By Michael Williams, Contributor, Golf Business
I got started in golf operating the National Park Service courses in Washington, DC. Our mission there was to provide affordable, accessible golf to the public. When I began my first season in 2002, you could get 18 holes and a cart for a weekday round for less than $40. I fully admit that the courses were far from Tour quality; after all, we were playing over 100,000 rounds on some of our courses and they were conditioned to withstand that beating. It wasn’t fancy, but it was a decent playable level of golf.
That period also saw an explosion of new golfers coming to the game because of the Tiger Woods phenomenon. His success and personal charisma as an athlete made people want to take up the game. The courses that Woods was playing on TV were some of the best courses in the world, most of them very private and inaccessible to the vast majority of golfers. To meet the demand for a more refined golf experience, the industry developed the upscale daily fee course concept. These courses had conditioning and amenities comparable to the country clubs that hosted most professional events, but they were accessible to anyone who wanted to play… for a price. I remember when the first $100 round came to the Washington, DC area; even with one of the wealthiest populations in the nation, that number raised eyebrows.
It didn’t take long for the price of a round at a top-flight public course to blow past that number. Now, $100 is considered “affordable” for an upscale daily fee experience. And the prices for bucket list courses like Pinehurst #2 ($495), Whistling Straits ($555), TPC Sawgrass ($650), and Shadow Creek in Las Vegas ($1000) look more like a car down payment than a round of golf. And the grandaddy of ‘em all is Pebble Beach, where the minimum total for a round at Pebble Beach is a whopping $2,465. That price covers the mandatory two nights at the resort’s lowest price point and the greens fee.
I am very fortunate to have played many of these courses gratis as a member of the golf media. But for many golfers, playing a round of golf at a bucket list destination means that you will probably have to sell the bucket in order to afford it, so it’s easy to look at the prices and say, “It’s not worth it”. But while the asking price is undeniably high for many of the experiences, I feel like I have to go all Adam Smith and say that an experience at one of these courses is worth what the public is willing to pay to experience it. That said, I am pleased with and proud of the golf course owners who operate the other 99% of the courses out there, and who make an excellent public golf experience affordable and accessible. These courses might not be hosting major championships, but the golfers who enjoy them will be making memories that are just as important, if not more important, than anything that happens on a Tour Sunday.
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