Golf, like almost any other business, succeeds or fails based on the right balance of supply and demand. In northeast Indiana, as well as in much of the rest of the country, there are too many courses and too few players.
“The last five or six years have been tough, without any question,” said Roger Delagrange, developer and owner of the Cherry Hill and Autumn Ridge golf courses. “We have more courses, per capita, than most other places.”
Golf surged as a favorite pastime in the early to mid 90s, and a number of new courses were built, said Mike David, the executive director of the Indiana Golf Association. Then growth in the sport leveled off, leaving many areas across the United States with an oversupply.
The U.S. lost 151 golf courses to closures last year, and opened just 12 or 13 new ones, David said. That makes nine years in a row that more courses have closed than opened, according to the National Golf Foundation.
Annual revenues from the McMillen, Shoaff and Foster parks golf courses, operated by the Fort Wayne Parks and Recreation Department, dropped 18 percent from 2010 to 2014, from $698,505 to $591,000, “which is directly related to play,” said Perry Ehresman, deputy director of leisure services.
There are several reasons golf hasn’t kept up with the growth it had been expected to see. The lagging economy is at the top.
“The discretionary income for a lot of families is not what it once was,” Ehresman said.
Golf clubs also lost players and revenues to corporate cutbacks.
“Corporate memberships, for many, just went by the wayside,” David said.
Then there’s the leisure time crunch.
“Some think it is also a lifestyle change,” David said. “With both parents working, there’s less time for a parent to do what he wants and it’s more about what the kids want.”
Many golf courses are changing their focus to be more family oriented, as a result, “but that takes awhile.”
Even then, “families don’t have the time; parents don’t have five hours to spend with kids,” Ehresman said.
Kids today also have a lot of choices, added Delagrange.
“Look at the growth in soccer, for instance…And you have to get them away from the Nintendo,” he said.
Sports such as basketball and baseball may be more appealing to youngsters than golf because they offer more and steadier physical activity, David said.
“But there are very few sports you can play all your life,” he said. “Golf is one of them.”
One of the keys to the sport’s future seems to be getting players interested at an early age. The Fort Wayne Parks Department does that with free golf lessons through its Lifetime Sports Academy, junior tournaments and peewee golf for children as young as age 3.
“We’ve led the charge in that for 30 years,” Ehresman said. “The challenge is to keep those kids into their teens and as adults.”
The PGA also works to attract youngsters to the sport.
“One of the things is they really try is to go after kids at an early age. It’s harder to pick up at a later age,” said Chris Montagno, a former golf professional at Sycamore Hills Golf Club and the current tournament director of the Hotel Fitness Championship.
The Web.com tour event is in its third year at Sycamore Hills, and Montagno expects that deal to be extended. It attracted about 27,000 people each of its first two years. This September, it is scheduled a week later, from Sept. 9-13, to avoid conflict with the annual Auburn Cord Deusenberg Festival and car show. Montagno believes the attendance numbers could be higher.
Events like the Hotel Fitness Championship generate interest in the sport, “and the one thing people fail to realize is you don’t have to be a golfer to come out and watch,” Montagno said.
The Fort Wayne parks department is trying something new this year: a “foot golf” course at McMillen. The nine-hole game is played with a soccer ball and a 22-inch hole, on the same course that regular golfers use, Ehresman said.
Delagrange is on the board of the Indiana Golf Course Owners Association, which has assisted course operators by, among other things, helping get them some tax relief. Speakers at its meetings also offer advice on other ways clubs and courses can improve “what we do and how we can market better,” he said.
Delagrange’s courses have cut costs by turning some full-time positions into part-time ones and cutting back on off-season maintenance staff, he said.
“It’s a struggle,” he said.
On the positive side, “Money is a little better maybe than it has been. It’s a tough business but it is improving,” he added.
This area has lost one 18-hole course, and nine holes of Deer Track, in Auburn, went to development, Delagrange said. That takes a little of the pressure off the other courses, but not much.
Now that real estate prices are improving, other course owners probably will find it makes more economic sense to sell their land to developers, if they can. The trend of course closings most likely will continue.
“I think there is going to be a shakeout,” David said. “The bottom line is there are a lot of golf courses suffering, and unfortunately, that kind of needs to happen in some places.”