The project was described as “building a new course on top of an existing one.”
The Links at Audubon Golf Course is set to reopen for the public on Aug. 1, marking a significant milestone for the Memphis golf community.
Monday’s media preview featured notable speakers, including Mayor Paul Young, Memphis Parks director Nick Walker, renowned golf course architect Bill Bergin, and PGA course professional Bruno Strzalka.
Young emphasized the course’s role in fostering youth engagement in golf, pointing to the collaboration between Audubon and First Tee of West Tennessee, a youth golf advocacy organization, and his projection of over 40,000 rounds to be played on the new course within the next 11 months. He also announced that the new clubhouse, which will replace the temporary one, will be the home base for First Tee after renovations are completed.
Children from First Tee, alongside Young, concluded the event, teeing off the driving range for the first official shots on the renovated course.
Bergin described the construction as “building a new course on top of an existing one.” He emphasized Audubon as the desired and best location for University of Memphis golf teams to practice because of its central location to campus and the relative difficulty of the course.
Photos from media preview event of the re-opening of The Links at Audubon Golf Course. Mayor Paul Young and Memphis Parks Director Nick Walker, amongst others, tested the new putting grounds, hit the first official tee shots, and unveiled the course partnership with First Tee of West Tennessee. (Photo: Josh Crawford/USA Today Network)
Audubon’s embedded beauty, with its rolling hills and natural tree line, was a challenge to maintain while simultaneously ensuring the course was as playable and beginner-friendly as possible, according to Bergin.
The first hole, with its quarters stretched, is now a combination of the previous first two holes and encourages golfers to be less timid on their drives on the opening hole, exemplifying this balance. A new six-hole course is designed for beginners, providing an ideal space to learn and practice.
“People coming back to the course will get a hint of familiarity,” Bergin said. “But they will walk away saying, ‘This is a completely new course.’ ”
According to Audubon’s website, green fees are $35 on weekdays and $45 Friday through Sunday.
You can reach writer Josh Crawford via email @joshua.crawford@commercialappeal.com or via X @JCrawford5656
“The golf courses are busier than I’ve seen them in decades.”
ROCKFORD, Ill. — Golf wasn’t dying five years ago around this mid-sized Illinois city that sits about 90 minutes west of Chicago. But it was retreating fast.
“2019 was the worst year we ever had,” said Jeff Hartman, the head golf pro and general manager of Park Hills, a 36-hole municipal facility in nearby Freeport.
Golf had been in a steady and somewhat severe 10-year decline across the nation. Courses were hurting after a flurry of golf facilities had been built in the early 1990s to take advantage of the extra focus Tiger Woods brought to golf. Rockford-area 18-hole public courses almost doubled after courses such as Aldeen, PrairieView, Timber Pointe, Swanhills, Wolf Hollow and Westlake Village opened.
“We over-expanded in the industry as a result of the Tiger Boom,” said Rich Rosenstiel, who manages the three Winnebago County Forest Preserve courses. “Too many golf courses were built with the anticipation that they would all be filled. I don’t think we were ever really in danger of not having golf, but there were conversations about how to streamline things.”
The Rockford Park District streamlined by closing Elliot, one of its four 18-hole courses, after 53 years in 2021. Westlake Village closed. Bel-Mar Country Club in Belvidere shut down. Alpine Hills, a deluxe par-3 track, closed.
But COVID brought people back to the golf course. And area courses are keeping them back. Even with all of the rain this year, courses all around the area say rounds are up anywhere from 10 to 15 percent from a year ago. And that’s on top of increases that began with COVID in 2020, when golf was one of the few recreational sports that people were told they could play.
An increase upon an increase upon an increase means, for instance, that Winnebago County courses Macktown, Ledges and Atwood have climbed from 56,600 total rounds in 2018 to 76,250 last year. And they are up an additional 12,500 rounds from this point last year.
“The golf courses are busier than I’ve seen them in decades,” Rosenstiel said.
Players warm up on the putting green at Ingersoll before the inaugural McWilliams/Johnson Open on July 13, 2024 in Rockford, Ill.
(Photo: Catie Vernon / Rockford Park District)
“When the weather is nice,” Swanhills superintendent Sue Spahr said, “my goodness, they come out.”
Part of that is because people who have not golfed before have started to play.
“That’s one of the greatest things,” Spahr said. “We’re seeing a lot of young people now, people in their late teens and 20s that we hadn’t seen in years.”
The other part is that the Park District, Forest Preserve and other local courses have kept prices virtually the same as five years ago and have done great jobs of welcoming these new golfers and making sure they return.
“The whole industry was asking: How sustainable is this?” said J.J. Maville, the general manager of Timber Pointe in Belvidere. “After the Tiger Woods boom, we had all these new players and the industry wasn’t prepared to take advantage of it. We can maintain new players better than we did 30 years ago by getting them instruction so they can find enjoyment in the game much sooner.”
