More Info on San Francisco Muni's Losses

[A_Clay_Man]

Another hit for Golf Observer.

http://www.golfobserver.com/index.html

Pleae go to GO to find this;

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/18/BAG12HB6LQ1.DTL

[Kevin_Reilly]

The article about the losses was accompanied by this (more interesting) article re: Sharp Park and its problem with flooding...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/18/BAG12HASUP1.DTL&hw=sharp+park&sn=002&sc=492

[Matt_Cohn]

Why don't Torrey Pines and Harding (especially) charge visitors $200+ per round? Torrey could probably get it with the US Open coming. Harding could get it because there aren't even any other decent public options in SF. So why do they charge in the low $100's? I hate overpriced golf as much as the next guy but it seems to me like they're losing $300 to $400 in potential revenue for each non-resident foursome.

I don't think visitor play would go down all that much. Somebody please let me know if my reasoning is way off here.

[Evan_Green]

Matt - Torrey is close to $200 for an advance booking - all the tourists who travel there are forced to pay that because they dont want to wait for 3 hours or want to risk missing the course after travelling to get there

[A_Clay_Man]

Matt Cohn,

 Do you think it would be better to resolve the "waste", first, before jacking up the fees?

Incompetence and/or corruption are the only two valid reasons why these golf courses can't make money. Increasing the fees only encourages more of both.

[Kelly Blake Moran]

Matt - Torrey is close to $200 for an advance booking - all the tourists who travel there are forced to pay that because they dont want to wait for 3 hours or want to risk missing the course after travelling to get there

I thought the USGA bringing their championship to public course was touted as helping public golf.  how does a $200 a round green fee do that?

[A_Clay_Man]

KBM- It helps the same way Pebble's increased fee structure has been good for the game. It gets greedy number crunches to build more courses, creating a glut, putting more courses at risk of NLEing.

[Evan_Green]

Matt - Torrey is close to $200 for an advance booking - all the tourists who travel there are forced to pay that because they dont want to wait for 3 hours or want to risk missing the course after travelling to get there

I thought the USGA bringing their championship to public course was touted as helping public golf.  how does a $200 a round green fee do that?

Kelly-
For San Diego residents it's still only $40, but when I went down there for Thanksgiving it was like $190 for the South and $140 for the North. On the other hand, one could argue it is better that Bethpage in the sense that we were able to play the course while visiting the area. My familiy wasnt about to wait around for 3 hours for a tee time on Thanksgiving.

[Evan_Green]

Another interesting point: re Torrey Pines, as part of the package in booking the advanced tee time at the $190 they sent around one of the Assistant pros with our group for the first three holes. Not somthing you will see at many munis!

Its a bifurcated system there: locals and tourists.

[Matt_Cohn]

Thanks for all the good replies.

Evan, I think it's important to have affordable public golf for locals, not for vacationers. The point of affordable public golf is to make golf accessible for more people on a regular basis close to their home. I guess I don't think it affects public golf one way or the other if people can play inexpensively on a course that's nowhere near where they live or work. Shouldn't visitors, who take tee times away from locals, subsidize the locals' experience as much as possible?

To me - and I'm not exactly a finance expert! - but to me, that's good for public golf.