Michael,
We have been pretty lucky considering what is going on in the industry. I believe that there will be less than 25 new course construction starts this year vs the 125+ from 3-4 years ago and 350 from 10 years ago. We are doing a lot of renovation of existing courses, but that work is also down considerably. We have always done quite a bit of irrigation-only work, so that is continuing and we also have ventured into other landscape and sports field work over the past 6-8 years and that business has been good to us.
We saw this slow down coming many years ago, but the business continued pretty good for some years, but since 2001 it has plummeted, mainly due to over-supply, not 9-11. We also continue to work overseas in Dubai on Tiger Woods project as well as a new start-up coming in China next month. The fact that we also own courses has put us in a much better situation that most golf course builders as we can offer more turn-key work than the others and we can also help potential clients through these slower times.
All in all, our volume will be down somewhat, but we should be able to hold our own. Unfortunately, the US golf course business will never be over 100 courses per year again no matter how good our economy gets so we will expand our other business, but still keeping the golf work on the top of our agenda.