Two nationwide programs are Get Golf Ready, where you get five lessons for $99. Another is the PGA Junior League.
“That has been wildly successful,” Maville said. “It’s a team baseball concept melded into golf. Kids are on two-person teams, play an alternate-shot format and wear jerseys with their name and number on it. That has really taken off and gotten more kids interested in golf.”
Other signs of a golf decline had been the cancellation of the Ballard tournament in Rockford, discontinuing the Junior Classic tournament and last year turning the once super-popular Senior Classic tournament from a 36-hole competition into an 18-hole two-man event. Well, the Park District revived the Ballard three years ago, brought back the Junior Classic tournament this year and also reverted back to the two-round Senior formula this year. It also added a new tournament, the McWilliams/Johnson Open, a two-man scramble that honored a pair of late Park District golf teachers who won a combined nine Men’s City titles. That tournament sold out, with 84 players quickly signing up.
“We had people in their 70s and 80s playing and some of their grandkids in grade school and middle school and every age in between,” said David Spencer, the Park District’s operations director. “We are bringing some stuff back that we started shelving because of growth. And we are going to continue to bring them back if we see the interest.
“All our programs to grow golf have been successful,” Spencer added. “Our Sunday Fun Day (where golf for families and beginners is just $5) used to be the slowest time at Sinnissippi. Now it’s one of the busiest. We’re seeing grandpas with their grandkids and all sorts of families playing together. All our lessons are busy. Our Tiger Cub event (an adult is paired with a junior player aged 5 to 17) fills up every year. All of that is helping solidify our base.”
The days are over when golf courses just open their doors and wait for customers to drive up. Freeport has drawn a lot of golfers by offering special rates online at GroupGolfer.com and golfmoose.com. “They have helped us get a noticeable increase in out-of-town golfers,” Hartman said.
Course officials are also on the lookout for inexperienced golfers who might need a little help in truly catching the golf bug.
“If they are not a familiar face or look like they have hand-me-down clubs, you have to ask if they are new to golf or have been here before,” Timber Pointe’s Maville said. “You try to engage them more. Then get them into a program.”
And then keep them coming back.
“I don’t see a decline any time soon,” the Park District’s Spencer said. “We have a really good feeder system going throughout the entire country.”
Negotiations between the university and the city are ongoing, and organizers admitted there’s plenty of work left.
AUSTIN, Texas — As soon as Verne Lundquist got the call, he knew he had to be part of the fun. Not just to enjoy the company of his buddies, many of whom he remembers from his time at Austin High School, but to help save a vital greenspace in the center of one of the nation’s hottest housing markets.
That’s why Lundquist – the 81-year-old sports broadcasting legend – was one of the many stars Sunday night at Imagine Muny, a Texas-sized gala at the Moody Theater made famous by the TV show Austin City Limits. The event, which organizers say netted around $800,000 to help restore Lions Municipal Golf Course, was a bona fide success in terms of fundraising, but perhaps even greater was the awareness the evening brought to a cause that’s been dragging out for decades.
For those who’ve missed the backstory, the 141 acres on which Muny sits are extremely valuable. The City of Austin has conducted stakeholder meetings, asking for public input on zoning for the area, and boyhood friends Ben Crenshaw and Scott Sayers put together the Muny Conservancy, hoping to purchase the area for a reasonable price and preserve it for years to come.
The parcel is part of the 500 acres of University of Texas-owned land known as the Brackenridge Tract, and is considered the first fully desegregated municipal course south of the Mason-Dixon line. The city has leased 140 acres for Muny since 1936 and pays UT about $500,000 a year. If the parties don’t come to an understanding, the university could be free to lease the property to another entity, develop it or sell it.
Lukas Nelson waves after performing during the Imagine Muny gala at ACL Live’s Moody Theater on Sunday night. Nelson joined Eric Church, Asleep at the Wheel and Jimmie Vaughan. (Photo by Tyler Schmitt for the Muny Conservancy.)
But the outpouring of support at the event – which included appearances by musicians Eric Church, Lukas Nelson and Asleep at the Wheel, as well as a surprise visit by Jimmie Vaughan – certainly might help to lean opinions. Among those who were part of a special video presentation were celebrities Luke Wilson and Kyle Chandler. Sports personalities on hand included former PGA Tour pro Mark Brooks and former TCU head football coach and Texas special assistant Gary Patterson.
“Just look at this event. You get some sense of what this golf course, this beautiful place, means to so many people in this city,” Lundquist said while musical acts rotated through the famous theater’s stage.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CaSzsbUFcr0/
Lundquist – whose famous calls at the Masters include Jack Nicklaus’ birdie putt on 17 in 1986 that gave him the lead and Tiger Woods’ dramatic chip-in birdie on the 16th hole in 2005 – admittedly doesn’t get around like he used to. The national broadcaster lives in picturesque Steamboat Springs, Colorado, but he and his wife, Nancy, purchased a small condo in Austin three years ago and he comes back to his hometown for at least a few months each year.
