There are all sorts of issues at stake.
Golf tourism is terribly important to only a few, but very prominent, regions of the British Isles. Golf tourists are drawn to the classic areas of St Andrews, Ayrshire coast, Lothians coast, Kent coast, Lancashire coast, Surrey heathland etc. In these regions there is a cascade effect where, because A charges £100, B can charge £75 and C £50. It does not seem to be true of Northern Ireland where courses close to R.Co.Down and R.Portrush still offer value proportionate to their challenge, class and status without the proximity effect.
Apart from these well-defined areas, other forces come into play. Generally speaking, it is expensive (by my standards) for a visitor to play a well-presented members' club course anywhere around our major cities. The driving force here is that there is enough general wealth among the community to supply members willing to pay, say, £1,000-£2,000 for a year's membership to have the course available to them at least some part of every day without being hindered by visitors. But all these clubs are aware that they need the income from company days and so on to keep the annual subs at that sort of level. They price their green fees between £40 and £80 to discourage the everyday golfer, yet making it accessible to those with company backing whose money they would like.
Clearly, the likes of Sunningdale and Wentworth are at a far higher financial level, demanding quite a lot more of their members, yet remaining just about affordable to those who are prepared to pay serious money to play their courses.
Let us leave out of the argument the one or two private clubs which manage to keep themselves totally private, with world-class courses and, well, who knows how much membership is, but it won't be as much as the next category....
There are a few very expensive clubs such as Loch Lomond and The Wisley which operate more in the manner of private members' clubs in the USA with brand new courses and no visitors other than members' guests. Others have been attempted but few have succeeded.
Historically, golf was a classless game, played in Scotland by king and commoner in an otherwise utterly class-denominated age. It is, to some extent, still that in places like St Andrews where citizens of the borough can buy a ticket enabling them to play all the Links Trust-owned courses for about £100 a year - when there are no visitors, that is. When golf moved south it soon acquired a class status. Private clubs were the preserve of the professional classes. That was not necessarily a bad thing. They aspired to the highest values in everything. It does not surprise me that they sought out the likes of Harry Colt to design their courses.
The common man was not always despised. Many clubs fostered artisans' sections in which artisan members could play the course for a much reduced annual subscription in exchange for physical work on the course. They were not, as you might expect, allowed inside the clubhouse and they were barred from many competitions. Happily, some of these artisan clubs survive to this day and artisan membership is almost more difficult to obtain than full membership.
But what about the occasional golfer, the beginner, the pauper, children, or those who (through no fault of their own) do not happen to know the right people? With the exception of much of Scotland, the rest of Britain has made little or no provision for them. There are, still, a few municipal courses, but there will not be any new ones. How can a council (city, borough, town or rural district) justify the cost of maintenance of a golf course when they have the social problems of which our press makes us only too aware? Enjoy the lovely municipal courses of Ayrshire while you can! They are a remnant of a golden (and enlightened) age.
Under the current economic climate it would be fairly impossible to set up a members' club in the UK in the way it was done 100 years ago, the economic structure being so different. But farming is in dire trouble, the R&A declared in the 1990s that 700 new courses would have to be built in order to cope with current demand, and many of us simply cannot afford the joining fee for a pukka club, even if there are vacancies on their waiting list.
But here I interrupt myself. There are plenty of vacancies at inner-city and remote clubs. Many are advertising memberships on the internet. None is demanding a joining fee! I could join (and I might) Reddish Vale for a payment of the annual sub (substantially under £1,000) and I would get the use of a cracker of a Mackenzie course. True, it would not be in the state of upkeep to which our American friends are used, and greens will be vandalised from time to time, and they've never cured the landslide where the railway used to run alongside the 10th, but it is still a heck of a sight better than most of the local pay-and-play facilities.
Yet it is within the lower echelons of pay-and-play golf that the future of British golf lies. Agriculture is in an awful state. Farmers are encouraged to take their land out of agriculture and into other uses. Some go down the golfing line. Many (not just farmers but their advisors, too) who try to get into the big time simply go bankrupt. They are aware that there is a business market out there driven by the sort of tourist and business golf on offer in Spain and Portugal (almost entirely instant golf of the least subtle kind - no names!). Suddenly the RTJ family, Nicklauses, Cupps, Millers, Littons and so on provide instant America in Britain. Suddenly we have the sort of courses we see on TV and can only aspire to. Their patrons are the new wealthy, and (snob as I am) I can only describe them as nouveau riche - no breeding, no class. You know what that means in golfing terms. A great many of these high-level courses and establishments fall foul of economic pressures and go under.
At the other end of the scale is the simplest pay-and-play facility. They are largely terrible, but they survive. They provide the young, the less fortunate, the less well-connected, the unemployed and BBC rejects such as me with the opportunity to play for an affordable fee. It is usually purgatorial on and around the greens but at least my wife and I can play 9 holes each for a total of under £20 whereas at any members' course locally we would be looking at not less than £80. I could buy a return flight to New York for that and scrounge a round off a GCA member for the same sum! (Don't worry, I won't.)
More to the point, these places do not go under. In a few years' time they expand to 18 holes or add better greens, acquire a brick-built clubhouse or plant a few trees. (I'm afraid, GCAers, that on some courses the addition of trees is a good thing.) They are still in business, and providing a service - of a kind, I agree - when many of the big-name projects have foundered.
I'm afraid that golf in the British Isles is polarising rapidly. Tourists and those for whom money is not a problem will continue to enjoy the best, if they cam afford it. Below that level, the club golfer does not care enormously about his course. He cares about his results in competitions, ideally Saturday and Sunday each week, but mid-week also if he can sneak out of work early. The rest of us have to begin to come to terms with the fact that we will never get to play the great courses - they have been priced beyond our reach by the overseas visitors and our wealthy business colleagues.
The good thing is that the overseas visitors value our great courses. Our own only hanker after the latest recreations of Florida in a typical English meadow.