How Llandrindod Wells Golf Club Turned a “Dull and Boring” Facility into its Best Investment

Ranked as the best golf course in mid-Wales, Llandrindod Wells Golf Club boasts a championship quality course with spectacular views of the surrounding valleys. The club has also had a driving range since 2004 but, up until a year ago, it consisted of a ball dispenser, 8 bays, and a mostly barren field to hit into, save for a couple of marker posts.

Their range was still more than many clubs in the region were offering but as Phil Davies, the club’s Head Pro, explained to me, it had needed reinvestment for a while…

“A bad range is better than no range at all.”

Phil doesn't mince words about how the old range felt to use: “I always personally felt our range was very dull and boring. It was flat, slightly uphill, so it's very difficult to judge distances for people to see how far they were going. I always found it very uninspiring to hit balls on there.”

Llandrindod’s range was a perfectly functional space for teaching, junior coaching and year-round access to golf but, like most amateur golfers, it lacked a genuine draw: “It was great for juniors, flood lit in the winter. I could teach on it all year round. But personally, I found our range very uninspiring to use myself.”

“You never know what comes out of a conversation.”

For a long time, one key factor put Llandrindod off: “We were always aware of the technology on the ranges. But back, we're talking back four, five, six years ago, we just couldn't afford it. It was early in its technology and it was expensive to install it on the range.”

It wasn’t until late 2024 that the club seriously considered installing the technology. In fact, one of their members worked for Top Tracer and with his help, “[the club] looked into prices … and we weren’t completely put off by it,” though the “management committee were very careful, very cautious about it.”

While the club’s committee weighed up Top Tracer’s offer, they happened to be visited by a representative from Trackman, the other market leader in shot tracking technology in the UK. Trackman’s rep introduced himself as a cold caller, and asked to see the range, which Phil showed him. 

After showing the Trackman rep their range, Phil recalls that he “just said one sentence: ‘Would you be prepared for our sales guy to at least talk to you about Trackman?’ I said ‘yeah, absolutely,’ of course we would.”

“We took that to management and suddenly their ears pricked.”

Anyone who’s sat on a club committee will know how easily big plans can stall before they really get going; in Llandrindod’s case, the decisive factor was a reassurance that Trackman were able to offer.

“Trackman basically said to us, ‘if you don’t [make certain] figures of extra profit in your first 12 months, we will allow you to terminate the contract. We won’t charge you anything. We'll just turn up, take all the equipment away, shake hands and say, thanks for trying.’”

This kind of safety net makes it much easier for a club to commit to a plan, and certainly made it easier for Phil and the committee to choose between the two companies: “[Trackman] made us an offer which, ultimately, Top Tracer just couldn’t offer us … so that was the reason we got Trackman installed.”

Even with this reassurance in hand, the committee still did their homework: “We put a little subcommittee together of about six people to look into Trackman, looked into the potential advantages, disadvantages, the potential disaster of committing to something, even though we had a one-year [exit] option.”

Phil told me that, with the subcommittee’s due diligence complete and the outcome being positive, “we managed to get it through; committee approved it.” With the deal signed and the technology approved, the club now needed to look for funding.

“Straight away, you know what money you have to make.”

The installation costs meant that the club would need outside funding from the start.

“The installation is the key [cost] … so we looked for sponsorship.” A local car dealership had previously expressed their interest in a partnership with the club, and the club’s Trackman subcommittee got in contact: “So we basically went to Spa Motors and spoke to their main man and he was very interested, so we put something together. He signed a three year sponsorship deal, which covered a very large amount. So you've got the names all over the screen. Names on the signage, you know, the official sponsor of Trackman Llandrindod.”

Alongside their official sponsorship deal, the club also received a number of donations towards the cost: “We had a bunch of members give us £250 each, as a sort of member donation. We had a few local businesses give us £250, £300 each type thing to help fund it. And to be honest, the installation was paid for.”

The only decision left was how many bays to install the technology on.

“You’ve got to go for it.”

Before deciding how many bays to put Trackman in, Phil asked around a number of other clubs who had already gone ahead with the installation and found that many of them had a similar response.

“There were a few clubs that actually said, ‘We made a mistake of being too careful. We made a mistake of, like [for] a 16 bay range, only putting eight Trackmans in’ because they were cautious about the cost.”

These clubs paid the price for being overly cautious, reporting that their members and visitors would only use the range if a Trackman bay was available: “People, if they couldn't get a Trackman bay, they'd [leave] … The bays that they've used for years without Trackman, they suddenly wouldn't go on them.”

A lot of clubs told Phil that they regretted not installing Trackman on every bay at their range - “they all said ‘it was the worst mistake we made’” - so Llandrindod decided that, with their range only having 8 bays to start with, they would convert them all to Trackman bays.

