Bill Yates

Wed, 29 Mar 2006 20:14:55 -0800

Founder/CEO

Bill Yates - Founder and CEO of Grey Town Golf, LLC, and the developer of Pace Manager Systems® and Pace Designer Systems® has worked with managers to improve their operations for more than 25 years. His philosophy is simple: know where you are, find out where you could be, and build a plan to get you there.

As the author of the “Pace of Play Manual” for the National Golf Course Owners Association and co-author of the USGA® Pace Rating Systems Manual, he understands the usefulness and accuracy of this objective measurement tool, and was the first to recognize its true value in helping manage play to improve customer value and revenue.

Bill’s Pace Manager Systems®, and his remarkable successes in speeding up play, improving the golfing experience and increasing profits on more than 100 golf courses in the U.S., Canada, Asia and the United Kingdom have been written about in many golf publications, including Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, The Boardroom, Executive Golfer, Golf Illustrated, Florida Golf News, Golf World, Golf For Women and others.

Bill has spoken widely about improving customer service, revenue and the pace and flow of play on our courses. Bill has made presentations at International Golf Business Conferences in Canada, the National Golf Course Owners Association Conference, and the PGA of America Golf Shows in Las Vegas and Orlando. Bill is widely regarded as “the Guru” of pace of play. He has consulted with and trained the management teams of Bandon Dunes Golf Course, the Courses of Walt Disney World, Pebble Beach Golf Links, Hong Kong Golf Club, Kemper Lakes Golf Course, Cog Hill Country Club, Amelia Island Plantation, Jasper Park Lodge, Harbour Town Golf Links, Doonbeg Golf Club in Ireland and many others.

Bill has consulted with the courses at St Andrews in Scotland, the cradle of golf, and has consulted with the Royal & Ancient Golf Club, assisting them in managing the pace of play for the 2002 British Open and British Amateur Championships. And in February, 2003, Bill and Pace Manager Systems® were the centerpiece of an International Symposium on the Pace of Play hosted in St Andrews by the R & A.

A graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University, Bill was a principal with an international management consulting company before starting his own business. He has taught a post graduate course in productivity at the University of Southern California, holds a Master’s Degree in Administration, and is an experienced teacher, trainer, writer and lecturer.

George Peper

Sun, 29 Jan 2006 20:26:38 -0800

V.P. Business Development, UK/Europe

George Peper was for 25 years the Editor-in-Chief of Golf Magazine. Under his leadership the magazine became the most widely read publication in the game (over 7 million readers) and was nominated for four National Magazine Awards.

Today Peper is Editor-at-Large of Links Magazine (USA) where his column appears in each issue. He is also a consultant to Workman Publishing, a partner in Grey Town Golf, LLC, which works with golf clubs to improve pace of play, and a partner in GOLF Magazine China Consulting, which matches golf architects with development projects in China.

Peper is the author, co-author, or editor of 17 books, including the best-selling “Golf Courses of the PGA Tour,” “Shark Attack,” in collaboration with Greg Norman, and “Cinderella Story,” in collaboration with actor Bill Murray. Collectively, his books have sold over a million copies.

For 20 years Peper wrote and produced the Masters Annual, the official chronicle of the Masters Tournament. He has written the scripts for over a dozen videos and TV specials including two in cooperation with Jack Nicklaus. His 1999 script for “The Story of Golf,” a two-hour documentary for PBS, earned him an Emmy nomination.

Peper earned a B.A. from Princeton and studied toward a PhD in comparative literature at Yale before joining GOLF Magazine. A six-handicap golfer, he is a member of Sleepy Hollow Country Club (NY), Ballybunion in Ireland, and five clubs in Scotland, including the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews where he is the first American to become a member of the Club Committee.

Among his contributions to the game are “Pace Ratings” which establish playing times for golf courses and “The Need System” which was adopted by the USGA as the recommended method for allocating handicap strokes across 18 holes.

In 2003, when the younger of their two sons headed off to college, Peper and his wife Libby sold their home in New York and moved to an apartment they’d bought 20 years earlier, on the 18th hole of the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland. They now live there fulltime. In May of 2006 Simon & Schuster (NY) will publish “Two Years in St. Andrews,” Peper’s account of his experiences there.

PaceManager Systems - About Us

Bill Yates

Founder/CEO

George Peper

V.P. Business Development, UK/Europe