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‘Blue sky’ guy bringing golf to the masses
   GreatLife Golf & Fitness expanding offerings

   No matter what golf “class” you fall into – Judge Smails’ upper-crust at the country club, Al Czervik’s new money and new to the game and club, the daily fee country club for a day-er, the weekend warrior muni player or somewhere in between – most golfers can agree on one thing: growth of the game is a good thing.
   It introduces people to a wonderful recreational activity that they truly can play for a life time. It forces the media to give more time and space to our great game. It builds new golf courses, keeps those that are already built going and it provides at least a little job security to those that call golf, its products and/or its playing field their way of making a living.
   To that end, Topeka-area golf entrepreneur Rick Farrant and his company GreatLife Golf & Fitness (www.greatlifegolf.com) are making the game of golf -- and access to a healthier lifestyle -- a possibility to many, even in these trying economic times.
   “We have a mission statement – to promote happy and healthy lifestyles for families while Rick Farrant

providing great golf and great fitness facilities,” says Farrant, whose company now owns/operates nine courses in the Sunflower State and in the Kansas City area, including the likes of Western Hills and Berkshire in Topeka, Lake Perry Country Club, Chisholm Trail in Abilene and its most recent acquisition, Leavenworth Country Club. “What we’ve seen as we’ve evolved is golf is declining. The younger generation isn’t coming into golf. They have video games, they have so many activities. Kids are incredibly busy and golf is getting squeezed out. The net effect of that is the young professionals aren’t coming into the game of golf. What we’ve been able to do is offer the golf and fitness to get them to come out. And they say, ‘It isn’t going to cost me any more to go out and play a little golf.’”
   Farrant’s “seeing the glass half full” mentality has helped him and staff expand the business even in a volatile golf economy…
   “I’m just a real ‘blue sky’ guy,” the 49-year-old former golf course superintendent says. “I’ve never seen a golf course or a location that I didn’t think ‘Hey, we can do this or we can do this and something will work.’”

Fitness, golf marriage working
   What has worked for GreatLife Golf is a low-priced membership fee that allows access to company’s holdings and all of the facilities located there. For an initiation fee of $100 and just $29 a month, members and their families have access to Topeka’s Berkshire, Western Hills and Prairie View, Chisholm Trail, Junction City, Lake Perry CC, Maple Creek in Kansas City North, River Oaks in Grandview, Mo., and Fitness 24/7 in Meriden.
   Memberships are available at all eight GreatLife Golf & Fitness locations. Each member (in good standing), his/her spouse, and children are free to use the club facilities at any of the locations any time during regular business hours. Other member benefits include no green fees or assessments, seven-day in advance tee times, club charge privileges, member-only golf and social events, and various golf leagues at each site not to mention the ability to use workout equipment/facilities that vary by location.
   “I think a lot of the struggling country clubs have a core base of old members, but it’s getting those new people in that’s tough,” Farrant says. “What we’ve been able to do by offering the golf and fitness is get them to come out and work out, then they go play a little

golf. Then the love of the game comes in – they get hooked on it. We’re actually generating core golfers out of our system. That’s what we’ve been able to do. Our (loss) rate is very low.”
   Farrant says a key to his business is converting those that are working out into golfers as opposed to converting golfers into fitness buffs.
   “I’ve got a lot better percentage of retention once I convert them to a golfer than a fitness person,” he says. “In the fitness business you lose 40 percent of your membership every year. So if you’re in that business you have to re-invent yourself every year and a half – that’s a lot of work.”
   So far, the marriage of golf and fitness seems to be working for Farrant and a staff that includes wife Linda (who Farrant credits with giving him the original idea of bringing fitness centers into the business) and brother Gary who co-own the business, and Rick’s son Jason, who the father says serves as a general manager and is in charge of getting each new facility set up to function the way GreatLife does business.
   “Our phone rings almost every day with someone either wanting us to come look at a golf course or wanting to partner with us,” Farrant says. “We’re gearing up to franchise and license. We’re always interested in new locations…it just takes a lot of time. You’ve got to have the right market and the right conditions. It’s kind of neat about what we do and how we do it. We’ve got locations where we’ve got a golf course here and a fitness center five miles away. I don’t think they have to be married to each other. All ten of our locations, each one is a little different.”

Farm kid goes golfing
   Farrant says he played a little high school golf at Village Greens near Ozawkie as a youth. He and his brother could play for a dollar a day back then. Rick Farrant says he took his first job on a golf course several years ago as a night waterman – at a course that would become Western Hills many years later and one he would sign papers to own, bringing an admitted smile to his face.
   “I didn’t like it; it was one of those hot years and I think I worked about 31 days out of the first 32 days I had the job,” he recalled. “I thought ‘Man, I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.’ We’d roll out hoses and that’s the way we did it back then.”
   Farrant says the superintendent later gave him a job on the maintenance crew and as a farm kid, riding around on tractors, mowing and taking care of the golf course was something

he loved to do.
   “I was still in high school and I thought ‘This is cool. I can do this,’” Farrant remembers. “I don’t know if that was a blessing or a curse.”
   After about four months, Farrant moved up to assistant superintendent. He would attend night classes at Washburn University in Topeka for two years.
   His wife saw an advertisement for a golf course superintendent at Carey Park in Hutchinson. Farrant applied, and at the age of 19, got the job and moved to Hutch. He spent four years there, attended Hutch juco for a year, and earned his finance degree from Wichita State.
   Farrant says he heard of a struggling golf course at the time, that under new management, began charging $100 to join and $25 a month to play. The course gained 1,400 members during a three-year lease when the old owner took it back.
   “I thought that seemed like it worked and I just started looking around for a course,” Farrant recalled. “And I found what was then Lake Ridge Estates (now Lake Perry CC). I drove up here, looked at one hole and went in to meet with the board and leased the golf course. And that’s how we got started.”
   Farrant says the first six properties his company got involved in were “failed operations.” But he says course conditions were the biggest factors in the struggles of those facilities.
   “It doesn’t matter how much you charge, if you don’t have good course conditions golfers aren’t coming out…that’s just the way it works,” he says. “After three years, we sold some extended memberships and raised some money. We put in some concrete cart paths, did some club house remodeling, re-built some tee boxes, did some irrigation work and boom, we got an immediate response in membership. I said, ‘We’re on to something here.’”
   Farrant’s golf holdings would later include Prairie View and Berkshire in Topeka, and Abilene’s Chisholm Trail, among others. He and brother Gary would open the Topeka Sod Farm in 2003, and that thriving company has provided zoysia sod for projects at The Golf Club of Kansas, Salina Country Club, Shadow Glen, Lake Quivira and Sunflower Hills among others.