“I’ve known Scott Sayers and Ben Crenshaw for more years than they want me to admit,” Lundquist said, noting that his sister was a year behind Crenshaw in high school. “Whenever we’re back here, we want to be here to support this place. It’s an amazing undertaking. Really it is.”
Sayers, who helped coordinate the event, said it was a smashing success on multiple levels.
Scotty Sayers, left, and Ben Crenshaw enjoy a laugh during the Imagine Muny gala at ACL Live’s Moody Theater on Sunday night. The event netted around $800,000 for renovations to Lions Municipal Golf Course. (Photo by Tyler Schmitt for the Muny Conservancy.)
“The musical guests and the finish to the thing were as good as I’ve ever seen,” Sayers said. “And we did what we hoped to do financially, to be able to make improvements to Muny, which was important. But the awareness is the key – we need folks from the city and the university to both realize this isn’t something for a small subset of people, or just a few folks who are interested. This is a place for the entire community. I think this proved that.”
The conservancy hopes to partner with the city to keep Muny in the best shape possible before any decisions are made by the university on potential permanent uses for the property. Recently, a fleet of 62 new golf carts was introduced at the course and a new roof was constructed on the clubhouse, all with help from the city. The money raised at Imagine Muny will help with more renovations and improvements.
But the final decision is yet to come. Negotiations between the university and the city are ongoing, and Sayers admitted there’s plenty of work left.
“This is a critical stretch, for sure,” he said. “We just hope that whatever develops that we keep all 141 acres as greenspace. If the conservancy gets the course, and we hope that happens, renovations will take time, but will be worth it. It’s a place that just means too much to so many people.”
The city plans to increase green fees and summer pass costs while eliminating free rounds with a loyalty card and shoulder season rates.
(Editor’s note: With the recent U.S. Open at Torrey Pines finished, there are no municipal golf courses on the majors schedule for the foreseeable future. In a series, Golfweek has been shedding a spotlight on municipal golf, why it’s a crucial piece of the golf industry and how it’s evolving. To see why some courses fail, why some succeed and where the industry is going, click here.)
ST. GEORGE, Utah — This southern Utah city is set to spend more than $1 million dollars on renovations to improve clubhouses on its golf courses in the upcoming year, according to the proposed city budget for 2021-22.
The city plans to spend $1.3 million on improving and renovating the clubhouses at the Southgate Golf Club and St. George Golf Club. This commitment to improving the golf courses is part of a “continual investment” that St. George has towards its golf courses, according to city council member Bryan Smethurst. The total budget for the golf department of the city is close to $7.4 million, according to the proposed city budget.
The city just finished renovations at the Southgate clubhouse that cost $755,000, adding a wrap-around deck, improving the kitchen and other facilities. The city will also give the 40-year-old clubhouse at the St. George Golf Club a “facelift” in 2022, according to Colby Cowan, the director of golf for St. George.
Smethurst says the golf courses are great for the city because they provide a steady stream of income. These golf courses saw an increase in usage during this last year due to Utah opening up sooner from coronavirus restrictions than other states, according to Cowan.
“We saw a big influx at the start of COVID from California and other areas like Nevada that were locked down came as well,” said Cowan.
The city budget projects its four courses will make $5.6 million in revenue over the next year. Smethurst says the increased usage of these golf courses is advantageous for both the city and its residents.
“These courses really carried us through COVID,” Smethurst said.
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There are 13 golf courses in Washington County, a majority of which are owned by municipalities and thus managed by city governments. St. George owns four golf courses: St. George golf club, Dixie Red Hills, Southgate golf club and Sunbrook Golf Club.
In 2020, 739,292 rounds of golf were played in Washington County and 39.5% of those rounds were played by non-locals, according to Kevin Lewis, the Washington County director of tourism. Lewis says the extra money travelers pay to play golf in southern Utah is what allows the region to have so many courses.
“If we had to support the golf courses with resident usage the community could support two golf courses,” Lewis said. “The benefit to the residents of having visitors is that they get more courses.”
At the four St. George courses, there were 230,000 nine-hole rounds played this year on average. In the next year, the city projects up to 250,000 rounds will be played, according to Cowan.
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If golf is really on the rise again in St. George, the city is planning on increasing fees and rates. These include increasing the nine-hole fee by $1, eliminating free rounds with a loyalty card, increasing the summer pass cost and eliminating shoulder season rates which go from October to December.
These moves are projected to net an extra $370,000 and the money from these increases will be used to offset maintenance costs, according to Cowan.
