Susanna Sarkki merged a master’s in Business Administration, and a couple of MVP awards and a very special zebra water float from her Hawaii Pacific golf teammates, into a job as a marketing specialist for a golf app.
Honestly, it wasn’t quite that simple.
Sarkki held her first golf club at age 4 back home in Finland, where the Golf GameBook app originated in 2010. She found her way to HPU in 2012 after a friend showed her pictures of his experience here.
She came as a junior and finished her degree in International Business and an MVP golf season in the course of a year, then returned to Finland.
“I realized that I missed Hawaii every single day,” Sarkki recalls. “I mean who would not miss the spectacular golf courses, gorgeous beaches and the clear turquoise ocean? I applied to the MBA program.”
That led to an internship at Golf GameBook, the MBA, another MVP award and the realization that she probably wasn’t going to make it playing on a professional golf tour.
She was also HPU’s captain that second year and became much more aware of “the importance of working toward a common goal and leading the team by actions, not just with words.”
She remembers her final collegiate shot in vivid detail. With her teammates watching at Waikoloa, she chipped in for birdie. They rushed her and gave her that zebra water float with a personal note from each of them.
Sarkki cried, tears of joy and also sadness, but she hasn’t gone far from the game. Since seizing that master’s degree in December, she has worked full-time for Golf GameBook and golfed more days than she hasn’t.
Life is good.
“I really enjoy competitive golf, but during my final year at HPU I realized that I want to pursue a career in business and use golf as an advantage in business,” says Sarkki, whose brother Sami plays professionally in Finland. “My work really is perfect for me, as I get to golf with our ambassadors and it allows me to be involved with the sport every day.”
The app calls itself the “ultimate clubhouse in your pocket.” It started as one of golf’s first hand-held live scoring devices. It evolved into a free app for digital scoring and the third generation was introduced a few months ago.
Originally the focus was scoring and statistics — fairways hit and missed, putts, greens in regulation — and social interaction elements have been introduced along with GPS.
Stewart Cink, a Georgia Tech teammate of GameBook CEO Mikko Rantanen, has been involved since inception. Sarkki calls it “live scoring in everyday golf rounds” and “social media for golfers.”
She is a big part of the push for new and younger players. Golfers can comment during the round and so can their friends on and off the course, expanding smack talk into a new realm. Photos and videos can be posted and followers can be notified of birdies and eagles.
Digitized scorecards are posted in a diary. There are 25 game formats — “Erado” anyone? — and golfers can compete with players on other courses and in other countries, live if they want to.
“Forget about all the hassle at the clubhouse after the round,” Sarkki says.
The app claims its database covers 95 percent of all golf courses in the world — Ironwood Hills on Molokai is one — and you can check out the scorecard before you get to the course.
Most of the courses now have GPS coordinates. Your phone can give you yardages and the ability to measure — and save — distances with specific clubs. You can also view holes from above and look at them all without being anywhere near the course.
“The goal of the app is to digitize the world of golf and make the sport more fun to interest younger generations as well …,” Sarkki says. “It is a social media platform that is meant for golf talk. Together with the European Tour, we have created Your Race to Dubai, which is a fan game where you can challenge a European Tour pro in match play.”
In other words, there is a lot going on during a seemingly serene round of golf. There has been from the moment Sarkki first headed to HPU.
