piece to be added to Hillwood’s amenities mix was its new stand-alone, 20,000-sq. ft. Fitness Center, which opened in September 2011 and immediately demonstrated its appeal not only to existing members, but also as a draw for attracting new members to the property. The center was designed and developed primarily under the direction of Brad Reese, who had run his own fitness centers in Nashville before joining Hillwood as Director of Fitness in January 2011, and Three Carpenter, who came two months later from Dallas (Texas) Country Club to be the club’s new General Manager. (At the end of 2013, Carpenter left Hillwood to pursue new interests within the club industry, and the club’s Chief Financial Officer, Katrina Wernick, was named acting General Manager.)
From the start, Reese says, he was determined to make sure that Hillwood’s new two-story center, built next to the club’s pool (see photo above), would avoid the problems of building too small that have plagued many club fitness facilities (see “Blueprints for Wellness” on pg. 43 of this issue). But a concurrent goal to making it “big enough,” he says, was to also make sure Hillwood’s fitness center “still had a boutique feel.”
That objective has been met, Reese says, by making sure the center is “well-appointed” with everything users might want or need for a comfortable workout or spa experience (the bottom floor of the center is devoted to massage and wellness/beauty amenities, and locker areas). One key to that comfort, Reese says, is “not having to bring anything from home”—so in addition to providing comfortable robes, slippers and other items, Hillwood has made sure that post-workout replenishment needs are also readily available from a full-service refreshment bar—located at one end of the top floor that contains most of the exercise and fitness-class space—where the usual fresh-fruit and energy-bar offerings are augmented by a full variety of HCC “protein shakes” (Reese goes out of his way to avoid the “smoothie” connotation). Varieties offered include Chewy Chocolate Brownie, Strawberry Banana, Banana Peanut, Banana Reese’s Pieces, Chocolate-Covered Strawberry, “Stars & Stripes” (with blueberry, strawberry and vanilla, for a red-white-and-blue look), “Purple Wildcat” (with mixed berries), and Blueberry Banana Bliss, a specialty of the stand’s primary attendant. Extras of many ingredients are available, and full nutritional information—calories, protein, fats and carbs—is provided for every shake.
The fitness center also provides day-care service that has been a “huge hit,” Reese says. “Once we earned [members’] trust, usage exploded,” he noted. “The key is to make sure it’s clear, through pricing and hours, that it’s being provided as a service, and not having it viewed as a profit center.” Discounts are provided on already-bargain rates for extra children in a group, and “drop and dine” rates encourage use of the service for lunching at the club, even if a workout isn’t involved.
An overriding objective from the start, Reese says, was to make sure members saw the fitness center as “their house, and their place.” To that end, daily access is provided, through key fobs, from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. (The fobs are available for those 16 and over; those 13-15 must be accompanied by a parent.) But to also avoid having the center become too impersonal, and to make sure assistance is readily available, Hillwood has fitness staff on site for 12 hours (7 a.m.-7 p.m.) Monday through Friday, and from 8 to 4 on weekends.
Tracking data attained from fob scans, Reese has been able to see from day one just how on-target all of these efforts have been in making Hillwood’s new fitness center inviting to members, and providing what they want and need. “It’s been so well-received, there’s really not much we would redo,” he said as 2013 came to a close. “Usage from the start has been much higher than expected.” Workouts for all of 2013 topped 61,000 at the new facility, he reports, up nearly 5,000 from its first full year.
Reese points to efforts by all Hillwood departments to integrate their services and help support the fitness center as major contributors to the facility’s immediate acceptance. “Mike [Lathrop] and Charles [Batt] were quick to encourage their golfers and tennis players to make full use of what [the fitness center] has to offer, to maximize their health and performance,” he says, “and Chef [Perry Seal] provided phenomenal support to make sure the [refreshment bar] could offer unique creations and top quality.”
The fitness center’s appeal also affirmed to Three Carpenter why he made the decision to join Hillwood as its new General Manager in 2011. “Even though Hillwood was facing tough times, like every other club during the recession, going there appealed to me because they still wanted to come out of 2010 playing offense,” Carpenter says. “They made the decision to spend $5 million on their golf course, and another $5 million on their fitness center.
“I’m originally from Iowa, so I’m all about ‘If you build it, they will come,’ ” he adds. “And even though [Hillwood] did lose members during the first part of 2011, by the time the two projects were finished in September, new members started to join every month—and by two years later, over 250 new members had joined.
“I can’t tell you how many [existing] members told me they were expecting their new fitness center to be a YMCA—and how happy they were to instead get something that was like a Four Seasons,” Carpenter adds. “And for new members, it really became a deal-sealer—sometimes, even before they’d seen anything else at the club.”
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