Outing & corporate gifting · The Walker's Journal
Something better than another logo ball.
If you're putting the gift table together for a scramble, here's what to hand out instead. One thing players keep, and a reason to get them walking.
ParWalker · Built for the walk
Everyone who has run a golf outing knows the gift table.
A sleeve of logo balls. A towel. A divot tool. Usually a koozie. It's the same table at the charity scramble, the client outing and the company event. Most of it is stuff the players already own three of. The balls get used and lost. The rest ends up in the trunk, then the garage.
That's not a knock on whoever ordered it. When you're buying 144 of anything on a budget, six weeks out, from a catalog, that's where you land. But the gift line usually does the least work of any money you spend that day.
Gifts get kept when they're useful. In ASI's Global Ad Impressions Study, 78% of U.S. consumers said they keep a promotional item because it's useful, and 85% could name the advertiser on an item they'd kept. That's industry research, so hold the numbers loosely. The basic finding is hard to argue with. A gift that gets used is the only one still working in October.
So don't ask what's cheap for a full field. Ask what's still clipped to someone's bag next season.
People keep what they use.
The rest of the table is money you spend once. A gift they use keeps working every round after yours.
The gap on the gift table
What a walking golfer doesn't have.
Walk the course and there's nowhere good to put your drink. Carry, push or pull, it's the same problem.
Carts have a cupholder. Walkers have a hand. So you carry the can, or set it down on the tee box and forget it, or wedge it in a bag pocket and hope. It's a small thing that happens on every hole. Nobody had fixed it, because the accessory aisle was built for carts.
We built the Dangler for that. A ball-joint pivot keeps the drink level while the bag swings. A collapsible silicone base takes cans, bottles and cups. The clamp grips carry bags, stand bags and push carts. It packs flat, so it fits in a gift bag.
The test for any tee gift
It goes back in the bag, not in a drawer.
The part nobody plans for
The health case is in the walking.
Most outings ride, and for good reasons. Pace of play, a field of mixed ability, the beverage cart. But plenty of those same events are raising money for a hospital, or built around a health message.
Golf counts as exercise mostly when you walk it. One study put pedometers on 42 golfers across three municipal courses. They averaged 11,948 ± 1,781 steps for 18 holes, and most cleared 10,000 in a single round whatever their handicap. Call it five to seven miles on your feet, depending on the course.
Ride the same course and most of that goes away. The University of Edinburgh reviewed roughly 5,000 studies on golf and health for the British Journal of Sports Medicine. It found that golf is moderate-intensity exercise, with measurable benefits for the heart, lungs and metabolism. The figures usually quoted for one round are about 600 calories riding and about 1,200 walking. Those are rough and they vary by player, but the difference is large.
Sources. Steps: Kobriger et al., The contribution of golf to daily physical activity recommendations (2006), PubMed 16901027. Health: Murray et al., The relationships between golf and health: a scoping review, British Journal of Sports Medicine · golfandhealth.org. Gifting: ASI Global Ad Impressions Study.
We're not going to pretend a drink holder is a wellness program.
But the gift is one of the few things from the day that goes home with people. If your event is about health, gear made for walking says that better than a koozie does.
How we'd run it
Three decisions, and you're done.
Count players, not teams
A 27-team scramble is 108 players. Add the sponsors and the committee, then a few spare. The spares are always what you run short of.
Give one thing, not five
Four cheap items in a bag read as four cheap items in a bag. One thing people keep does more for you, and it's easier to budget.
Come to us early, with a date
Outing orders are built for the event, not pulled off a shelf. Tell us your headcount, the date you need them in hand, and how you want your name on them. We'll work back from there.
Good things come to those who walk.
That's our line, and it's the idea the company was built on. The walk between shots is where you live the round. If you're handing something to a hundred golfers this season, hand them something that makes that walk better.
Outing & corporate gifting
Gifting for a full field?
Outing orders don't go through the cart. Send us your date and your headcount and we'll come back with the rest.
