Why ? Why ? Why?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tim,
I'm not a person who wants to turn back the clock, I'm saying that the speculation and overbuilding in the golf market caused problems for many people who were already in it......and we will all end up paying a higher price if those 'lesser designs/facilities' go out of business because of it. That's why I am an advocate of staying away from high priced golf courses (not too hard to do at this time) and going back to the type of place you once knew, those 'lesser designs/facilities', so they can stay in business.

 
George,
I wasn't 'calling you out', didn't you see the smiley? ?  There was nothing personal in my response to you.

[Jim_Kennedy]

......just an addendum, Denver's system of munis seems to be well rounded. They have 4-18 hole facilities, one 27 hole w/an additional 9 hole par 3, one 18 hole exec, one 9 hole par 3, three junior courses of 3 and 4 holes each(no one over 18 can play them),
a mini-golf course and driving range, and a caddie program at five of the facilities.

http://www.golffusion.com/golfdmgc/start_page.php

[David Kelly]

That's why I am an advocate of staying away from high priced golf courses (not too hard to do at this time) and going back to the type of place you once knew, those 'lesser designs/facilities', so they can stay in business.

The problem is that I am not interested in helping lesser facilities stay in business.  I am interested in playing interesting golf courses.  If they happen to be cheap - Rustic Canyon - so be it but if they are interesting and expensive - Bandon in season - I'll play there as well.

[Jim_Kennedy]

David,
Lessser doesn't have to mean less interesting. Support whoever you want.

[Matthew Petersen]

......just an addendum, Denver's system of munis seems to be well rounded. They have 4-18 hole facilities, one 27 hole w/an additional 9 hole par 3, one 18 hole exec, one 9 hole par 3, three junior courses of 3 and 4 holes each(no one over 18 can play them),
a mini-golf course and driving range, and a caddie program at five of the facilities.

http://www.golffusion.com/golfdmgc/start_page.php

Many of them are sneaky good courses, too.

Wellshire is a Donald Ross design, and just down the street from Cherry Hills.

I always thought Willis Case was a fun course to play, and a very unique property with big slopes. I remember Overland having a few nice holes as well.

[George Pazin]

George,
I wasn't 'calling you out', didn't you see the smiley? ?  There was nothing personal in my response to you.

Can't say it read that way, but maybe it's just me. At any rate, I said my piece, no big deal.

I do agree with your posts about returning golf to its roots, that's kind of the point I was making originally.

[Jim_Kennedy]

George,
I think you just read it wrong, as I said, I wasn't calling you out.  Glad it's no big deal.

You'd think golfers would smarten up. The most expensive places to play are in the most out of the way places where an architect has moved the least amount of dirt and the owner has spent the least amount of money in attaining it. 

I mean, at least you can justify most of the 500 smackers you need to lay out to play Shadow Creek by the amount of work it took to build it. 

[Rob Rigg]

You'd think golfers would smarten up. The most expensive places to play are in the most out of the way places where an architect has moved the least amount of dirt and the owner has spent the least amount of money in attaining it. 

So a golfer should not pay to play one of the best courses in North America just because it is out of the way, the architect did not move a lot of dirt and the developer did not pay a ton of cash for the property? I think that is how you turn a good single course destination into an all world multiple course destination.

Instead golfers should contribute green fees to marginal metro courses even if the golf experience is uninspiring?

I have never understood why anyone would pay upwards of $100 to play a CCFAD but I can certainly understand why someone pays that much to play a "spectacular minimalist out of the way course."

The experience is worth it and certain out of the way courses support caddy programs like the Evans Scholars which gets young golfers into the game - something that is very positive for the future.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Rob,
Lighten up, everything but the first sentence of that post was satirical. Plus, I never said you should play cheap crap over more expensive quality. There are many, many courses of interest that aren't stratospherically priced and they should be supported lest they disappear.

But I will say this, what the muni sysytem in a city like Denver provides for it's citizens is infinitely more important to the continuing health of the game of golf, and will touch more people, than any mega expensive golf course on the planet, pick your locale.

That takes nothing away from bright ideas like Bandon. 

[Tim Nugent]

Jim, put your trust in the market.  If Big, overpriced CCFAD's are not the value they preceive them to be, the management will have to either adjust what they are offering and what they charge for it.  If not, the market will speak. 

The problem operators of non-municiple DF's have is competing against muni's because the cost structure isn't an even playing field.  A muni doesn't have to pay RE taxes, doesn't have to turn a profit (there's alway the taxpayer), has it's insurance covered by the municipality's policy and has most overhead covered under a municipal structure, land cost is usually not a factor, and capital improvements can be financed with cheaper muni-bonds rather than private market financing.  With these advantages, how do you expect non-public DF's to survive if they don't charge more than there public counterparts.  And to charge more, they need a differenciated product.

