As the game of golf struggles with a national decline in popularity and a wave of course closings, millions are being spent in Southwest Florida to keep existing courses in top condition — even while local developers are shy about building new layouts.
“Just shoot me,” said one real estate developer, who asked that his name not be used, “if I ever mention developing another golf-course community.”
Practicing the short game at the Venice Golf & Country Club in 2012. The course is currently undergoing a $2.5 million renovation that includes new irrigation and forward tees that are intended to make the game more fun for golfers who don't drive the ball very far. Staff photo / Harold Bubil
Only elevators ranked higher than golf courses on a list of new-home buyers’ “most unwanted” features, compiled in 2013 by the National Association of Home Builders.
Lakewood Ranch has no intention to build any courses in its proposed Villages section south of the Manatee-Sarasota county line, said vice president of sales Jimmy Stewart. “We at SMR, no. Somebody else, perhaps,” he said.
“I grew up in the golf business,” Stewart added, “but I haven’t played in five years. Takes too much time.”
Golf-course operators have heard it before. The game is costly, difficult and time-consuming in the era of instant gratification and “bang for the buck.” The game lost as many as 4 million players in the years after the recession, and is expected to grow by about 1 percent per year for the rest of the decade, the same as the national population growth rate, according to the National Golf Foundation.
In Sarasota, the Foxfire, Sarasota Golf Club, Oak Ford, Forest Lakes and Sunrise courses have closed in the past decade.
At the Venice Golf & Country Club, a crew instals new irrigation pipes in the 25-year-old golf course, which was designed by Ted McAnlis. The club is investing $2.5 million in improvements to keep the course in top shape in a competitive market at a time when the game is losing players. Staff photo / Harold Bubil
On the other hand, says Jim Schell, general manager of Venice Golf & Country Club, those people who still play golf remain passionate about it.
He feels the pressure of an increasingly competitive market fed by discretionary spending. The VGCC is investing $2.5 million in course upgrades and employing rules changes to make the game more fun and faster to play.
Sabal Trace Golf & Country Club in North Port is doing an extensive course renovation, too. It should reopen early next year with a new, par 71-course, called Valente at Sabal Trace, replacing the old par-72 layout. Nine of the holes will be replicas of famous holes from such courses as Augusta National, Winged Foot and Bay Hill. The community also will get 280 new houses and paired villas, and a new clubhouse.
Serenoa is investing $50,000 in clubhouse improvements this summer.
Esplanade on Lakewood Ranch, developed by Taylor Morrison, has a new golf course, supported by the owners of 1,250 paired-villa homes. A little farther east, Lennar also is developing a “golf community.”
Forest Lakes, the local poster child for golf-course disaster, is being redeveloped by Mattamy Homes with 220 town houses, and the old course is being made over as a short, par-63 layout, to open this fall, on which rounds will take less time to play. This ends nearly a decade of misery for Forest Lakes’ homeowners, in which they watched their close-to-town course on Beneva Road turn into an ugly weed patch. A boomtime developer had purchased it but then walked away from plans to replace the layout with housing after the market collapsed in 2007.
The new "golf cottages," which provide lodging for The Concession Golf Club's 120 "national" members in the high-end golf and real estate development in east Manatee County. The Concession began in 2006 with the spotlight on the Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course, now rated No. 7 in the state, but the activity now focuses on real estate sales. In 2014, 55 homesites sold; about one in four buyers are interested in joining the golf club, said Mark Bruce of The Concession Real Estate. Staff photo / Harold Bubil; 1-9-2015.
Even The Concession, the king of local courses, is constantly tweaking its layout to keep the well-heeled members happy. The course’s designer, golf legend-among-legends Jack Nicklaus, has stopped by to play the course and suggest tweaks, which are dutifully carried out.
At VGCC, steps are being taken to make the game more enjoyable for the novice or average player, such as the occasional placement of two cups on greens (aim for the closest one), extra-wide cups so that the long putt is more makeable, and tees that are farther down the fairway.
“The game is supposed to be fun,” said Schell, noting that these adjustments to the staid rules of the game are popular with couples playing on Sundays. Those same couples might play tennis or enjoy social activities at the country club. “If you are not having fun, you shouldn’t live here.”
America changes faster than golf
But many observers are saying that America has changed faster than golf.
In the digital age, where people want satisfaction and they want it now, golf is struggling to shed its image as a difficult, expensive — all that equipment and clothing, and those greens fees! — and time-consuming pastime. Nicklaus himself has echoed those complaints in print.
Fully two-thirds of home buyers do not want to live on a golf course, according to the NAHB survey, which is done every five years. That is more than even having a master bathroom that has no tub (51 percent), laminate countertops (40 percent) or ceramic-tile counters (30 percent).
“Too expensive to live there,” said Realtor Kim Ogilvie of Michael Saunders & Co.
“Too many rules and regulations for my clients. They want waterfront,” said agent Ellen Bussear Baker.
She added, “You know, it’s hot down here.”
Builders and developers are listening. For every development like The Founders Club or The Concession, both luxury residential communities with outstanding golf courses, there is at least one The Lake Club, which has comparable luxury homes and lots of water hazards but no sand traps, fairways or tees.
The new-home buyer’s rejection of golf is reflected in these numbers, provided by Orlando land-use attorney Paul Chipok: n Four million fewer people play golf now than a decade ago.
