Officials keep golf memberships

Pleas to keep the program for the elderly strike a positive chord as Sports Authority members keep memberships.

By JEFF TESTERMAN

© St. Petersburg Times, published September 19, 2000

TAMPA -- Seventeen years ago, George Eccleston took his police pension, moved to Florida and plunked down a few hundred dollars for a golf membership he expected would give him unlimited play on Tampa city courses forever.

Monday evening, Eccleston found himself pleading against a plan pitched by the Tampa Sports Authority to cancel his precious golf membership.

"I've got a fused back, I've got a titanium knee, and I still get up before 5 a.m. so I can walk 18 holes five days a week," Eccleston said. "But if you take this away, I won't be able to do that anymore."

The sports authority had been asked to cancel the memberships because they offered an inequitable advantage over other golfers who want to tee it up at the Babe Zaharias, Rocky Point and Rogers Park golf courses in Tampa.

A weekday golfer right now pays $25 to play a single round. Golfers holding memberships pay $80 to $99 a month for unlimited play.

"It's not really fair to the rest of the golfing public," said authority executive director Henry Saavedra.

Authority members thought differently, especially after hearing from Dee Anderson, who said golf was helping keep her 79-year-old father, widower and retired civil service worker Arthur Spinney, active and alive.

"Once old people are put out to pasture, you can't take away what they get up in the morning for," said Anderson. "My father plays with three other veterans, and they worked for us and fought for us. Now, the great generation is dying at the rate of a thousand a day. We have an obligation to give something back to this generation."

The sports authority instituted memberships 25 years ago, Saavedra said, to assure a constant cash flow to Tampa's city courses.

The idea was so popular that an estimated 700 to 800 golfers signed up at about $400. After that, members paid a monthly fee and played as often as they wanted.

The members ended up monopolizing the courses, said Saavedra, and "the public was almost excluded from getting tee times."

So, 10 years ago, the authority decided to end the membership program. Existing members were grandfathered in and kept their monthly fees.

Since then, the membership has dwindled because of death, disability and member relocation. The authority now counts 135 members on the rolls: 70 at Rocky Point, 40 at Babe Zaharias and 25 at Rogers Park.

The surviving members get in their golf. Authority officials said 200,000 rounds are played annually at the three courses, and as many as 12,000 of them are played by the 135 remaining members. One estimate put the authority's loss on the cheaper rounds at more than $90,000 a year.

But authority member Jim Norman said he thought that was a small price to pay to honor memberships of several dozen elderly golfers.

"We're the ones who made the overture on this years ago," he said.

Norman also suggested that other elderly golfers deserve discounted greens fees.

His motion, approved 6-2, keeps the memberships in place, adds 5 percent to members' monthly fees each year and mandates that the sports authority staff study the possibility of giving all older residents senior golf discounts.

- Jeff Testerman can be reached at (813) 226-3422 or testerman@sptimes.com.

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