A relatively new phenomenon in are area is courses/clubs that were built in connection with higher-end residential developments, went through bankruptcy, and are now with second owners.
That seems to be the type that are saturating my local market at the moment. All these places 15 years ago were struggling already because there's only so many people in Columbia, SC looking for a $200-$300 commitment (plus $15-20/round for the required cart) to play a housing development course. And there were 2x to 3x as many of those as there were potential members to go around. So even during the final years of the "boom" they were typically running in place trying to keep up with their operating expenses plus debt load.
Now a lot of them (most of them) have been through either bankruptcy or a fire sale of some type. So they're doing month-to-month or year-to-year deals for the equivalent of about half what they were charging in the early 2000's with no buy-in required. And they are sitting empty or nearly so outside of peak season, weekend morning and their shrinking men's club of retirees. One such place is right next door to the club I belonged to for 10 years and last I heard you could get an all-you-can-play-including-cart deal there for something like $160/month. I think they were even throwing in free hamburgers and hotdogs for lunch on weekdays or some such.
So a deal like that, even at a course which they can't afford to maintain properly, is for the moment a great deal for those 5 day/week retired guys who always use carts and want to play M-F at 9am. They pay their $160/month, play every day and even with buying a beer or two after the round their per-round cost is down to something like 10-12 bucks at a formerly "private club".
Between that and the occasional/casual golfers playing their 3 rounds a month for $30 (with cart) via GolfNow you really don't have many suckers like me and you left who are looking to shell out a couple hundred bucks a month, plus extras, every month rain or shine just to get a little better golf experience.
Heck it's gotten so bad my former club will accept any and all comers for an "introductory" deal of $1,500 for one year, billed monthly at that. So alongside the $300/month guys who paid initiation fees plus years of assessment and other nickel and dime stuff you have incomers who are paying $125/month and that includes golf for all members of the family, use of the pool for the kids and all the amenities. I guess they're banking on a large proportion of them sticking around and tripling their cost starting in Month 13 but that seems a low probability thing to me. There will be some other place offer incentives next year and they can just go get their cheap golf there!
All that said, I'm not so sure I'm hoping for a bunch of those walking-dead clubs/courses/developments to go under sooner rather than later. If I wanted to save a bunch of money (and were willing to ride in a golf cart and play a slowly decaying course) I could certainly go do that myself. And I don't really think those places going away are going to bring droves of folks into my club to pay initiation and dues.
At the local level, my dilemma as always revolves around the fact that I always walk when I play. For starters, many of the public and some of the semi-private clubs will not allow me to do that on their course. So my pool of choices is restricted. The other is that most of the good deals are predicated on cheap golf for someone who is already going to ride in a cart.
Even at the very, very reasonable cost club of which I'm a member the modest yearly dues (well under $3,000/year) aren't the only big ticket item for most members. They play 6, 8, 10 times a month (more for retirees) at $20 a pop for a cart. So those guys get siphoned off to the "all you can eat" cart-included places which are just a fabulous deal. I actually couldn't save much money at all by playing one of those places because even at $160/month including cart that's maybe 30% less than my cost to walk and play a much, much nicer course.
To me the key things working against my interests long term are the fallout from the extreme overbuilding of those residential development courses and the fact that everything about the current golf market (locally for me) is structured around near universal golf cart usage. In the long run I fear the only places left standing when the shakeout is complete will be courses I don't care for that are priced to seem like a good deal for those who expect to rent a cart for every round. And worst case, eventually the last place in town that will allow me to walk on a Saturday morning in May will decide to go carts-only.
But at least the current unstable situation provides all of us with options. And if my home club hasn't started requiring golf carts yet after being there for nearly a century, then hopefully they won't do it while I'm still alive. In which case I'm set!