Golf vacations with a spouse, family, or friends are supposed to be relaxing experiences filled with fresh air and memories that can last a lifetime.
Unfortunately, many golfers become fixated on the 10-day weather forecast leading up to the trip, stressing over a piece of a vacation that’s out of their control.
Or is it?
Relatively new to the golf travel industry is the ability to essentially purchase insurance on your tee time cost if you or your group is “rained out.”
An upstart company, launched one month before COVID-19 hit in 2020, has become a key player in this golf space, selling more than 500,000 of what it calls Weather Guarantees within four years across the United States and internationally.
California-based Sensible Weather has recently inked a major deal with golf managing giant Troon to add to its client base of over 3,500. In addition to Troon naming Sensible Weather as its official weather protection provider, Sensible Weather has also partnered with the PGA of America, which promotes the tee time insurance product to all PGA professionals across the country.
“I am a weather scientist by trade and also an avid skier, a sport which has a lot of parallels with golf, so that’s how the idea of starting Sensible Weather came about,” says company CEO Nick Cavanaugh.
“Rain checks have existed in baseball since the 1800s, but the data and the technology has come a long way to where we can essentially observe where it’s raining anywhere in the world,” says Cavanaugh. “So we don’t need to be sitting at the course to issue you a weather guarantee reimbursement. The idea is we can streamline this whole thing, which alleviates some of the operational constraints on the ground course operators.”
Over the years, getting a rain check at a golf course has been an inconsistent proposition at best. There is no uniformity from course to course as to when you qualify for a rain check. In addition, if you are on a golf vacation at a resort, say in Colorado and live in Chicago, a rain check may be of little use to you if you are required to redeem it within the calendar year.
If the resort or course you are booking a tee time with online offers the Weather Guarantee, it’s as simple as opting in. The cost is between five and ten percent of your tee time cost, says Cavanaugh.
“It depends on the time of year and the location of the course and time of day and a few other variables,” says Cavanaugh. “And the opt-in is similar to how you might buy travel insurance. Once you are in our system and we have all of the specifics that day we can track the weather for you and automatically reimburse you if a suitable number of rainy hours are expected or transpired.”
If there is poor weather, a golfer who purchased tee time insurance will receive an email, text, or both from Sensible Weather informing them that they qualify for a reimbursement that includes options of how to receive their money. The golfer still has the option to play through the rain or not.
“Our product doesn’t necessarily replace the rain check,” Cavanaugh says. “In many instances our partners also offer rain checks. When you think about it, the two things are related but different. What we are offering is a free day of golf. It just happens to be raining. If you still get a rain check as well you can have a second free day of golf.”
The Sensible Weather online service is free to all golf courses who wish to implement the product for their golfers.
“The idea end-to-end is tech-driven and seamless and we reimburse golfers on the same day,” Cavanaugh says, “The real goal of the product is to take what would be a bad experience and turn that around. And there are lots of ancillary benefits, including helping to alleviate a logistical challenge for golf course operators. If all of a sudden their customers are happy and they’ve gotten reimbursed and they are waiting it out in the clubhouse or playing through whatever weather there is, that means it’s a better customer experience and ultimately better for the course and the owners and the operators.”
Cavanaugh says Sensible Weather uses data from the National Weather Service in the United States that will trigger the insurance policy reimbursement.
“The whole thing is data driven – a combination of forecasts, rain radar and satellite data,” he said. “And it will be a text message prior to the start of your tee time, saying ‘two hours or three hours into your tee time we are expecting two hours of rain, here’s a reimbursement.’ And why we like that is it allows the golfer to orient their day around that experience. They have money in their pocket and they can play two hours before it starts raining or go to the clubhouse and maybe play on later or get something to eat and go home or back to the resort.”
There are other such golf tee time insurance companies in the market, such as Vortex Weather Insurance, but the PGA of America and Troon partnerships have helped separate Sensible Weather from competitors.
“We partnered with the PGA a little more than a year ago to where they would essentially be our liaison to various golf courses and ownership groups inside the U.S. and globally,” says Cavanaugh. “Troon is obviously a whale. Troon has a massive footprint in golf and provides inroads elsewhere for us as a company as well. It’s a needle mover for us and probably the biggest single entity to partner with in golf.”
“With more than 500 golf courses in our U.S. portfolio from coast-to-coast, weather is obviously a daily factor in running operations,” says Ryan Pensy, vice president of strategic partnerships with Troon Partners Network. ”Through this Sensible Weather partnership we can benefit both our golfers and our golf course operators with a guarantee program that is a win-win for everyone.”
Cavanaugh, 36, says Sensible Weather has grown tenfold year-over-year, with each July the peak of the company’s seasonable business. It also offers weather insurance from ski trips to amusement parks.
“Ultimately the weather impacts people’s lives and when it impacts people’s lives it changes what they do,” he says. “When you book a golf tee time and it’s rainy, that’s a miserable experience. But we’re here to help make that experience better.”