(NOTE: This appeared in the Triad Business Journal in 2006.)
In the rough: Clubs try promotions, amenities to draw golfers, families
Head golf
professionals and general managers at golf courses or country clubs are
going round and round, trying to overcome their problems. Fewer people
are playing golf, and fewer rounds of golf are being played than a few
years ago.
"It's harder
than it was, no question," says Scott Stratton, the head golf
professional of Greensboro's Cardinal Golf and Country Club. "As the
bottom lines aren't as good and the rounds are down, we're trying to get
the revenue up. It definitely was easier six or seven years go."
That's the situation everywhere, not just in the Triad.
"All of us are
struggling now," says Mark Hartis, the head golf professional at the
Grandview Golf Club in Winston-Salem. "We have a saturated market right
now. When we had our best years, when we first came out here, (R.J.)
Reynolds (Tobacco Co.) people were retiring and playing, and everybody
from the neighborhood was playing.
"But it's not
that way now. Throughout the country, you've got baby boomers going to
soccer games with their kids instead. Guys who were playing here are now
doing yard work."
Hartis and his
partner, Harold Kincaid, have a unique situation. Hartis is the golf
professional and Kincaid his assistant, but Kincaid's family owns the
course. Kincaid is the president of the company, and Hartis is the vice
president.
Hartis says developers have approached them about buying Grandview and building homes.
"If they made us an offer we couldn't refuse, we'd have to look hard at it and run," Hartis says.
The problem is
supply and demand, says Rick Murphy, the president of the Carolinas PGA
and the owner/operator of Rick Murphy's Carolina Golf Academy in
Greensboro.
"Golf courses
were overbuilt," says Murphy, whose organization, the Carolinas PGA, has
about 1,900 members in North Carolina, South Carolina and a small
portion of Virginia.
"It's partly due
to home building and residential communities popping up to attract home
buyers. A few years ago, there were 200 to 300 new golf courses being
built per year, and that's flattened out."
Murphy says that
golf participation was off in 2005, but he's seen a slight increase in
2006. The PGA of America's new program, called Play Golf America, has
helped.
"Our section
kind of took a leadership role," Murphy says. "We're holding events to
spur interest in golf. We want to bring new golfers into the game,
increase interest by the casual golfer who plays six to seven times a
year, get them out more often, and try to maintain with the avid
golfer."
Murphy says the
Carolinas PGA section will hold eight events this year. The one in
Hilton Head, S.C., featured 51 golf professionals giving 10-minute
lessons, he says, while the one in the Triad drew 18 PGA professionals
and probably 800 potential golfers.
Paul Spicer, the
golf professional at Salem Glen Country Club in Clemmons, says 2002 and
2003 were the worst times for golf courses, but that business is
improving.
"I think it's on
the rise," says Spicer, who was an assistant golf professional at the
Old Town Club in Winston-Salem before moving to Salem Glen last fall.
"After 9/11 hit
and the stock market crashed, there were guys who had been living off
the stock market and playing golf, and those guys had to go back to
work. People saw being members of a club as a luxury, and it was
probably the luxury they cut out first."
Tom Coffman, who
recently took over as general manager of the Asheboro Country Club,
says he believes PGA programs will increase interest.
Coffman favors a
program by the PGA Foundation called Golf: For Business and Life in
which businessmen and others can take a college course to learn about
playing golf and golf etiquette. He says he plans to approach Randolph
Community College about starting such a program.
"The industry as
a whole is losing golfers, and we want to replace those who haven't
been there awhile and to bring in new faces to create an interest in the
Asheboro Country Club," Coffman says. "We haven't yet established a
time frame to get this done, but it'll be on the agenda in the next
couple of weeks."
Pricing is always a concern, of course.
"So far as I
know, there hasn't been a price change here as far as greens fees,"
Coffman says. "But if we lower prices too much, the course would suffer
and we'd lose money."
Salem Glen's Spicer says every club wants families to come out, and amenities help.
"That's what we
are really trying to get -- families. We try to offer them everything we
can offer, dining, pool facilities, tennis courts," Spicer says. "We
(at Salem Glen) don't have tennis courts now, but it's in the plan for
the future. It all depends on how the memberships go."
Spicer has had
two tours of duty at Salem Glen. He was an assistant there when it
opened in the 1990s; then he returned as head professional last fall.
"The original
owners wanted to have 150 to 200 members so they could build a
clubhouse, but they ended up building a clubhouse to attract new
members," he says.
Nontraditional
amenities don't hurt, either. Winding Creek Golf Club in Thomasville,
for instance, is relatively rare as a golf course with a lighted driving
range that's open until 10 p.m.
"It's unusual,"
says golf professional Jason Gentel. "There are a lot of lighted driving
ranges, but not a lot of golf courses have them."
Coffman says
Asheboro Country Club's amenities include a driving range and a swimming
pool, but it has the unusual, too: a spring-fed lake that allows
members to take a boat out and fish.
He knows of only one other course with a fishing pond -- Ike's Pond at the par-3 course at famed Augusta National.
How big is
Asheboro's lake? Coffman, a PGA member and a former club pro, says it's
two drives long and a drive and a wedge shot wide.
Jim Lotich, the
director of sales and marketing at Greensboro's Grandover Resort, says
Grandover is unique locally. It has an East Course and a West Course,
and the resort itself draws families and groups that might not visit a
public course or a country club.
"We're lucky in
the fact that we have three different audiences," he says, "guests in
the hotel, groups that stay at Grandover that utilize golf and groups
that don't use the hotel."
"We have different revenue streams, and we're happy with our success," Lotich says.
Still, no business is bulletproof.
"When the economy is good, we're good," he says. "And when it's bad, we're bad."
Tom Gillispie is a free-lance contributor.
Contact: I can be reached at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.
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