It is impossible to play the Old Course on a Sunday. Why?
Every Sunday (outside of tournaments), golf is not played there. It’s been that way for hundreds of years.
But here is the fantastic part… the public (and even dogs!) are welcomed on the fairways. The Old Course in St. Andrews becomes a park for one day a week.
A huge bark park. At 45 acres, it is one the biggest dog parks in the world. According to Golf Inc. Magazine, “The only rules are obvious: 1. Please pick up after your four-legged friend. 2. Please stay off the greens. (The latter is only loosely followed.)”
When Jenn and I took a tour of the Old Course nearly two decades ago. The tour guide said something that stood out. He shared how residents of St. Andrews would lay out their laundry to dry on Sundays. Or that fishermen spread their nets on the fairways to mend them.
In “Pink Goldfish 2.O” David Rendall and I share how Chick-fil-A Restaurants stand out through a concept called Withholding. Like the Old Course, it is also closed on Sundays.
According to The New York Times, “Historians trace the Old Course’s Sunday closure to religious laws dating at least to the 16th century, when some residents of St. Andrews were cited in town criminal logs for playing on the Sabbath.”
Sometimes you can stand out by doing less of what everyone does as normal…
In the words of James Murphy, “Can one imagine this happening at that silly place in Augusta, Georgia? I can’t.”
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Stan Phelps walks the walk. He stands out in the sea of sameness by modeling his own Differentiated Experience (DX) message: Differentiation isn’t just about what you say, it’s about what you do and, more importantly, how and why you do it. Stan leverages his unique collection of 5,000+ case studies on customer, employee, and brand experience to engage audiences with informative learning-based experiences. He believes purposeful DX wins the hearts of employees and customers, and differentiation ultimately boosts loyalty, retention, referrals, and results.
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