My wife and I aren’t sentimental about things like birthdays and Christmas.  Our anniversary usually involves dinner, but for the most part, we don’t do the whole “gift thing”.  We’re both pragmatists.  Any money for gifts would get pulled from the communal pool, so our thinking is more along the lines of “happy birthday, go buy yourself something you want”.  Traditionalists might find our lack of sentimentality abhorrent, but it works well for us.  Besides, from time to time, for the sake of surprise, each of us has been known to break our no gifts policy.  Such was the case a few Christmases ago when I bought my wife the set of Calphalon pots and pans she’d be lusting for (she loves to cook), and such was the case last December when my wife bought me a gift card for my favorite area golf course; Saratoga National.

I’ll save the full review of Saratoga National for a later date.  For background purposes, I’ll just say that Saratoga National offers the finest public golf in New York’s Capital District – actually probably the finest golf between New York City and Canada (although one could certainly make a case for the Donald Ross designed Sagamore in Bolton Landing).  Saratoga National is on par with the 3 outstanding Turning Stone courses just 2 hours to the West, but for the trouble of a 15 minute car ride, there’s nothing near me that even remotely compares.  National is where I like to play when friends come to visit from out of town…even if it does cost $185 a round during the peak August season.  Rest assured, as soon as I come up with $4500 I don’t know what else to do with (or that my wife doesn’t know about), I’ll sign up for one of their preferred customer programs.  In the meantime, I play when I can.

So now that you know about my wife and I and our shared lack of sentimentality, and a bit about my favorite local golf course, here’s what happened:

I was checking out the Saratoga National website (my college roommate is coming to town in August, and I’ve got that anniversary dinner past due) when I noticed Saratoga National was on Twitter.  Hoping they might use Twitter to offer ridiculous discounts (a boy can dream), I started following them.  Not long after that I got to thinking about that gift card my wife bought me back in December (as I said, my roommate is coming into town, so I’m going to need it).  I searched high and low in all of my usual stashing places.  I checked the junk drawer, the gift certificate pile, even my workbench in the basement where miscellaneous golf stuff sometimes piles up.  After more or less ripping my house apart I came up empty.  My wife got in on the action; checking file cabinets, folder, envelopes, and the stacks of papers that we probably should have dealt with months ago.  She too came up empty.  $100 towards a round of golf (or dinner) at Saratoga National was gone.  Frustrated, I posted on Twitter, “If you were my Saratoga National gift card, where would you be”?  You know…just in case my gift card had its own Twitter account.

Much to my surprise, Kristin, who handles all things social media related for the golf course, sent me a tweet asking about my gift card, and offering to help.  By help, of course, I don’t mean she offered to show up at my door to continue the search (that would have been weird, but given my level of desperation, I wouldn’t have turned her down).  Nope, instead she asked me for some basic information (purchase date, last 4 or the credit card, etc.).  It took a little bit of time (mostly because the search on their involved the Director of Golf, and Claire from the billing department), but much to my awe, a replacement gift card did arrive at my doorstep not too long ago.  How awesome is that?

Here’s the thing.  I’m an idiot (or maybe my wife is an idiot).  One way or another one of us (probably me) lost the gift card.  I certainly wasn’t about to call Saratoga National to see if they’d replace it (why would they…they mailed it to me, and then I lost it), so I was completely blown when Kristin reached out, on Twitter of all places, and offered to replace the card.  They already had my money.  There was absolutely no reason why anyone at National needed to do me any favors.  They’re sitting on the best golf course in the area.  They’ve got one of the best restaurants in town.  And it certainly doesn’t hurt that they’re sitting on the prime real estate that is just about anything in Saratoga come August.  Simply put, they’ve got the goods – and they’ve got it regardless of whether or not they replace a gift card that some moron misplaced.  And yet despite having every reason do do nothing, Saratoga National made it better than right.

So whether you want to chalk one up to the power of Twitter, or simply comment that customer service isn’t dead after all; color me more than impressed by the staff at the most impressive golf course in town.  I’ve commented numerous times on my not so warm and fuzzy feelings towards a few local golf courses where the staff  has made me feel like they’re doing me the favor of a lifetime by allowing me to play their $30 a round goat pasture.  Having the exact opposite experience from a golf course where it actually feels like a privilege to play, well…wow. 

In the past I’ve struggled to find the superlatives to describe the course, and now the same is true of the staff.  So to Kristin, Claire, and everyone else at Saratoga National who does more than needs to be done to keep their customers happy, let me just say thank you.  I’ll be visiting soon.

Find out more about the golf course and Prime Restaurant at www.golfsaratoga.com