More On the State of the Golf Industry.

In the previous post I had discussed a little about the “State of the Golf Industry."

I talked about the loss of the number of rounds played since 2005 and what might be the cause. Well I did a little more digging from the National Golf Foundation and found a ton of information that may be interesting to some of you golfers.

While there has been a lot of conversation around the number of available golf courses in the U.S. and the closings of courses ,the statistics show some interesting trends. Based on a national 2009 survey that the NGF did, they found that approximately 800 courses closed since 2000, but the reality is the U.S. golf-course supply actually increased by more than 500 net courses during that period.

 The stats are as follows:

Closures

• 1,083 “facilities” closed
• 57% of the facilities closing were 9-hole courses
• 93% were public facilities
• Of the public facility closures, 85% of them had green fees of $40 or less
• 7% of the course closures were private
• 26% of the closures were non-regulation courses such as Executive or Par 3 courses

Openings

• 81% of the facilities opened were 18 holes or greater
• 60%+ of the facilities opened were real estate or resort courses
• 66% of the public facilities opened had green fees of $40 or more
• 28% of the course openings were private
• 92% of the courses opened were regulation courses

In 2011 there were a total of 15,890 golf courses in the US. Of those 11,628 were public and 4,262 were private.

In my future posts I will drill down a little more with some of the differences in rounds played by year, the difference in the national averages of operating information between public and private course, and trends in fees.

If you have any curiosities on something in the golfing industry let me know and I’ll see what I can dig up. Until next time keep your head down, and swing through to the target.