Woodhall Spa Golf Club

Meet Adam Keogh, former member of the England national squads and now Head Professional at the National Golf Centre, Woodhall Spa. Adam has been a familiar face on golf courses across England since his teenage years; after turning professional at the age of 22 and playing for a couple of years on some mini tours, he completed his PGA training in 2016.

Following a successful coaching career at the Spalding Golf Club, Adam became Head Professional at Woodhall Spa in early 2021. In the run-up to his first workday, he spent his time figuring out how he could improve the booking side of things. “Historically the other professionals used their own paper diary,” Adam recalls. “I thought there was a lack of visibility of what the academy and the professionals had to offer. An online booking system was the first step to make things easier for both the clients and the organisation.”

He continues: “The ProAgenda booking system made us visible to the clients in the area. It also makes it so much easier for them to book a lesson with us.

Academy not only has four golf professionals, but also a strength and conditioning coach and a physiotherapist. In addition, it covers two short game areas, an indoor putting studio, a gym and a practitioner’s room.

As Head Professional, Adam is always keen for new ways to track performance within the Academy. “I want to know what the level of business is at any given moment. Being able to easily pull a report with turnover amounts, or coaching staff hours, is great. The reporting features in ProAgenda are really key to making this work from a management point of view.”

Woodhall Spa is well known as the training facility of the England national teams “We’re grateful to be part of the National teams teaching experience,” Adam says, “but it also requires us to be flexible with the schedule. That makes tracking facility availability even more important, and it’s great that ProAgenda lets us instantly see who’s working where and which facilities are booked at any given moment.”

With facilities integrated into the system, Adam can tackle another problem—he no longer needs to worry about coaches’ schedules and facility bookings getting mixed up. “The gym and putting studio can only house one individual at a time, and ProAgenda prevents them from being double-booked.”

The role of Head Professional comes with more responsibility than just coaching. Adam spends multiple hours a day working on organisational and management tasks. But he remembers his previous experience of managing his bookings after a full day of coaching: “In my previous position I had busy days coaching, and the moment you came home there were emails, phone calls and messages awaiting a reply for future lesson bookings. It could take up to another 2 hours of an evening.”

“The time aspect, being busy teaching, playing and trying to coordinate appointments is a thing of the past. My colleagues and I are now 7-10 hours per week better off, saving time on booking administration. And if the clients aren’t able to book online, the Professionals can still help them out. It just gives them more options. We encouraged them to send their dairy links out and it just worked.”