Michael J Benkusky's Golf Design Blog

Steve Mona and the Spring of 2013

So in keeping up with my tweets, and who is tweeting out, I read this one last week from Golf Course Industry.

Steve Mona, of the World Golf Foundation, saying that contraction may continue in US golf courses.  Problem is, that contraction is not going fast enough.

According to the NGF, the number of courses in the US are at 15,753, down by 299 from 2005.   So, in the past 8 years we have lost 299 courses and he expects to lose another 750 courses in the next 4 years.  And that number of courses will still be too high to support the demand.

This all got me thinking about a conversation I had with an industry veteran this past winter.  We were at a local superintendents meeting discussing the upcoming year.  I casually made the comment that I hope we have a good spring and a year of weather like 2012, when golf rounds were up with the dry summer.  Then he surprised me by saying, “I hope we have a bad year!”

Someone out there, who relies on the golf industry, saying he hopes for a bad year?  I asked him to explain himself.  Here’s what he told me.

We all know we need more contraction in golf.  When we have a good year, like in 2012, those courses that were on the fence about closing see an uptick in sales.  They end up having a modest year, or at least break even, and think this may turn around.  So they keep the doors open another year hoping for more of the same.

The problem is, we can’t always bank on the weather bailing out the golf economy.  This spring we have seen one of the wettest Aprils in Chicago.  We had snow in Omaha and 20 degree wind chills in Oklahoma, both in the first week of May.  Now some of these courses are going to be doomed to close at one time or another.  If they keep going another season, that is going to take golfers away from the more profitable courses.  Causing their recovery to be slower.

Now, I am not wishing any hardship on any of these courses.  I wish the housing economy was stronger and they could sell to a developer.  Or a park district could buy the course and keep it as open space.  Either way, we need to get the number of courses down to stabilize the market place.

So back to the tweet.  Courses down to 15,000 by 2017, and it still won't be enough.  I don’t know what it is going to take to correct the problem.  Maybe more springs like the one we are having now will be a good start.