May 1, 2017

Meet Kris Hart of Nextgengolf in Government Center

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kris Hart.

Kris – kick things off for us. Where does this story start?

I played varsity golf at Bryant University my first three years in college, but life got in the way senior year and I wasn’t able to compete on the team.

It really stunk being a non-varsity golfer. I couldn’t play free golf any longer, get free balls or equipment, and there was no competitive outlet for golfers like me. Three years after graduation, Nextgengolf was founded to help solve some of the fundamental problems with non-varsity collegiate golf.

Nextgengolf originated as a Boston-based affordable golf membership program for recreational college students called CollegeGolfPass, which helped make golf more affordable for college students. The company expanded nationwide after merging with The National Collegiate Club Golf Association (NCCGA) in 2013. In the first year of the merger, the company started 100+ new club golf programs and supported over 10,000 student golfers.

Over the next two years college golfers kept coming to us saying “thanks for all the help in college”, but kept asking “what do I do now” after graduating college. CollegeGolfPass and NCCGA rebranded as Nextgengolf in January 2014, knowing we could help graduating college golfers. As a result, in 2014 we developed the Nextgengolf City Tour which provides team-based golfing opportunities for young adults in their 20’s and 30’s near major cities.

Between the NCCGA and City Tour, Nextgengolf is the leading entity for golfers in their 20’s and 30’s in the US. At the core of our organization we run great golf tournaments and are in the golf experience business. Beyond running great events, we work hard to provide meaningful content and information to young adults and the golf industry at large. Our organization does not focus on the best golfers, rather we support “the rest” and care about the future sustainability of golf.

Hard work, dedication, and a great team got us to where we are today.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Hard question. Starting a business is not easy. It was not been a smooth road starting out. Not making a salary for 2 years while we were trying to find our way was especially difficult. Our business has changed and evolved over the last 5 years. The business we started called CollegeGolfPass is now just an add-on free service we provide to our customer even though this was our core business back in the day. Finding, hiring and retraining a talented team is crucial for the success of any business. We made some mistakes early on, but feel really comfortable and could not be more thankful for the team we have on staff today.

Please tell us about Nextgengolf.
We are known for millennial golf, especially at the collegiate level. I hate the term millennial, but our goal is for anyone 18-39 years old who is a golfer to think of Nextgengolf first. Our core competency is running great golf tournaments. I am very proud of our team. It is pretty amazing how we will run 185 golf tournaments in 2017 with only a staff of 7 full time employees. As a company, we are really proud and humbled by our customers, especially college students who spend their hard earned money on golf for the love of the game. Club golfers are very different than varsity athletes since varsity golfers get everything handed to them for free. All of the golfers involved in Nextgengolf love the game so much that they are willing to pay to compete. We are also proud that we run an inclusive organization where race, gender, wealth or skill level do not matter. All golfers are welcome as long as you are 18-39 years old.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
This is a tough one…..I would have to say college graduation and the time spent with my parents and family showing how proud they were of me and what I achieved. Is this still childhood?

If talking more childhood, I would say summers on Cape Cod with my family, friends, and on the golf course caddying/golfing.

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