[Tom_Doak]

Tim:

So why don't municipal courses dominate the golf market, instead of their current status as a breed on the verge of extinction?

[George Pazin]

Tim:

So why don't municipal courses dominate the golf market, instead of their current status as a breed on the verge of extinction?

Lousy ownership and management can overcome any other inherent advantages.

Golf is a wonderful sport, hobby, whatever you want to call it. It will grow nicely all by itself, as long as no one actively tries to kill it.

[Tim Nugent]

Tom,

Where are munis on the verge of extinction?

In many markets they do dominate.  A couple of reasons but the they all seem to boil down to the experience, quality, value equation.  Most muni's tend to try to have the most economical fees.  Afterall, the voters are the clients.  This tends to draw alot of players for whom cost is the only factor, especially retired guys who need to get out of the house, so the other aspects that are desired by golf affectionodo's (sp?) don't come into play in the decision making process.  However, for those for which these apsects do matter and whom are willing to pay a bit extra for them, they can find them at non-publically run venues.  

When you get into more urban areas and the cost of land sprials, eventually all you end up with is either Clubs or munis.  Take Chicago, New York, SF, LA.  You have to go out a ways to find non-muni DF courses and most of what you will find are ones that have been around for quite some time.

Now, some of the munis will be either private clubs or formerly DF courses that couldn't make it but the muni didn't what to lose the open space/recreation venue.

[Mike_Young]

Sean:


The crusade SHOULD be not how to make the game grow (in terms of GDP), but how to make it more affordable so that more people could play.  But now that I think about it, there is no one in the golf business saying anything like that.

You are correct...and an even bigger problem is that when someone tries the same forces that push the latest and greatest are there to convince courses they can't do it in a more affordable way.....
BUT that's all we have to do....make it affordable.....

[Richard Choi]

If you want to "grow the game" isn't what we just went through over the last couple of decades exactly what we want?

I mean, building golf course is just too darn expensive. It takes too much land and it takes too much effort to build it. You just can't do it via normal routes.

But thanks to some deranged bubble, we went through a huge building boom where we were able to extract money from dumb banks and Wall Street firms and built courses that really should never have been built. Many of them of great architecture quality.

Now all we have to do is make sure that they go bankrupt then take them over and offer rounds on those courses at much more reasonable price. Sure, some of them will close as they are worth more as land than as a golf course, but many will survive. We just have to make sure they are taken over by sane people who actually care about the game and find ways to reduce maintanance cost as much as possible.

[Rob Rigg]

But I will say this, what the muni sysytem in a city like Denver provides for it's citizens is infinitely more important to the continuing health of the game of golf, and will touch more people, than any mega expensive golf course on the planet, pick your locale.

Jim - agreed - Denver has a great muni system and every golf experience does not have to be "spectacular" but it should be worth the amount of money that the golfer is asked to pay. Public courses of good quality at a reasonable cost is the future of the game and we need to provide easy access to the next generation of golfers even if it means free or almost free golf for them.

I often have difficulty picking out your satire vs serious comments - we are rarely on the same wavelength, but it's all good.

[Mike Cirba]

But, I can't help feeling that kids today do not have the chance to get into the sport the way we did.  I grew up a mile from a public golf course I could play (as a junior after 3 pm) for ONE dollar; where is that opportunity for kids now?  When I was ten Dave Stockton came to town and did a free PGA clinic; when's the last time a top ten player did a week's worth of those? 

And without such opportunities, where is the next generation of golfers going to come from?  Kids with $50,000 college debt and no job?  I have seen plenty of places in the past year where the sport is just dying, because the numbers don't work anymore, even on older courses with no debt.

Tom,

I think that's a fundamentally important question.   

I also wonder how many of us out here were exposed to the game indirectly because either our father, or grandfather, or other ancestor who may have been much less well-to-do than we are today was given the opportunity to play affordable golf somewhere, at either a muni, a cheap low-key public, or a modest private facility.

We all have a stake in growing this game, I believe.

[Matthew Petersen]

But I will say this, what the muni sysytem in a city like Denver provides for it's citizens is infinitely more important to the continuing health of the game of golf, and will touch more people, than any mega expensive golf course on the planet, pick your locale.