The golf courses run by St. George all use non-culinary irrigated water to maintain the large swaths of grass. This water would be unusable as culinary water and using it to keep golf courses green saves the city millions of dollars in treatment costs, according to Karry Rathje the communications director for the Washington County Water Conservancy District.
To water nine holes on these golf courses for a year, it takes 65 million gallons of reused non-culinary water, according to Cowan. The four municipal courses have a combined 72 holes so it takes 520 million gallons of water to keep St. George’s golf courses green.
Using this less treated water allows the golf courses to pay next to nothing in water fees, the budget projects all four courses will pay zero dollars for water in 2021 and 2022. In 2020, the St. George Golf Club was the only course that paid water fees, $124,800, but the course switched to using irrigated non-culinary water and now doesn’t pay water fees.
Since the water is irrigated, the water costs are represented in pumping and electric fees, according to Cowan. For 2021 and 2022, these courses are expected to spend $84,000 on electrical and pumping costs.
Sean Hemmersmeier covers local government, growth and development in Southwestern Utah. Our work depends on subscribers so if you want more coverage on these issues you can subscribe
To listen to Peter Hill explain the history of golf course construction is like getting Warren Buffett for a lecture on investing.
(Editor’s note: After the upcoming U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, there are no municipal golf courses on the majors schedule for the foreseeable future. In a three-part series, Golfweek sheds a spotlight on municipal golf, why it’s a crucial piece of the golf industry and how it’s evolving. To see the first part, click here.)
To spend an hour listening to Peter Hill explain the history of North American golf course construction, primarily public-access golf, is like getting Warren Buffett to drop by your college business class for a lecture on investing.
There little emotion in Hill’s voice as he thoroughly dissects how and why municipal golf courses have been built, where they’ve been built, why many were set up for failure, and what obstacles they need to overcome in order to become successful.
Hill loves golf, for certain, but for more than three decades he managed these facilities — some good, some bad, some in urban areas, some in the suburbs — in a cunningly calculated fashion. While others get warm and fuzzy discussing the sentimental value of their local muni, Hill came at these sites with a checklist to mark — tee sheet percentages, payroll totals, pace-of-play averages, utility expenses, etc.
Get the numbers to work, and the course will be a success. Allow too many columns to slip into the red and suddenly there’s a permanent closed sign on the clubhouse door.
Hill co-founded Billy Casper Golf in 1989 with Robert Morris and 51-time PGA Tour champ legend Billy Casper. By the time the firm became Indigo Golf in 2020, the group managed over 160 properties in 26 states, and was one of the largest privately-owned golf course management companies in the United States. Hill’s group didn’t own municipal golf courses — if they did, they’d no longer be classified as municipal. Instead, they helped those that had trouble helping themselves. Often, municipalities allowed courses to fall into disrepair, didn’t manage the books well, or had trouble finding the proper price point. Or sometimes they realized they simply didn’t know how to run a golf course efficiently.
Hill’s group started small, but as word spread of their success, more courses came seeking their services.
Soon after the name change, Indigo sold out to Troon, which has become one of the biggest power players in golf. Others who handle similar services for municipal courses include Hampton, ClubCorp, Arnold Palmer and Arcis, just to name a few.
But how did we get to this point, one in which municipally-owned courses need an added level of management?
With decades of this knowledge under his cap, Hill is the perfect person to explain why we’re still losing a few municipal courses each year, why some are financially self-sustaining while others aren’t and where the industry is headed as a whole.
Peter Hill worked with Billy Casper Golf (later Indigo Golf Partners) for 31 years until the company was acquired by Troon Golf. (Contributed photo)
Before the ’90s: ‘Franchise locations’
The older the course, the more likely it’s in a city center, Hill explained. In the 1960s, when television shined a light on golf with Arnold Palmer and others, municipal courses boomed. Those cities that didn’t have a course — or multiple courses — added them as sound recreation alternatives.
And the time was right in terms of land purchases and access to utilities.
“You really need to look at this as a time series,” Hill explained. “Historically, a lot of municipal golf that was built before the 1990s, those courses have been there a long time. I’ll say there were probably a couple thousand that probably predated the 1990s in municipal golf.
“And so as a result of that, they were built when land was cheap and when it didn’t cost a whole lot to build them. So a lot of these municipal course facilities have what we would call ‘franchise locations.’ They’re closer to population, they’re more in the fill, they’re core golf courses and so the bedrock of municipal golf, going back to 50 to 60 years is that they’re really well located.”
These courses, like Austin’s Lions Municipal, were built in prime areas, but often the land prices have gone up dramatically, making such a large greenspace far too valuable. If the land hasn’t increased in value, it’s likely the area has hit hard times, and that presents another series of problems.
As Tiger Woods hit the scene and golf came back in style, suburbs were in the middle of wooing inner-city dwellers, often competing for potential residents with a few handy trump cards — good schools and better recreation.
