For all intents and purposes, the 2014 golf season has come to its conclusion in Lake County. Sure, there will be some nice weekend days during the next nine weeks, but there also will be a whole lot more days that are wet, downright cold or both. During the next few months, we”ll see less and less of daylight, early morning golfers will experience frost delays, and there will be a few Saturdays where watching a bad football game indoors is a more pleasant experience than bundling up and fighting the elements as well as the golf course.
From the Lake County perspective, it really hasn”t been all that good a year for the golf business. We”re still in the throes of a serious drought with water conservation front and center for those who run golf facilities throughout the state. The economy hasn”t rebounded in this part of Northern California, and if families are going to have to watch their budgets, then entertainment items such as dining out, the movies and golf have to be put on the back burner. You don”t have to play golf but you do have to pay the rent and the electricity bill.
Of course, our neck of the woods is suffering more than most in the golfing industry. The National Golf and Resort Properties Group releases a golf market update on a semi-annual basis. Their report focuses upon the golfing industry as well as making prognostications for future business direction. At the conclusion of the 2013 calendar year, the headline of their report was titled, “The Golf Industry Has Turned the Corner.” Among their many assessments, they contended that “nationwide, golf courses are riding positive momentum from stabilized revenue.”
It all sounds pretty good. Things also seem to be going well with high-end private country clubs. A good locale to check out this assessment is in some of the more upscale sections of New York”s Long Island. While most knowledgeable linksters are very familiar with Shinnecock Hills, a past and future U.S. Open site, as well as The National Golf Links, a turn-of-the-century C.B. Macdonald creation that hosted this year”s Walker Cup Matches, there is not a lot of background information out there about one of their neighbors, namely The Bridge Golf Club. A private course, there is a waiting list to be able to join The Bridge. Once you do happen to get accepted into the club, you will need to pony up the initiation fee of $850,000. To compare and contrast, the very exclusive California Golf Club in South San Francisco is also very private, is very exclusive, is a great layout, and its initiation fee pales by comparison at a paltry $65,000.
Yet there is that elephant in the room. Not all is rosy in the world of golf. All one need do is check out the annual report from the National Golf Foundation to realize that not every golf course is located in a tiny part of Long Island and that Joe Six Pack can”t necessarily afford to play every Saturday with the boys at the local municipal golf complex.
The National Golf Foundation has been quoted as saying that one golf course closes in America every other day. That”s a pretty stunning figure and yet the most recent NGF report on the 2013 golf season bears out that number. In 2013, a total of 14 new golf courses opened for business throughout the country. Of those 14 new courses, 8.5 were public or daily fee courses while the other 5.5 were private course facilities. By the way, the decimal number represents nine-hole courses. This is a decidedly low number. In the 20-year period from 1986 through 2005, the golf industry saw a national increase of just more than 4,500 newly built courses for an average of 225 courses annually.
From 2006 through 2013, there was a reduction of 643 golf courses throughout America. The NGF reported that in 2013 alone a total of six private clubs, seven municipal courses and 144.5 daily fee courses closed their doors. Those 157.5 golf course closures do pencil out to a facility going out of business on the average of every second day. Regionally, the once active Southridge Golf Course in the Sutter Buttes has been out of business for the last five years. A drive through the complex several months ago showed an abandoned clubhouse and restaurant structure, a parking lot strewn with weeds, and fairways with grass 2 feet high.
The old public golf course at El Dorado Hills has met a similar fate. Looking north while driving along Highway 50, one can barely make out the bunkers that used to be filled with sand and currently are the home of a hearty crop of star thistle.
Locally, Lake County is home to six golf courses. One of those courses, Langtry Farms on Butts Canyon Road, is a privately owned facility that is not open to the public. It generates a very minimal amount of play. The other five courses in the area are open for public play. Hidden Valley Lake is owned and funded by the local homeowner”s association and is an outstanding Billy Bell design. The remaining foursome of Lake County golfing experiences are all nine-hole tracks that are located on relatively small parcels of land. Buckingham and Riviera Hills (Riviera/Konocti Hills) are within proximity of Clear Lake while Adams Springs and Cobb Mountain (Rob Roy/Hobergs) are situated along the Highway 175 corridor on Cobb Mountain. All five Lake County golf courses offer very affordable golf with green fees topping out at $50.
The affordable green fees offered locally also represent a negative trend. The National Golf Foundation notes that there is a disproportionate amount of golf course closures that are from lower priced public or daily fee facilities with green fees south of $50. Since 2006, 66 percent of golf course closures have come from facilities within that price range. The financial margin of error for small, rural area golf courses is a slim one indeed. Factor in a drought, a wet or snowy winter, a sudden influx of certain pests such as snow mold on the greens, and the end result is that fewer people play your course. Bills pile up, the necessary course improvements in the areas of maintenance equipment, motorized golf carts and the golf course itself are put on hold, and suddenly revenues plummet as fewer people play golf. It”s a bad cycle that could hamper the ability of some of the county”s five golf courses to remain open, playable and viable. As we get closer and closer to the conclusion of the 2014 calendar year, area golf courses are reeling from another season of drought, diminished play, increased expenses and decreasing revenues. In the world of supply and demand economics, things are bound to change for the worse as far as the Lake County golfing scene is concerned.
