- Joined
- Mar 25, 2011
- Messages
- 23,236
- Reaction score
- 6,365
How does it recover? Is it more golfers paying less? Or just so tethered to the economy? I have certainly done my part to contribute to the industry in the last three years.
It's really only partially tethered to the economy. Time to play a round of golf is absolutely crushing participation. The technology boom in the last 15 years ushered in a new era of longer courses and nobody considered the fact that taking a course from 6400 to 7000 yards made it cost 10% more to maintain it and it upped the average round time by 30+ minutes.
Your typical father of 2 is not going to be able to skip out for a 5 hour round every Saturday without his wife wanting to chop his balls off.
Golfers paying less only works in certain cases. The private club model is absolutely gutted except for all but the best, well capitalized private clubs. There are so many private clubs with staggering debt loads that simply cannot survive on the current economic model where golfers expect (and get!!!) greens fees for under $30 all the time or monthly dues for $150 when they previously barely broke even at $250/mo dues levels?