“That’s when the municipalities look sort of looked around and said, ‘hey, why don’t we build one?’ ” Hill said. “And because golf was popular and they had the land, that resulted in a lot of municipalities building golf courses.”
Cities, towns and counties did this in conjunction with private developers, many of whom saw golf as an opportunity; many of these courses wind through residential neighborhoods.
“A lot of the stuff that was built in the 1990s and in the first decade of this millennium had to be built farther out. They were more remote and not as well located as the initial municipal inventory that was built 50 years prior,” Hill said. “A lot of stuff that was built in the 1990s and in the first five or eight years of the 2000s, there were a lot of courses built that shouldn’t have been built.”
As Hill tells it, many of those municipalities that built courses in this era did so for all the wrong reasons — not because demand wasn’t being met, but rather to add to the city’s jewel box. When play started to dip again, these courses were ill-prepared to weather a storm.
“When participation started to decline from the early 2000s up until recently, you had an oversupply for the first time in the history of the game,” he said. “And a lot of that oversupply was driven by municipalities deciding that they should get in the business.
“Which, by the way, irritated a lot of people in the private sector. These people were like, ‘go build bowling alleys or bars and restaurants.’ Instead, they just picked golf as a segment because they had the land and it was politically expedient. Many of them looked across the street and saw their brethren who built a golf course — so they said, ‘why don’t we go build one too?'”
Papago Park Golf Club was a municipally-run course, but now is operated by Troon Golf and has become the home for the Arizona State University golf teams. (Courtesy of Troon Golf.)
The move to managing courses
Hill added that many municipalities didn’t use sound vetting processes when building newer courses, often ignoring factors like the move to online tee times and discounted rate demands, circumstances that also caused a dip in the hotel market.
Hill’s company originally started by helping to complete the design process, but quickly realized there was a larger need in managing the courses. This vision is one of the reasons he was consistently listed among Golf Inc. magazine’s 10 Most Powerful People in Golf list.
“We’d be hired on to see these projects through and we’d say to the municipality, ‘We want you to know you’re probably not going to realize the financial returns or financial performance that you anticipate for years.’ And they’d go, ‘No, that’s not right, because we have this study over here done by Joe Blow who says we’re gonna have X amount of revenue and X amount of expenses and we’re gonna make that much money,'” Hill said. “And we’d say. ‘well, that may have been the case eight years ago when you started this thing, but it’s not the case today.’
“We already saw the headwind of increased supply and decreased demand, but no one would ever really wanted to hear the bad news and they went ahead and did it.”
Issues: Expenses or revenues?
According to the National Golf Foundation, only an estimated 67 percent of all public-agency golf facilities made enough revenue in 2019 to cover all on-site expenses. So why do it?
Those in socio-economically thriving communities can afford to take the hit. And often, large cities see this as a means to keep residents from fleeing to suburbs. But when the pandemic hit and budgets were smashed, the microscope returned, even in areas where the number of golf rounds skyrocketed.
All this leads us to the bigger question — what helps make a golf course economically sustainable?
Like with any business, it’s either a revenue issue or an expense issue.
If it’s a revenue issue, Hill said:
• Either the course isn’t charging enough
• The course isn’t managing its tee time inventory properly
• It’s in a bad location
• It’s an indication of how well the facility is maintained
“Golfers really care about playing conditions. You can have a really well-located golf course that is in a high-demand area that’s in terrible shape — the greens and the tees and the fairways are just not up to snuff — and nobody’s going to come,” Hill said.
Meanwhile, on the expense side, the following factors come into play:
• Simple daily overspending: “You can spend an unlimited amount of money on a golf course. What’s the right amount to spend? That’s the question.”
• Labor: Muni courses often fall under a parks and recreation umbrella with municipalities. Often, the workforce is fit to accomplish the work necessary, rather than building a workforce to accomplish the work. In other words, 30 employees from the parks and rec department split up chores because they’re already on staff, rather than hiring the necessary number of bodies — say, 10 — to get all the tasks completed.
• Utilities: How much does water cost? Are there land expenses? What arrangements are worked out with local utility companies?
Hill said when a municipality came with its books open, he could determine if the course could remain viable almost instantly. Practices like tiered pricing allowed Hill and his company — like many others now in the space — to optimize golf course profitability.
“I could tell within a half an hour of looking through the financial information how much it would cost to run that golf course and if it would be profitable long-term,” Hill said. “Remember, golf courses are like sporting events cruise ships, airlines, stadiums. All seats should not be sold at the same price. There’s tiered pricing depending upon demand, time of day and how far out you make a reservation.”
Clubhouses, restaurants and other pieces
One fallacy Hill wants to shed light on is the notion that bigger clubhouses, better restaurants and merchandise shops are a sure-fire path to economic success.
