Let's say you're a farmer...

[Adam_F_Collins]

You've got a nice piece of land, good for growing grass, nice elevation changes and good drainage... You've got machinery, the basics of earth moving and agriculture.

How do you make the best golf course for the least amount of money? Where do you cut costs?

How could the best possible "low-end" golf course be created? Let's say that you were aiming to create a fun, challenging golf course that had 18 hole green fees of $20.

Where do you concentrate your resources?

This is totally hypothetical, but it always seems that if we find a little homemade golf course, it's so outlandishly designed that it's ridiculous, or it's well-designed and over-manicured and expensive to run.

I've always felt that there could be a nice, happy medium in there. A homemade 'hackaround' track which is rough around the edges, but well-designed, fun and has that almost extinct, old school, relaxed family golf club kind of feel.

Humor me.

[Tom_Doak]

1.  You don't clear trees if you can keep your holes in the open.  (Clearing costs are $3000 per acre)

2.  You build a great set of greens with some interesting contour, and find a superintendent who is comfortable maintaining push-up greens, assuming the soil allows.

3.  You keep bunkering to a minimum unless the ground is sandy and you just dig them and leave them.

4.  You go with a single row of Toro 690 sprinklers down the center of the fairways in cooler climates, or a double row system in warmer climates, and let the rough be what may.  This is by far the biggest cost, if you are not building USGA greens.

5.  You keep the length of the course down to (insert your own number here) to reduce land costs and irrigation costs and maintenance costs.  (Every acre of grass costs more to maintain.)

6.  You locate the pro shop right off the access road to minimize paving costs, and you build the smallest building you can stand.

[Adam_F_Collins]

This may be a stupid question Tom, but what are 'push-up greens'?

[Adam_F_Collins]

And is it common practice to make an arrangement with someone interested in the wood of clearing?

Is there a way to keep costs down by "selling" the wood?

[Brent Hutto]

The course I learned to play golf on (I started in 1994) was done just the way you describe. A guy owned a bunch of land with a road running through it. His house and a couple of pastures on one side and the bulk of the land across the road, mixed soybean fields and pine/scrub oak woodland. Not particularly good farmland because it sits on top of several hundred feet of sand with little topsoil.

So in 1978 he and a couple of his farm laborers started clearing nine hole across the road from this house. Push-up green with sprinklers around them, slightly pushed-up tee boxes and flattish rather wide-open fairways with common Bermuda everywhere. I wasn't playing golf then but he had some sort of converted shed acting as a clubhouse.

Once nine holes were grassed and the greens were able to be irrigated he opened for play. Pretty cheap green fees and only 20 minutes outside a city with maybe 150,000 people in the metro area and 250,000 within a 40 mile radius. He actually made an operating profit from very early on and as soon as he had banked a little bit of money he went out and pushed up nine more greens and tees. Then a pretty decent clubhouse (not huge but adequate) was added and he became a bona fide 18-hole semi-private golf course. Eventually he added nine more holes (which I think he hired out the construction of) and then about the time I started playing installed irrigation on all the fairways and put a decent strain of Bermuda on the greens. He's been deceased for a couple years but his son has now sold house lots surrounding a dozen or so holes and made a good bit of money but more importantly the golf course operation has turned a profit every year since it opened. The key is no debt service, ever.

Here's why the course works. Sandy soil means it is always playable. Here in South Carolina we're blessed with twelve months of golf weather a year and I'd guess the course is only closed for play about a dozen days a year. Very small greens keep that portion of the maintenance budget under control and the combination of fast fairways, moderate rough, few enough trees to be playable by hackers and tiny, domed greens makes for a course enjoyable by a surprising range of golfers. Those little greens are hard enough to hit that a long-hitting 5-handicapper still has to play well to make birdies but even a 30+ index golfer can keep his ball in play and scrape it on the green in four or five strokes and have a shortish putt for his double-bogey or whatever.

