#148 Web TV: Golf and Tours Interview With Ainslie Saunders

Golf and Tours Interview With Ainslie Saunders

What I have is a Tuesday talk and she is going to talk about travelling away to play golf.

That sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it?

This is the lovely Ainslie Saunders, my buddy, we’ve teamed up together and I have asked her to come down and have a chat with me, and you, to find out more about golf tours and what she has planned and why she has put it all together.

We are going to get to know Ainslie, what a cool chick she actually is and what she has planned with absolutely awesome tours, so we’ll have a chat with Ainsley about everything, even golf.

Tiff: Hi Ainslie and welcome to today.

Ainslie: Hello Tiffany and thanks for having me along.

Tiff: It’s a pleasure. Before we get started and going straight into questions, what is the name of your company, so we all know.

Ainslie: It’s Golf and Tours.

Tiff: Golf and Tours. Tells you everything, doesn’t it?

Ainslie: It does. Everything you need to know.

Tiff: Why did you start Golf and Tours? You have only just started the business, in the last few months. What was the reasoning behind it?

Ainslie: I’ve been working in the golf travel industry for quite a few years now and I thought there was a genuine gap in the market. Women. There are plenty of golf tours around for men and I think what men and women want out of a golf tour is quite different. Men are happy to play thirty-six holes in a day, have a couple of beers at the end, go to sleep, wake up and repeat. I think women want a little bit more out of their golf tour than that. I think that most women see golf as a social activity and as part of going away on a golf tour they want to do more than just play the nice courses. You want to experience the destination, you want to spend time with your girlfriends and have a really nice time. That’s what we try and do with all of our tours is to make it about playing really good courses, but also about having a really great time with your girlfriends.

Tiff: She know it well, doesn’t she? She knows how you’re thinking. That’s awesome. So, that awesome and we have teamed up together and Ainslie puts all my tours together and I have just started as well.

Ainslie: Very exciting.

Tiff: Ainslie is the one to speak to if you want to come on a tour with me, you speak to Ainslie. She is doing everything for me. You have actually started playing golf as well?

Ainslie: Yes.

Tiff: She has been in the golf industry quite a while and she has just taken up golf.

Ainslie: Well, I’m a mum as well and a wife and I’m working full time, so taking up golf has taken a bit of a back seat but now I’ve really gotten into it, I started with the swing fit program which has been great to introduce me to golf, my husband is extremely excited about it. So is my dad, they have both been playing for years and years and years, even my daughter, who is ten, has just started coming along with me and she is really getting into it, so on the weekend my husband, daughter and I have been going down to our local golf course and just playing anywhere between three to six holes before it gets dark at the end of the day, when no one is behind us. I don’t feel the pressure. My daughter doesn’t feel the pressure, I feel the pressure.

Tiff: Does your husband feel the pressure?

Ainslie: No.

Tiff: He’s quite relaxed. That’s good.

Ainslie: I’ve been saying to his, gosh, this must be terrible for you, because I hit the ball fifteen metres, and he says that really for him it’s the best round of golf ever because he is there with our daughter and me and we are doing it as a family. It’s actually really beautiful.

Tiff: It’s a bonding thing?

Ainslie: Yes. You can do it anywhere in the world, any place you go to there is a golf course and how great to experience that together as a family.

Tiff: Beautiful. You’ve started golf. This is the question I’m going to ask now. What do you think of it?

Ainslie: Well, I love it. I do, I have a long way to go and the good thing for your listeners is that any tour they come on that I’m on, guaranteed that they will be better than me. No need to feel intimidated because I’ll be there. I do really love it.

Tiff: What have you found, is it as easy as you thought.

Ainslie: Working in the industry and working with golfers day in and day out, I knew all about the love, hate relationship that people seem to have with it and you see even Jordan Spieth, in the Masters the year before last, how he had a bit of a shocker, a meltdown, and if the professionals can have that then it makes one feel a bit better about one having a shocker yourself. They are professionals, they have been playing for years and years and years, so if I have a shocker it’s not so bad. It’ not the end of the world.