In fact, Hill said, while these auxiliary pieces might help on the revenue side, they are often major drains on the expense side. And remember, if the goal is financial sustainability, it’s all about the balancing act of revenue and expenses.
“If you took a really high-quality public golf course in a good location and you have a choice between running that golf course out of a double-wide trailer, which is dressed up in order to look like a nice thing, or building an 8,000-square foot clubhouse, you’ll make more money running it out of the trailer. Always,” Hill said. “You’ll gross more money if you have a clubhouse that has food and beverage and whatnot with a big golf shop. Your gross will be higher, but your margin will be less.
“Look, the margin on an incremental round of golf is 85 or 90 percent. The margin on a food and beverage business is 15 percent, right? There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just a completely different business. If you want to do things in the most efficient way, the double-wide wins every time.”
A scenic view from the second hole tee at the Vivint Houston Open at Memorial Park Golf Course on October 13, 2020, in Houston, Texas. (Photo: Keyur Khamar/PGA Tour via Getty Images)
Case study: Houston’s Memorial Park
A municipal golf course is akin to a college — people seem to develop some of their strongest friendships there and even if they graduate to ritzier surroundings, they still hold a soft spot for it.
When the makeover was complete, the Houston Open, which had been at Memorial until 1964 when it fled for the suburbs, returned for the 2020 season.
The muni was due for a refresh in the 1990s and the city found $7 million to provide an adequate if underwhelming facelift to the property. But Crane starting asking about the potential of hosting a PGA Tour event and momentum started to build.
Is this a model that can be used in other places? Daniel Gilbert’s efforts to put the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit were substantial, but could a muni have been saved in the process? Could other cities follow a similar loophole of allowing a wealthy civic-minded business leader to refurbish courses, all with the thought of getting major events to these venues?
Tom Doak (Brian Walters Photography)
Possibly. But even Doak — who is also part of the National Links Trust project in Washington, D.C., which is on track to refurbish three inner-city golf courses — isn’t certain there’s one true recipe for success on these projects.
“This could be the way things go,” said Doak about private-public partnerships. “It’s a little easier without all the red tape of dealing with city bureaucracy and all that. And that helped this project in Houston, too. Dealing with the red tape we had to here was just up front in the project. As a matter of fact, they didn’t want us to start until the day after Election Day, so we got a little bit of a late start.
“But combining a public-private partnership, especially when the Tour is also involved, it adds a whole bunch of corporate sponsors who are willing to jump in. It makes a project like this go easier.”
Then what’s the hold-up? Why not simply engage more big-money donors, many of whom love golf?
“The potential donors are always afraid that the city won’t take care of this after they do it. That’s the real thing,” Doak said. “The foundation in Houston, they made sure the contract for the tournament is for five years, so at least for five years, they’re very involved in maintaining the golf course. The Tour sends their staff in and makes sure everything is going right. That’s the trick in most places.
“A lot of these old golf courses don’t need much architecture. They were built well. They need better maintenance and they don’t get it. That’s the easiest thing for cities to do, but they often don’t do it.”
COMING THURSDAY: With the golf mecca of Bandon Dunes leading the way, Oregon is hoping to build a municipal-public-private relationship that helps grow the game for everyone. It’s not the only place this is happening. Another example is in San Francisco where the hope is that players evolve from Lincoln Park to Harding Park to Olympic Club — all very different but all in proximity.
In a three-part series, Golfweek sheds a spotlight on municipal golf and why it’s a crucial piece of the golf industry.
(Editor’s note: After the upcoming U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, there are no municipal golf courses on the majors schedule for the foreseeable future. In a three-part series, Golfweek sheds a spotlight on municipal golf, why it’s a crucial piece of the golf industry and how it’s evolving.)
AUSTIN, Texas — Hop along the hills on Enfield Road — which bounces from the vibrant downtown scene here to a quaint neighborhood on the west side near Lake Austin — and an endless stream of single-family homes and condos is breached by a long row of tall Texas oaks.
For those heading to a popular strip of shops and restaurants along the lake, it’s an insignificant stretch. But for those who preceded the Austin boom, this is sacred space, a revered golf course in a now-gentrified neighborhood. A green respite amid the chaos.
On the backside of those trees is Lions Municipal Golf Course, built in 1924 and still considered one of the best places to play golf in a now-thriving metropolitan area. It’s not uncommon to see celebrities here. Matthew McConaughey is often spotted with his son. Sergio Garcia has been known to sharpen his game here. Rich Beem is a part-time Austin resident and will pop in from time to time. Former University of Texas football coach Mack Brown was known to frequent the course, often accompanied by some of his players.
And on this spring morning, as is often the case, Ben Crenshaw is roaming the grounds at Lions, which locals simply refer to as “Muny.” With an impressive list of world-renowned courses on his architectural resume, not to mention the ability as a 19-time PGA Tour title winner and two-time Masters champ to finagle his way onto almost any track, Crenshaw still forgoes bigger name sites to play his boyhood 18 whenever possible.