They also have a slightly better management and operations staff than some of the other $20-$30 semi-privates in the area. So they can move an awful lot of players through their 27 holes during the busy season and can host enormous outings at a reasonable (but quite profitable) tarriff. And the greenskeeping staff has enjoyed fairly low turnover and had the same superintendent for a decade or so resulting in surprisingly good conditioning for its price range. The firm, tight fairway lies in particular could be emulated by many pricier clubs in town and a lot of that comes down to simply knowing how to sharpen a mower blade and keeping the irrigation short of the massive overkill point (they also have their own pumps and don't rely on municipal water).

[Kyle Harris]

Adam,

Push up greens are greens that are built on whatever soil is available with sand introduced in the form of top dressing.

Sometimes they are built up in the form of a green pad. See any older green that is elevated from its surroundings.

[Ian Andrew]

There is a great example in eastern Canada of someone being advised this and extending themselves to the point of bankrupcy because "this land should be a golf course"

Grow in costs are inflexible, even when construction costs can be kept down. It's the year without income and large outflows that kills many.

[Joe Hancock]

So far, no one has mentioned anything about hiring an architect....interesting.

Let's start with number 2 on Tom's list...no really, go ahead and do that without an architect. I know it's been done before, but rarely has it been done well.

So, number 1....hire an architect whom you have respect for their work. I bet many, if not most, would work reasonably if the client has a passion for good, affordable golf.

Joe

[Jim Thompson]

I'd never say I was a farmer, but that's kind of a family joke.

I am however the brother of a farmer and we just built a great course with a great architect.  If I get a little time tonight I'll write up some of the lessons we learned.  Don't be afraid of trees, they may just pay for the land in the end.

Cheers!

JT

[Bill Gayne]

I would start by contacting other farmers that had made a similar effort for the lessons learned. My starting point would be: www.pasturegolf.com

[paul cowley]

...if it were me, with 20$ greens fees and with 30,000 rds, I would not want a debt of more than 1mil to eke out my life.

[paul cowley]

...but I have done a good example of your ideal post...
...Orchard Creek in Altamont NY.....GD's best new affordable in 2001 and still going strong....but with 30$ greens fees [new].

...farmer owners, single row irrigation, 50,000 yds moved...small club, great food and people..... good golf the way it should be.

[Tony_Chapman]

Adam - In the midwest we see this a lot, especially in smaller towns that want nine holes to beat a ball around. A farmer donates land the town folks build it and away you go.

But, the course most notable in these parts is probably Chisholm Trail in Abeline, KS.

Chisholm Trail

[Daryn_Soldan]

Tony,

When I saw Adam's initial post I also thought of Chisholm Trail.
At $20 max for weekend play it really is a great deal. Chisholm Trail is
located within a mile of I-70 at the Russell Stover Candy factory exit
just west of Abeline, KS.  Here are a few pictures.

Tee shot from top of dune on par-4 2nd. The hole doglegs left and you can cut off as much of the thicket as you dare.


Par-3 3rd, plays directly into the strong prevailing south wind


Tee shot on the par-5 4th.  A drive challenging the trouble down the left leaves a shorter approach up the hill to the green in the following picture.



The tee shot on the par-4 6th.  Several fairway bunkers such as this one have been added around the course and the general upkeep continues to improve.


Approach ot the par-4 7th. The best hole on the course in my opinion.  A downhill drive that skirts the large fairway bunker (not pictured) cut into a dune on the left side of the fairway leaves this slightly uphill approach.


Par-3 12th.  No more than a short iron, it usually plays directly downwind and stopping the ball on the rolling, rear-sloping green is difficult.



The square green on the par-4 13th.  Note the boundry fence very near the back of the green.


A hallmark of Chisholm Trail, sloping greens that fit seamlessly with the natural terrain.  This is a view from left of the 15th.


A view from the tee of the drivable 300yd 16th. No need for bunkers on this challenging little hole.

[Tony_Chapman]

Daryn - Thanks for the pics. Why I haven't gone is beyond me. Next time I play golf in Kansas I will have to wrangle by brother up there instead of driving all the way to Wichita.