“August, we had our best ever month.”

On November 5th 2025, Llandrindod’s fully-Trackman-enabled range was opened to the public. The club hoped that the range would now see an increase in usage, both to pay for the monthly costs of the technology and to attract new members to the club.

The results were instant, as Phil explained to me.

“So, [in] November, we were 450% up on usage.”

This remarkable figure might be expected for a first month, but November’s huge increase wasn’t just a flash in the pan: “December, just over 400%, January, just below 400%, February, we were over 400% up on usage.”

March held onto most of that momentum, though the numbers began to ease. From April onward, growth settled into a steadier, less eye-watering, pace: “Between 75% and 150% up on usage … with that by itself, if [we’ve] gone up that much, we’re doing enough.”

That steadier run gave way to a genuine wobble over the summer, though not one unique to Llandrindod. Trackman and Top Tracer had told Phil that, nationally, range usage fell by roughly 20% through June and July, and he had a clear idea why: “A combination of extreme heat and the Football World Cup.”

It would be fair to assume a range does its best business in winter, when fewer members are out on the course itself, but the opposite proved true: “When we chatted to a lot of ranges around the UK, they said, ‘No, no, no, you'll find the opposite. You'll find that you have incredible summer months. It'll surprise you,’ they said.”

And, with the World Cup finished and the heat subsiding, Llandrindod’s range returned its best month on record in August of this year. With two months of their trial period still remaining, the club has already passed the yearly target figure set by Trackman from the beginning.

Not everyone has been entirely convinced by the new range - which is understandable and inevitable whenever a big change is rolled out at any sports club - but for Phil and the club’s committee, the upsides have been massive, both on and off the range…

“You cannot underestimate the add-ons.”

With the range becoming a more popular destination, it has brought with it a number of players who might otherwise not have visited: “We can clearly point to at least 10 members who joined our golf club that were totally, 100% inspired by Trackman.”

Phil wasn’t guessing the impact that Trackman had on their new members joining: “We asked them - when they come and join, I actually ask them - ‘What's inspired you?’ And they just said, ‘Oh, I just came up and used Trackman. I thought it was amazing.’ And it's gone from there.”

More balls being hit on the range is an obvious positive for a golf club, but Llandrindod’s new range has returned much more value than the price of a bucket of balls. “If you look at what our income is on golf balls, that's one thing, that's been good, but … ten new members coming through our beginners package, and then going through intermediate, and then hopefully going on to be full members, is a lot of money.”

This lesson applies well beyond golf; players naturally gravitate towards clubs with the best facilities, whatever the sport. For Phil, the upgraded facilities are more important than just a boost to the range’s financial takings: “If the amount of business we do just pays for the technology and no more, it's still going to be worth it because of what you're offering people … it's just a much better experience.”

And now that it’s installed, Trackman is essential for the engagement of most members, and of Phil himself: “What we say now about Trackman, about our range, people who use it, we all just say, if Trackman went from there now, I would have absolutely zero interest in hitting the ball on that range.”

“That's really the next step for us.”

Llandrindod’s sponsorship deal with Spa Motors is agreed to run for three years, and the club are already looking at ways to make even better use of their increasingly popular range.

The improved range has become a hook to bring in groups who might never have considered golf as a hobby: “We sent invites out to all the local young farmers clubs... tonight we've got Beulah Young Farmers coming in, 15 to 20 of them.”

It's not just a boost for the club, either - the sessions are priced to be genuinely accessible, and the response has been consistently positive “We just charge them £10 a head. They get unlimited balls, clubs to suit them, and two of us down there helping them out with a bit of coaching. And they love it.” “So far all of them have said, oh, we'll be back. We'll come again.” Corporate groups and local social clubs have followed the same pattern, from Christmas staff outings to a weekly slot for the local Ladies’ Circle.

This uptake from locals has not come about by chance. The club has leaned into marketing the range directly, as a separate destination to the course, using promotional videos, a steady drip of social posts and trusting in word of mouth to do the rest: “We're getting known now... something to do on a weekend.”

Phil's ambitions for the range go further still as he noted the difference between what Llandrindod is - a golf club with a driving range - and the standalone ranges which aren’t attached to a course: “They are the ranges that make big money, because families will come up and have a bacon roll and a burger and the kids will have cake and tea.” “The next step for us is to introduce catering to the range.”

Whatever comes next, Phil is in no doubt that taking the leap was worthwhile: “We went with eight bays from word go and we don't regret it at all. We don't regret it at all.” 

Once home to an uninspiring, basic driving range, Llandrindod Wells Golf Club now houses a prime sporting and social destination for the local community, fit to match the outstanding course it sits beside. And, as Phil explained, there’s plenty more still to come.