Jim - agreed - Denver has a great muni system and every golf experience does not have to be "spectacular" but it should be worth the amount of money that the golfer is asked to pay. Public courses of good quality at a reasonable cost is the future of the game and we need to provide easy access to the next generation of golfers even if it means free or almost free golf for them.

I often have difficulty picking out your satire vs serious comments - we are rarely on the same wavelength, but it's all good.

The Denver area is really special for golf and I didn't appreciate that when I lived there. The city/county of Denver itself has a wonderful muni system but so do many of the suburbs. Aurora's muni courses are wonderful (Saddle Rock, Murphy Creek, Meadow Hills), and there are some nice courses in the South Suburban system and in Littleton, all of which are muni-owned.

For all the wonderful courses in Arizona, where I live now, very few are munis. Phoenix has just a few muni courses, and of those only Aguila and Papago are worthwhile. Most suburbs have very few courses if any muni system at all. This creates a nasty situation where virtually all of the better courses in the area are either private or CCFAD-type.

[Bradley Anderson]

Most courses were built to either fill hotel rooms and restaurants at resorts, to increase lot value of land that had no amenities going for it without a man made golf course..especially in the deserts...or politicians wanting to subsidize the latest and greatest muni project ( for awhile)...and all of this allowed it to get out of hand...manufacturers made better equipment whether it be , playing equipment, irrigation, or maintenance....and clubhouses...well they almost single handedly destroyed much of the game....

Do you think that the laws had something to do with that too? I remember back in 1990 working on a project with the Army Corps of Engineers and they explained to me that the Bush administration had really pushed hard for compensatory storage of water and for wetlands preservation. The result being that now when you build homes you have to set aside plenty of green-space and wetlands. And so golf was just the best use of that green-space because it raised the value of those home lots, while providing a place to absorb, store, and release the water.

[Bradley Anderson]

Sean:

If I don't make another dime off golf in my life, that would be okay.

But I'd still like to see the game made available to people in the far corners of the world, and here at home, because I think it's a great game and a great culture.

The crusade SHOULD be not how to make the game grow (in terms of GDP), but how to make it more affordable so that more people could play.  But now that I think about it, there is no one in the golf business saying anything like that.

Of course it is the same for all other businesses ... all of them lobbying in Washington how more regulation might cost people jobs, or lower the value of investors' 401(k).

Tom,

Back in the 80's I managed a 200 acre golf course in Central Illinois on a $150,000 budget. The fairways were unirrigated bluegrass, cut with gang mowers. We had pretty good bunkers there but we only raked them once a week, and we edged them once a year. The players were expected to rake them out. The tees were all at grade and there was very little trim work. And we had very few trees. The amazing thing about that operation is it could have had good strategic design features there and that wouldn't have necessarily raised the cost of maintaining it.

I have always thought that you could make something like that near a major market, so that more people could afford to play the game. But the cost of the land is so high that there wouldn't be any venture capital to back it. Mabye that will change?

[Jim_Kennedy]

Rob,
It's probably a generational thing.

Tim,
I'm not telling you anything new, but golf would have about the same following as polo if it weren't for the vast number of munis that were built during the last century, especially at the inception of golf on this continent.
There looks to be around 4 privately owned DF courses for every muni in the Denver area. They can't be too disadvanteged and still be operating.

[Tim Nugent]

Jim, I'm not disparaging munis, just pointing out why they exist and how they impact DF of CCFAD business plans.  And how the "public" nature of them restrict what they can do.

When I was working on replacing the - ready for this - rubber tee mats at a County owned course just outside the Chicago City limits,the County outsourced the  management to Billy Casper Golf.  The course had all the old bunkers (on a majority of the holes) grassed in to save $$$. 

I suggested returning them to sand and even did a free masterplan showing how this could restore the course.  The reply was, we were prohibited by contract from raising rates, and it would cost more to maintain.  The low fee already packed the course so, economically there is no incentive.

[Jim_Kennedy]

Tim,
Yes, but there is an incentive if Casper management could show the county that the cost of improvements would put more dollars in both their coffers while still keeping the fees reasonable and the tee sheet full.

[Mike Cirba]

Tim,

Roughly how many bunkers were you were hoping to put back that the management company contended would have necessitated a price increase?

[Mike Cirba]

Tim,

Roughly how many bunkers were you were hoping to put back that the management company contended would have necessitated a price increase?

Tim,

Or, asked another way, wouldn't the corrollary here be that removing X number of existing bunkers from a course should lead to a price decrease?  

Seriously....with talk about proposed maintenance $$ changes at Modesto and other cities, is there some formula the management companies are using that involves architectural features and their associated maintenance costs??