Tiff: Did you play anything prior to golf, growing up?

Ainslie: I played netball at school and some tennis and that sort of thing but I’ve never really played a ball and bat type sport before, so it has been a steep learning curve. One thing I keep telling myself all the time is that there are so many older ladies that play golf, I don’t need to try and hit the skin off it because there are some really great ladies out there (Tiff: listen to that!) who are much older than I am and can hit the ball so much further and if they can do it then I can do it. They are inspiring me.

Tiff: Good. That’s good to hear. It’s just that golf is a process, you just have to make sure you learn the fundamentals and you get the fundamentals in place and then you will get all that distance and all of that sort of thing and catch up with them.

Ainslie: Hopefully it will come.

Tiff: You don’t feel like that in the beginning, you look at it and think how is this ever going to work, but if you do work through it, it does come.

Ainslie: I trust you.

Tiff: I’m proof. I was like everyone else, I started on a forty-five handicap and took it up as an adult and hacked my way through the golf course, air swings, skewing the balls all off over the place, hitting the balls fifteen metres and doing the whole works.

Ainslie: Do you think I could be like you one day?

Tiff: You could be like me (she says laughing). It is possible.

Ainslie: You introduced your mum to golf as well. My mum is learning with me.

Tiff: Yes, that’s right. You two are actually learning together. Whereas I actually took it up two years prior and I kept saying to mum, you have to take up golf, you are just going to love it. No, no, when I’m retired I’ll take it up. Then when she actually did take it up she said why didn’t you tell me it was going to be so good? She’s addicted. If you get to meet my mum, she is addicted. I’m sure your mum will become addicted too.

Ainslie: Yes, I think so. We are a family of lawn sports, we love having a good game of finska or quoits or whatever, usually we have a glass of champagne in our hands but really golf is like the ultimate lawn game, isn’t it?

Tiff: Yes. Big time. By you taking up golf, has that actually opened up a new area in which you are going to be marketing in the sense of your golf tours? It’s the beginner golfers, so that’s really exciting. Let’s hear about that.

Ainslie: Well, I can see that there is a bit of a gap in the market for those of us that are just first learning golf, to actually going from your golf clinics or golf classes to actually becoming a golfer, a member of a golf club, and feeling confident and happy about playing eighteen holes and playing in a competition (Tiff: a different environment, a very different environment). I know that for me it is quite intimidating and I’m sure there must be other ladies who feel the same way.

So, we are putting together these beginner tours. These tours will just be two nights, three days, self-drive packages, where we go somewhere really great that has other things to do, other than golf, the Southern Highlands, Orange, the Hunter Valley, the Blue Mountains, the North Coast and we arrive, have a golf clinic in the afternoon and then the next day we will have a golf clinic in the morning and play only nine holes and then do something fun, like have a high tea or a wine tasting, just depends on what area we are in and then the next day another golf clinic and another nine holes and then we go home.

It’s a good beginner, sort of like intensive clinic really.

Tiff: Yes, for three days. Three days of fun. That sounds fantastic. That’s all come about because you have just taken up golf yourself?

Ainslie: Yes, it has given me a unique perspective into the beginner golfer’s mind because I am living it.

Tiff: It’s very interesting taking up the good old golf game. I’m sure we all understand that big time. It can be incredibly frustrating and I always say that it puts you onto a high, right up into the clouds because you feel on top of the world. You feel like you are in ecstasy and then the next day you can be in the depths of despair and want to slit your wrists.

Ainslie: It is such a good leveller, golf. We all feel that, it doesn’t matter what our skill level is, it doesn’t matter our gender, it doesn’t matter what country we are from, every golfer feels it. If you meet a golfer you have an instant connection because you have both been in the same doldrums.

Tiff: You’ve suffered! You’ve suffered!

This is all really great, what you are doing with the beginner golfers, I think that I’ve always had that frustration as well, because I’ve found that even though that’s where my specialty is, the beginner golfer market, I don’t believe they are looked after enough and I think it’s great that you provide this for the beginner golfer.

