I often think the entire golf business is set up for suckers more than any other business on the planet. Where else could one find astute business men who would line up to buy an IPO on a golf club company as they did Callaway years ago? Where else can one purchase a new driver with promise of more forgiveness and length every 6 months? And where else would a group of people spend 5-10 million on a golf cpurse just for the hell of it? The common factor all of the above have is that the people purchasing the services rarely know what they don't know. It is brought on by an industry that is bent on destroying the goose that laid the golden egg. Back to the above coments: Good players know that new clubs will not beat them and allow them to improve so much they can dominate other good players. Good old courses know it does not take 10 million to renovate them.
So why does this exorbitant renovation phenom continue to happen? IMHO it begins with membership ego and following the lead of other clubs with which they identify. They also equate dollars spent to quality. . Secondly, is the state of the industry. The industry has one hell of a sales pitch whether it be the architect, irrigation company, clubhouse archies or the superintendent. Once the new growth slowed the marketing and sales efforts had to go toward the larger private clubs who had dollars available.
However, IMHO, there is not a well routed , good, older course that can spend such high sums on a good renovation. In most cases why would anyone actually need to place a machine much larger than a rubber track excavator on a renovation project. It usually always boils down to tree encroachment, grass encroachment, bunker drainage and adjustment, (where bunkers have grown in and lost sand lines etc.) , tee leveling and tweaking and possibly lengthening. The original greens in most cases were screwed up once the triplex came into use and they just need to be brought back out the the original edges.
None of us have any say over what a club does with their property but most of the guys making such decisions for these clubs today know one thing for sure. Their fathers would not have done so. It would have been spoon fed from in house. I continue to be amazed at what smart people fall for in this business.....