Sports: Courses pay for lower rates

Golf

Courses pay for lower rates

Plethora of bay area clubs, fewer golfers and summer prices don't add up to huge profits.

By BOB HARIG, Times Staff Writer

The days are getting longer, crowds have thinned, prices have dropped.

It is golf's annual rite of spring in Florida, and year-round residents of the Tampa Bay area are the beneficiaries of some of the best bargains in the game.

The problem, say area course operators, is that golfers here don't realize how good they have it.

Prices traditionally decline after Easter and remain at that rate through October. That's great for golfers, but not so great for the courses, which struggle during summer.

"The consumers are the beneficiaries of one of the great times in history as far as value," said Matt McIntee, vice president of acquisitions for Crown Golf, which owns several local properties.

"There are too many courses here, and as soon as it gets slow, everybody panics and drops their prices," said Dave Stewart, head golf pro at Fox Hollow in New Port Richey. "We can't collude on prices, but at some point you have to hold the line and just say we're going to stick to our guns, this is what our product is worth."

Fox Hollow lowered rates from $75 weekdays and $85 weekends to $45 and $60, respectively.

Stewart said courses have no choice. With a majority of winter residents gone, and heat and summer thunderstorms on the way, the market bears a correction. But courses, he said, cannot survive charging rates that some customers expect.

Various studies conducted by the National Golf Foundation have shown that golf is flat in the United States. Though the game has become more popular with minorities and women and more children are taking up the sport, others leave the game just as quickly because of the difficulty or cost.

And the economy has not helped. Travel is down, as is consumer spending. All of it hurts course operators.

"There's definitely some concern," said Clay Thomas, general manager at Westchase in Tampa, which this week lowered its rates to $43 during the week and $59 on weekends from $75 and $85, respectively. "Certainly in this environment, there will be some golf courses that will suffer. No. 1 is the economy. The big way that affects us is travel. Not just the leisure traveler but the business traveler. Even in the offseason, the business traveler would come here. But fewer people are traveling for business or they cut their trip short.

"And what we've found in the summer here is that more and more people are competing for a stagnant number of golfers. We do what we can to increase loyalty at our facility. We have an annual pass program here. We're part of the Paradise program. We're doing what we can to keep people playing our course."

There are more than 100 public-access courses in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties. Throw in the Bradenton-Sarasota area, and there are at least another 50 courses from which to choose.

And few areas in the country are forced to discount their prices like this one. In northern climates, courses shut down in the winter and charge prime rates in the spring and summer.

Here, when the days are the longest and the weather conditions most extreme, rates are the lowest.

"Consumers' perspective has been skewed," said McIntee of Crown Golf, which owns more than 20 courses across the country, including Palm Harbor's Lansbrook, Largo's Bardmoor and Tampa's Northdale. "Ten years ago, affordable public golf usually meant a park district or municipal facility that might not have had the best design characteristics or the best piece of land.

"Then we had this massive boom in development which was really driven by the perception that there wasn't enough golf holes to satisfy the demand, that golf would continue to grow. All of these well-conditioned, state-of-the art courses were put in every major market and the price tag to play them was pretty high. So the price of golf went up. So did consumers' expectations.

"Now things have settled down from a supply-and-demand standpoint. Consumers still expect courses to be in tour condition. But there's only so much we can spend to maintain this as far as revenue flow. But the consumer thinks you're insulting them. It's very difficult because this is such a high, fixed-cost business."

In addition to reduced rates, area golfers can take advantage of summer programs such as the Paradise Golf plan, which charges a one-time fee for the right to a membership card, which offers discounts at various courses.

Fox Hollow, Westchase and Bardmoor are part of the program. McIntee said Bardmoor participated reluctantly. Program members play Bardmoor for $19.80 including cart. The regular rate is $45.

"You cannot convince me that it has been the best thing for the golf industry in Florida," McIntee said. "It's caused such a devaluation of pricing in Florida. To the individual consumer, it's been pretty good. They still have to come out of pocket for a couple of hundred bucks, then they get a great discount. But none of that really went back into the golf courses' hands."

The hope is to make it through the tough times back to the winter season when seasonal residents arrive and the rates increase. And that brings another problem.

"The typical Florida resident feels he gets hammered in the winter," McIntee said.

"The reality," Stewart said, "is the locals think that the summer price is the regular price and that we raise it in the winter. But our season is the winter. That's the regular price."