Ben Crenshaw discusses a plan to save Austin’s Lions Municipal Golf Course. (Austin American-Statesman photo)
A thoughtful soul, Crenshaw seems to summon an extra dose of sincerity as he talks about Muny, and it’s easy to see why. He’s stopped on this morning near the practice green by a friend with whom he played Little League baseball. The superintendent pops by to ask a question or two. And lifelong pal Scotty Sayers, his agent since 1985 and a founding partner in his Coore and Crenshaw design firm, is by his side.
“I was introduced to this place at a really early age, like 8 or 9 years old. It was so convenient that we just came here, and we learned that everybody came here, from all walks of life. The community always embraced this place and it’s got a long legacy, a really long legacy. It’s been a fixture, really,” Crenshaw said. “And it’s beautiful. It’s open and it’s inviting and it’s a place to meet people you know, just like any other municipal golf course in the country.
“You can see the joy that it gives to people. It lasts, as we know. If you start young, you’re really fortunate because you carry it — golf and a place like this — with you for the rest of your life.”
Crenshaw and Sayers developed their love for the game at Muny, and they’re desperately trying to give future generations an opportunity to do the same. Real estate in many parts of the country is a booming business and Austin is no exception. In fact, the metro area has dipped in recent “best places to live” polls as housing increasingly becomes more expensive.
This, of course, has made the 141 acres on which Muny sits extremely valuable. The City of Austin is conducting virtual stakeholder meetings the week of June 21, asking for public input on zoning for the area, and Crenshaw and Sayers are putting together a trust to hopefully purchase the area for a reasonable price and preserve it for years to come.
The land is part of the 500 acres of University of Texas-owned land known as the Brackenridge Tract, and is considered the first fully desegregated municipal course south of the Mason-Dixon line. The city has leased 140 acres for Muny since 1936 and currently pays UT about $500,000 a year. If the parties don’t come to an understanding, the university could be free to lease the property to another entity, develop it or sell it.
Similar scenarios, although perhaps not always as entangled, are playing out throughout the country at municipal golf courses.
Crenshaw and others are fighting to preserve the 141-acre golf course. (Photo by Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman/USA Today Network)
There’s a reason this is an important distinction. Public-access, non-municipal golf facilities were created as for-profit endeavors. Many of the residential courses built during the early ‘90s golf building boom fall into this category. These were not built to grow the game, per se, but rather to capitalize on the game’s popularity. It’s sound business — as golf’s numbers grew, especially during the beginning of Tiger Woods’ ascension, courses were built to take advantage of the uptick in rounds played.
A municipal course, on the other hand, is one that occupies publicly owned or municipal land. Why is this important? As the business of golf waxes and wanes, municipal courses are expected to fulfill multiple purposes:
• To maintain greenspaces in urban areas
• To provide recreational opportunities for residents
• And perhaps most important, to introduce new players to the game
They are also hoped to be at least financially self-sustaining, but this is often not the primary motivation for building or preserving these courses.
Sure, it’s fun for weekend warriors to dream about an afternoon at Pebble Beach, Pinehurst or Bandon Dunes, but new players don’t typically evolve into lifelong consumers at the top of the funnel. The game needs to be — and here’s a phrase we’ll repeat often in this series — accessible to the masses.
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“At its core, golf is not about manicured greens or high-end amenities. It’s about how golfers experience the game. Players experience the game in a multitude of ways, whether it’s at municipal golf courses or high-end clubs,” said Sinclair Eaddy Jr., a former president and executive director of the First Tee of Greater Baltimore. He now serves as the executive director for the National Links Trust, a group that is dedicated to protecting and promoting accessible, affordable and engaging municipal golf courses. “But what’s important is the experience the golfer has when they’re on the course. That’s an intangible thing and it’s something you just can’t put a value on.
“Good golf, compelling golf, should be affordable for all golfers.”
According to the National Golf Foundation, there are about 2,500 municipal golf courses throughout the country, and while the pandemic has served as a kickstart for the entire golf industry — with the sport naturally promoting social distancing and healthy recreation — some of these courses continue to slip away, even with increased demand.
According to the latest monthly report by Golf Datatech, produced in cooperation with NGF, golf rounds are up 81% nationwide in April and 44% for the year, yet nearly 200 18-hole equivalent closures took place in 2020, or about 1.3% of the total supply.
Those sites that are shuddered often exacerbate the issue of keeping golf accessible to the masses. (Yes, there’s that phrase again.) Without vibrant municipal courses, golf is more susceptible to spiraling downward during tough times. Courses close in “franchise locations” — those in inner-ring suburbs or within a large city’s limits, near a large population base — meaning fewer playing opportunities for large swaths of the public. It’s simply harder to get hooked on golf when you don’t have a place to play nearby.