It doesn’t matter that you’ve just started playing golf. It’s okay, you can still go and have a good time with the opportunities that golf brings you, I know that when my husband and I have been in one of our favourite places (for me it’s Hawaii the plantation course at Maui, it’s magic). You get to spend the time and it doesn’t matter what the level is. It doesn’t matter, just go and enjoy it.

Ainslie: You’ve had that bonding experience of being somewhere together, doing an activity together that you both love, and they are memories you will keep forever.

Tiff: Absolutely, it’s fantastic.

So, moving on, My Golf Tours. The first one is scheduled for July at the Gold Coast. Would you like to (Ainslie is doing it all) tell us all about the Gold Coast?

Ainsley: The Gold Coast tour that Tiff is leading is from the 24th to the 28th of July this year, 2017 and it’s going to be a great opportunity to get up to Queensland in the middle of winter and get into the warmth.
The tour is going to be following same schedule that most of our tours follow, which is two days of golf, a rest day and then another two days of golf. On two of those golf days you will be doing the clinics before as well.

That’s great, you can improve your golf while you are on your golf tour and playing courses at Lakelands, Royal Pines, Sanctuary Cove, and Links, Hope Island. They are all really beautiful courses, I think the ladies will particularly like Royal Pines, it’s a beautiful course but the staff there are amazing, they are really attentive, all the facilities are fantastic. I think it will be good, there are a lot of tournaments that are played there as well.

It’s always in really good condition and then we are staying at the Meriton Apartments in Broadbeach. Everyone will be in one bedroom suites which can either be in a king bed or if you would like to twin share you can have two single beds. It’s in a really great location, each suite comes with a full kitchen and for those who don’t want to go out for dinner every night you can choose to stay in a cook.

Tiff: Make your own breakfast?

Ainslie: That’ right. But, for those who would like to go and see what’s out there, literally, the restaurants are just downstairs.

Tiff: It’s really the place to be, Broadbeach.

Ainslie: It is. Now that the Gold Coast has put in the G:link, which is their new tram line for the Commonwealth Games coming up, it’s a really great spot.

Tiff: Perfect. I can’t wait. I can’t wait for all my fellow golfers to be there either.

At the end of the year in November, we have one booked for New Zealand. Let’s hear about that one.
Ainslie: Well, Queenstown is one of my favourite golfing destinations, from Sydney it’s a three-hour flight, you get there, the airport if only 30 minutes from the hotel, from downtown Queenstown and there are four amazing golf courses no further than a twenty-five to thirty minute drive away. It is really one of the prettiest places to play golf, with the Remarkables in the background, they’re razor sharp, they have snow caps and they are really striking.

Tiff: Just magnificent.

Ainslie: The food and the wine, New Zealand is known for all that. It’s just a perfect spot.
Tiff: You can’t not go. You must go. Just experience it.

Ainslie: It is fantastic.

Tiff: If you are interest in coming on a golf tour, Ainslie is the person to speak to. You can get through to Ainslie via me or you can contact Ainslie directly. I will leave details for you on my website so you can get in contact with Ainslie and it will link straight through to her website so you can check out the golf tours that she has coming up and obviously my golf tours too, I have to promote me too.

Ainslie, thanks so much. Is there anything else you would like to share today?

Ainslie: Well, I’d just like to say that every woman that I have met through golfing has always been so encouraging, truly, genuinely encouraging and I’m really looking forward to giving back to the golfing community and to meeting new ladies and getting some more golfers, lady golfers particularly, into the sport so that we can all have fun and play long games together.

Tiff: Exactly. It’s a beautiful sport. I love golf.

Ainslie: Thanks for having me on.

Tiff: Thank you for coming and I always say at the end of my videos, tee if high and let it fly. So tee it high and let it fly, I haven’t got a golf club with me today, we’ll just have to pretend.

Golf Tours With Tiff  ==>> CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE

Golf And Tours With Ainslie ==>> CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE

Have an absolutely awesome day, take care, and remember; Tee it high and Let it fly.