Chapter 1 · An excerpt
The Pro Shop Moment
An everyday interruption can reveal a much larger problem in the way a business works. This excerpt from Vertical AI: Changing the Game begins with the ringing phone in a golf pro shop.
Listen to the opening of Chapter 1
Sir Nick Faldo — the voice of Vertical AI: Changing the Game.
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Read the audio transcript
Automated transcript of the supplied recording; minor wording may vary.
Chapter 1 — The Pro Shop Moment.
On the outside, golf looks simple. A person stands on the tee, stares down the fairway, takes their club back, swings through, and sends a small white ball into the sky. That is the theory. The reality is usually different. The ball may slice into trees. It may disappear into water. It may travel seven glorious yards. It may produce a sound no golfer wants to hear. Twice.
Golf is a game that looks peaceful from a distance and becomes a psychological thriller the moment you pick up a club. It’s the same story for the operations. On the surface, all that needs to be done is some gardening and booking in tee times. Underneath that all is a lot more.
Greens need mowing, bunkers need raking, carts need charging, members need checking in, visitors need directions, competitions need organising, the weather needs watching, food and beverage need stocking, dress codes need explaining, groups need adjusting, bookings need changing, complaints need handling. Someone wants to know if the course is open, someone else wants to know if they can bring a guest, someone else is running late, someone else has forgotten their tee time, someone else wants to book eight players on Saturday morning at 8am and is surprised this might be difficult.
And then the phone rings.
When good people hold a broken workflow together
When the phone keeps ringing, the staff member has a choice. Serve the person in front of them or answer the person on the phone. Both customers matter. Both expect service. Both believe their request is simple. And both are right. That is the problem. The pro shop phone looks like a small operational inconvenience; however, it’s actually a clue. It tells us something important about the way the golf business works, and about the way many industries still work.
For years, we have assumed that if the phone keeps ringing, the answer is more staff to answer the increase in calls. The phone is not the problem though—it’s a symptom of an operational failure. The real problem is that the customer’s intent has not been captured properly by the system designed to handle their query.
When a golfer wants a tee time, it shouldn’t be a complicated process. In business terms, it is one of the cleanest transactions imaginable. I want to play golf. You have available times. I choose one. I pay. Done. This should be easy, and yet in many cases, golf clubs have websites, booking engines, apps, etc., and still golfers call to book their times. Why? Because when people do not trust the system, they route around it.
Excerpt from Chapter 1 of Vertical AI: Changing the Game by Clive Mayhew. © 2026 Clive Mayhew. Dean Publishing.
The practical lesson
A busy service team is not, by itself, evidence that the workflow works well. Look at what people repeatedly have to translate, remember or repair to deliver the customer’s outcome. Those hidden steps are the starting point for redesign.
The lesson travels across industries: a guest calls reception, a tenant follows up on a repair, or a customer emails because an online process did not resolve their need. The useful question is what the customer was trying to achieve and why the existing system left them uncertain.
Try the first exercise
Spend 60–90 minutes at your main point of customer contact. Observe without directing or correcting the team. Write down the three most repeated requests, what the customer actually said and every step staff needed to complete the work.
Then use the Front Door Audit to decide which workflow deserves a closer look. The complete free chapter includes the audit worksheet and the book’s golf booking example.
How to request the complete chapter
Use the email button below. It opens a draft addressed to vertical@clive.ai with the chapter request as its subject. Send that draft to request your copy. If your browser has no email app configured, email vertical@clive.ai directly with the subject “Send me Chapter 1 today”.
The book is forthcoming. A publication date and ISBN have not been announced on this site.