Case study: Dayton, Ohio (losing at-risk players)
Madden Golf Course in Dayton, Ohio, was permanently closed in 2020. (Contributed photo)
For example, the city of Dayton, Ohio — metro population of about 800,000 residents — operated three municipal golf facilities at the start of 2020: Community Golf Course, Madden Golf Course and Kittyhawk Golf Center. Although the three-facility system was self-sufficient as a whole, Madden — which was built in 1929 and sits just a few miles from downtown Dayton — always lagged financially.
The historic course played host to PGA Tour pros Lee Elder, Jim Dent and Charlie Sifford through the years.
“We made enough money on the other two golf facilities in our group to cover the losses at Madden,” said Kelly Pressel, the City of Dayton’s manager of the division of golf. “But when we were going to have to start covering the costs from our city’s general fund, the decision was made to close the facility.”
As Kittyhawk, which had three 18-hole tracks, started to fall into a similar financial boat as Madden, the system collapsed. An NGF study suggested that outdated irrigation systems and insufficient clubhouse facilities were dragging Kittyhawk and Madden down — the study went on to suggest an investment of about $9 million to remain viable long-term.
But when the pandemic took hold early in 2020 — before the golf season started — and an 18 percent general fund shortfall was predicted, the city decided to close both Kittyhawk and Madden. The two sites never re-opened last summer.
The closures, while financially sound for the city, could have devastating effects on any attempt to rebuild the area’s golf base. The revenue from Community provided about half of the golf department’s total budget line and according to the NGF study, it’s in a “golfer-rich” area. While that means Community will likely be able to stand on its own in terms of its ledger, opportunities for minority and inner-city players — those the USGA and PGA of America are trying hard to woo to grow and diversify the game — will likely dwindle.
Former Dayton mayor Clay Dixon told the Dayton Daily News the loss was significant for the Madden community, one with which he was tightly associated.
“It was more than just a golf course. It’s a venue with a lot of history to African-Americans,” Dixon said. “We had to fight to be able to play there. It became part of the fabric of our community. You can’t judge that just in terms of dollars and cents.”
‘We don’t want this to be a country club’
Ben Crenshaw reads a Golfweek article about a course in Palm Beach, Florida, that’s working with the PGA of America. Crenshaw is working to save Austin’s Lions Municipal Golf Course, the course he started playing as a kid. (Tim Schmitt/Golfweek)
While the issues in Dayton are very different than those facing Crenshaw and Sayers in Texas, the results could be similar. Currently, the city of Austin’s junior golf academy is on-site at Lions and due to a lack of similar facilities, would likely need to be moved out of the city if the course were to close. Austin only has a handful of other public golf options near downtown.
But if Crenshaw and Sayers have their way, a conservancy they helped to form will purchase Muny from the university and allow play to continue as it has for decades.
“We’d like to make it more like a course in Scotland in the center of town,” said Sayers. “We’d like to make more public areas — maybe a bigger putting green where kids that aren’t part of the Austin Golf Academy can just come knock the ball around. Or families can come out and have a reasonably priced meal and hang out, even if they’re not playing golf on the course.
“It really is like a community center, that’s what you feel when you come here. You feel like everybody is comfortable here, not pretentious. All economic backgrounds, all races. We don’t want this to be a country club.”
Crenshaw isn’t the only big name to come through the doors at Lions — Ben Hogan, Tom Kite, Byron Nelson and 42-time LPGA winner Sandra Haynie have all been regulars at one time or another.
And as he talks about the history of the course, he does so while sitting next to an office named for Tom Penick, a head pro at Lions from 1927 to 1961 often credited with helping in its design. Penick’s younger brother, Harvey, turned out to be a pretty decent coach in his own right.
“This place,” Crenshaw said while motioning the booming city in the distance, “has exploded. It’s not going to stop. There’s no stopping this town. But I think people have seen the benefit of the preservation of greenspace now. I mean that comes before a lot of things and it’s rapidly disappearing every day.
“People need a place like this. And we want to make sure it doesn’t go away.”
COMING WEDNESDAY: Many municipal courses are now managed by outside companies. Why? Does it work well? And what are the financial hurdles municipal courses need to overcome to be viable?
Municipal golf courses are a vibrant part of the golf industry’s plan to bring a wider group of the American public to the game. Often, municipal courses – not simply public-access courses, but those that sit on municipally owned land – have had to …
Municipal golf courses are a vibrant part of the golf industry’s plan to bring a wider group of the American public to the game.
Often, municipal courses — not simply public-access courses, but those that sit on municipally owned land — have had to weather storms like dwindling tax bases, the game’s rising and falling popularity and a change in access to utilities and labor.
Here is a look at five different municipal golf case studies — some that ridden out the storms successfully and some that have not:
