It wasn’t always this way. A generation ago, back when family-owned courses ruled the pastures, there was little need to promote, as courses were turning away nearly as many golfers as they sent to the first tee. Business boomed in the 1980s. Millions took up the game and thousands of courses opened across the land.
“The growth lasted until about 1992,” Jacobsen adds. “There were so many courses built. We doubled the courses — but we didn’t double the golfers.”
According to the National Golf Foundation, play is on a steady decline. Thirty years ago, there were 35 million golfers (age six and older) playing the game. That figure dipped to 30.6 million by 2003. Corporate fundraisers were greatly reduced at courses, an indication that the millennials are not taking up the game at the same rate the previous generation once did, and junior programs have seen steady declines in participation over the past three decades.
Yet, those warning signs were largely ignored by the monied class, as courses continued to be built well into the current century, many with accompanying housing developments. Over a 20-year span — from 1986 to 2005 — 4,500 new courses were up and running.
Then, it was hang-on time. The economy began sinking and golf went down with it. For eight straight years — 2006 to 2013 — more golf courses closed than opened, according to the National Golf Foundation. Over the past decade, 800 were shuttered, at one point one approximately every two days.
By 2016, that number that had stood at 35 million golfers in the 1980s, and 30 million just 15 years ago, was down to just 24.1 million.
And it’s not just courses, either — Mike Livingston, general manager of the regionally-based Puetz Golf Superstores, says, “It’s been a perfect storm of challenges that we’ve faced the last nine years. Everything in golf was overbuilt, and it reached a crescendo in 2008 and ‘09. And we will have, for a number of years, declining net growth.”
Like solo golf courses, the Puetz family has also had to overcome these challenges without the resources and marketing reach of the national chains such as Dick’s Sporting Goods, Sports Authority and PGA Superstores.
Livingston, who has been with Puetz for 27 years, says there are several factors that have helped Puetz remain viable, mostly unique to the Northwest. For one, the major national retail chains have not been as aggressive in the Northwest as in other regions. Also, the local economy has rebounded quicker and more substantially, and there has been a healthy and respectful competition with Puetz’s main regional rival, Pro Golf Discount.
“We’ve had a disciplined competition on favorable grounds, instead of the price wars that we’ve seen in many, many markets,” Livingston says. “We’ve tried focusing on the service end of things — better visual aspects, better customer service and personal fittings, instead of just engaging in a race to the bottom.”
A victory of sorts for family-owned tracts came in 2014, when the celebrated Gamble Sands opened in Brewster. The course was the vision of Cass Gebbers, CEO of Gebbers Farms, one of the biggest apple producers in the country. His motivation was to build a destination course that would bring in a new wave of tourists to diversify the economy.
Of course, this high-powered family is mostly immune from typical family-owned challenges. For those limited-resource solo operations, it has been a bumpy, red-knuckle ride that shook out the most vulnerable.
“We’ve tried to take the long-term approach, ride it out and hope that we’d emerge on the other side financially stable,” says Avalon’s Hass.