OB Sports rebounds from mistaken identity

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - In the last two years, OB Sports Golf Management has experienced incredible growth in the number of properties it manages, jumping from five contracts at the beginning of 2001 to 14 at press time. According to C.A. Roberts, OB Sports’ vice president of business development, this growth is the best of any in the company’s more than 30 years in business.

“We’ve achieved our most success ever that I could point to in the history of the company just in the last year and a half, which is weird,” Roberts said.

While that would be cause for celebration at any company, it is particularly sweet for OB Sports, which has had to deal with a case of mistaken identity in recent years.

In the mid-1990s, OB Sports managed two courses in the Las Vegas area, Angel Park and The Legacy. The owners of those two courses approached OB Sports founder and CEO Orrin Vincent and proposed forming a new company to build and buy more golf courses. The result was OB Sports LLC, which existed from 1995 to 2000. During that time, the company bought several golf courses and built others, all the while picking up management contracts along the way, Roberts said.

“We had a nice portfolio of 16 golf courses,” he said.

In 2000, the financial backers of OB Sports LLC decided to get out of the golf business, so OB Sports put together a package to sell the six courses they owned jointly. Heritage Golf Group then offered to infuse OB Sports LLC with some financing and manage those six courses for them. This was when OB Sports’ management team decided to separate from OB Sports LLC.

“All of us on the OB Sports management team said, ‘We’ll separate from you.’ So Jan. 1, 2001, we kept our eight management contracts and all of us on the executive team kept the name and logo of OB Sports and moved down to Scottsdale and set up our office here,” Roberts said. “So OB Sports Golf Management was our name. They were not to use the name OB Sports in any way, but they didn’t want to have to go change all their loan documents they had on those six courses. It would have taken an infinite amount of time, legally.”

Confused yet? So was the industry to some extent, Roberts said.

“[OB Sports LLC] filed for reorganization and we had to do some damage control to say, ‘We’re not them. We have nothing to do with them,’” Roberts said. “But every time they filed for reorganization, OB Sports LLC was in the documents. So even though they didn’t market the name, vendors were getting letters that were saying OB Sports LLC was filing for bankruptcy.”

Rather than create more confusion by mounting an aggressive marketing campaign, Roberts said OB Sports chose to ride out the storm.

“We decided not to create a press campaign because we might have been dredging up people who might not have otherwise cared. We kind of watched all that unfold,” he said. “The good news is that now they’ve either sold or dumped all of those courses and they no longer exist. They’re no longer on the map anymore, so that issue is gone.”

Since the beginning of 2002, OB Sports has added nine management contracts, and no longer gets involved in any type of equity deals, Roberts said.

“We’ve added seven contracts this year. It’s a huge growth for us,” he said.

At the same time, Roberts said, the company has to be careful about growing too much, which would fly in the face of its management approach.

“We have to be careful about growing too much. Our big hook is our boutique size,” Roberts said. “We always tell people we don’t want to be Troon or ClubCorp or American Golf. We like the lives we live and the jobs we have here. We don’t want to have 3,000 employees in our office. Can we grow to 18 or 20 and be comfortable? Absolutely.”

Among the 14 properties OB Sports currently manages are Angel Park and The Legacy, which are particularly sweet, Roberts said.

“It’s like a homecoming,” he said.

Roberts said OB Sports has two or three additional contracts that could potentially come to fruition in the near future. For now, he said, the company will continue to garner new business through referrals, while being careful not to exceed its capacity.