[Sean Remington (SBR)]

  Being a Superintendent I often day dream about working for myself rather than a committee as I do now. I would love to have the oportunity that Adam has outlined. I am encouraged that several of my ideas are in line with what Tom offered as working perameters. I agree that the greens are the key to providing an interesting course. This is also where you could set yourself apart from other courses constructed in this way. Make the greens larger than you think they should be and give them plenty of subtle movement and you can change the golf course to fit your play. Push up greens are a mandatory cost savings. My vision also includes rolling, rumbly fairways. You need the movement to take water away but it will also add interest in place of having several bunkers. I also see very few heights of cut and if possible the fariway mower could go up to and around most of the greens. Idealy one machine could cut all my fairways in 4-5 hours. Two maybe three tees  and natural areas surround all. Keep the corridors wide enough and pace won't be a problem. I think you could do the entire course for 1 million of less. Anyone want to donate 150 acres to the cause?

[Lou_Duran]

Tom Doak,

What soils and geographic locations you're acquainted with allow for push-up greens?  Would the Lubbock site be one?  And if not for bent, how about for the hybrid bermudas?  In addition to the agronomy, how about the playing characteristics of pushed-up greens versus though cored and built to USGA standards?

I remember the built-up Scarlet greens during summer drought condiditons becoming so hard that you could drive a maintenance vehicle on the them and not make a mark.  They also seemed to repel water instead of absorbing it like a sponge.

[Daryn_Soldan]

Not sure if he still posts on this site, but Bruce Dixon did a significant amount of preliminary work, including
the routing I believe, at Chisholm Trail as part of his landscape architecture masters degree program
at Kansas State.  I know he never got to see the finished product in person but he may be able to offer
some insight on working on a mom-and-pop project like this.

Tony - You should give Chisholm a try. The golf is good and it will save you a couple hours of drive time.
Regarding your link to the Ron Whitten article, he liked it enough that he and a partner ended up
buying the course a year or two ago.  (long after the linked article was written) Course conditions
have improved and a few bunkers have been added.  The course is built on sand and as of last time
I was there, the bunkers were just dug into the terrain and left as is.

[Adam_F_Collins]

Tony and Daryn

Thanks for the article and photos regarding Chisolm Trail. That is EXACTLY the type of place I'm talking about.

To quote Ron Whitten in his article for Golf Digest,

"...Chisholm is one of those "prairie earth" courses, an amateur-architect design and mom-and-pop operation. I liked it when it first opened in 1999, and like it even more now.

Not just because it offers $15 weekend green fees, or $8 twilight ones, or that logo shirts in the clubhouse cost just $20.  I'm a fan of Chisholm Trail because it represents the very grassroots of golf. It's proof that golf design is more art than science, and some very good courses can evolve from the landscape...

...the postage-stamp greens and the hardscrabble fairways. Welcome to real golf, guys. This is the kind of course this game was built upon. It's the kind we should cherish in this age of $200 green fees. "

Sean Remington:

I think it's a good dream to have.

[Tom_Doak]

Lou:

I have only built "push up" greens on sandy sites to date, but I would build them on loamy soils if budget constraints were tight (and if my owner signed a waiver agreeing not to sue me if his superintendent had problems with them!).  You've also got to screen the rocks out of the mix, no matter what the general condition of the soils.

For Bermuda I think you could build them out of just about anything, but the heavier the soils, the more problems you're going to have with ongoing maintenance (aerification in particular).  I am sure Eric Johnson is glad we didn't use the native soils at The Rawls Course, although when it's hot and dry, he probably curses us for putting sand on the approaches.  

[Don Dinkmeyer]

Another example of this type of course might be Chestnut Hills in Bear Lake, Michigan. It's a one-man operation that began as a 9 hole. Definitely laid out as the land dictated and not much fussing around.

The amazing good news is the expansion of the property with another 9 on the other side of the road. It's much "bigger" and is a big leap forward.

I have no idea what the costs have been; the greens fees are absolutely reasonable (its in the shadows of Arcadia Blufss, Crystal Mountain, and 3 other courses within a half hour) and the staff superb.