-- Since 2006, 643 18-hole golf courses have closed across the nation.
-- One-hundred thirty to 160 golf courses will close each year for the next five years.
-- Nationally, for every course that opens, 10 close.
Chipok’s clients include golf-course owners who want the land rezoned so it can be used for something else. “Highest and best use” is the phrase.
Golf is shrinking, especially among the young. That may be why the PGA website, under the heading “Golf industry enters new era of collaboration to keep growing game,” shows a picture of two attractive 20-something couples laughing and smiling as they tote their golf bags down the fairway. The target market.
It hasn’t helped that Tiger Woods, the game’s biggest draw since Nicklaus himself, developed an appreciation, while married, for waitresses some years back and devastated both his image and his game in the process. Injuries have not helped. He recently shot an 85 in a round on the PGA Tour. Talk about not having fun.
“Golf needs a hero,” Stewart said.
Still a viable amenity
While the national outlook is worrisome, locally, golf is still a viable amenity for residential subdivisions, said Mark Bruce, a PGA professional and co-publisher of the golf tourism magazine “Play Golf Sarasota.”
“Our market — Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice — has seen a resurgence in memberships and rounds played versus three to five years ago, for sure,” Bruce said. “It doesn’t mean operators don’t face challenges. They always do, because a golf course is not a cash cow. It is a depreciating asset with everything under the ground — the greens, irrigation, root system, pump stations — everything it takes to grow the grass and make it pretty, deteriorates over 10 to 20 years. So you always have to be willing to reinvest.”
The market is extremely competitive, said Jay Tallman, who co-developed The Founders Club in 2004, just in time for the market bust, and resurrected his career as developer of the Aria condominium on Longboat Key’s beachfront.
“The upper echelon of courses that are newer are doing OK,” Tallman said. “The tougher ones are the ones that haven’t had the capital to upgrade. They are struggling to hold on. You have the haves and have-nots. It is a tough industry.”
Courses without strong member support will start to look ragged, as the greens fees only pay for the operational expenses and not course upgrades and makeovers. Such courses eventually have to invite in non-resident members, and perhaps even become semi-public daily-fee courses.
“Some courses in this area are on the brink of trouble, with rounds down and no membership base,” Bruce said, “but unless they are really burdened with a ton of bank debt, it would be real tough for them to go under.
“The Palm-Aires, Sara Bays, four or five years ago, they were treading water. The last two years, they have managed to get above the line and are ahead of the game and have a few dollars to make some improvements.”
“It is competitive,” said Schell at VGCC, which opened in 1991 with a course designed by Ted McAnlis. “There have been a great number of courses that have closed over the past five to 10 years. And very few new courses were opening. That was a product of oversupply. And then you get the downturn. That is a double whammy to golf.
“We have to have a premium product with great playing conditions, or you have to be a daily-fee course and try to get every single penny you can out of it. You can be low-price or you can be high-quality and sell a high-quality lifestyle.”
Schell’s course is a requisite-membership country club, which means you have to join the club if you buy a home there. Venice Golf & Country Club has 587 homes and 364 golf memberships. The other households have social or recreational memberships. To pay for the current course revamp, $1.7 million of which is for a high-tech sprinkler system that will reduce water usage by 40 percent, VGCC has “a 10-year long-range plan and we charge members each year to fully fund the depreciation schedule, and put it into the capital plan,” Schell said.
“Most clubs just want to do an assessment, and that is a bad, bad word.”
While acknowledging that Esplanade is the only new course to come online locally in years, Mark Bruce, the PGA pro, says he is “confused when I hear people say golf is struggling.”
“Thousands and thousands of kids tried to qualify for ‘Drive, Chip and Putt’ at The Masters (tournament). It is an unprecedented way to get kids interested in golf,” Bruce said. “The challenge of golf that middle-aged parents or working folks face is not the desire to play, it is the time commitment.
“The developers that are doing bundled golf communities, Taylor Morrison and Lennar, that formula has proven to work for them time and again when they are bundling club amenities and the purchase of a home inside of a gated community.”
But mandatory-membership communities, while helping assure that the course and country club are funded, can be hard to sell, real estate agents and developers say.
“It is a double-edged sword,” said Tallman. “While that may help better support the club, it also can hurt real estate sales” if the initial fees are too pricey for the average buyer there.
Advice from the pros
A well-maintained and funded course helps support the value of the surrounding residential real estate. The best way that homeowners can protect their investment is to support their own country clubs, golf industry insiders say.
“Owners can’t take it for granted,” said Jay Tallman, a residential developer who co-developed The Founders Club in Sarasota. “With land values going up, for some of these clubs, the highest and best use is not going to be golf. Residents need to wake up and realize the course is an asset, whether they are a member or not, that contributes to the value of their property, and they have to do something to support that club. Even if they are not golfers, they can join as a social member.”
Before buying a home in a golf-course community, PGA professional and Realtor Mark Bruce urges buyers to “do a little homework. The most sure way is to meet the treasurer of the club and ask what kind of financial footing they are on. Talk to them about storms they may have weathered through the downturn; where they have made improvements; if they have managed to grow their membership. Most of the ones that are on good footing are going to share that information up front.”
Once you buy, “Play the course, or eat at the club,” Bruce said.
