The private club world and the boutique resort world often feel like parallel industries—adjacent, similar, yet fundamentally different in culture, expectations, and operations. Every so often, we meet a leader who straddles both worlds daily, offering a rare perspective on how racquets programming evolves when a facility must serve two distinct audiences at once.

In this week’s BeyondTheBaselines.com podcast, we sit down with Dave Neuhart, Director of Racquets at Innisbrook Golf Resort on Florida’s Gulf Coast. Innisbrook is not your typical resort. While it welcomes a steady flow of guests who stay for a week or two and move on, it also maintains a robust year-round membership. The result? A racquets environment that blends the pulse of a resort with the continuity of a private club.

Dave walks us through how he manages this hybrid model—running programming simultaneously for resort guests and full-time members across pickleball, racquetball, table tennis, tennis, and soon, padel. From themed live-ball sessions built around holidays to the planning of club championships, he shares how he keeps both groups engaged without compromising the identity of either.

We also dive into the strategic side of racquets management. Dave discusses the growth of league play at Innisbrook—seventeen teams strong—and how his “Awesome August” initiative boosted participation with four weeks of tactics-and-strategy sessions and creative prize incentives, capturing 60 percent of all league players.

Finally, Dave offers insights into reporting into a corporate ownership structure under Salamander Investments, and what profit-and-loss scrutiny means for departments that straddle hospitality and sport. We even explore the broader industry landscape, including the acquisitions of Peter Burwash International and Cliff Drysdale Management by Troon, and how such consolidations may shape the future of racquets operations nationwide.

It’s a thoughtful, engaging look at what it means to operate at the crossroads of resort hospitality and private club culture.