SOME LOCAL GOLF COURSES RAISING GREENS FEES,A LITTLE
Despite the booming economy, the hype and Tiger Woods, the sport of golf isn’t seeing a net increase in new golfers. Nonetheless, high-end golf in OC is getting a little more high-end.
Despite flat,some would say “stable”,golf rounds numbers, OC facilities are not slashing prices to grow their business. Instead, pointing to all the new wealth and efforts to attract travelers unfazed by greens fees above $125 on weekends, the county’s premier golf courses are holding the line on their top rates. And several operators are planning slight increases in greens fees.
Starting April 1, Tustin Ranch Golf Club will be at $85 Monday through Wednesday, $100 on Thursday and Friday and $135 weekends and holidays. The latter two rates will be up $5 and $10, respectively.
Similarly, The Irvine Company-owned Oak Creek is going up $5 to $10 a round, depending on the day. The biggest planned increase is at Pelican Hill, the Irvine Co.’s ocean jewel. The attitude here is that if higher fees thin the crowd a little, so much the better for those who can afford the golfing experience. The price range at Pelican Hill is going from $155-$225 to $175-$250.
“It’s not an unhealthy local golf picture by any stretch of the imagination,” says Mike Lichty, director of golf at Tustin Ranch. “And we’re not the only ones to raise our rack rates.”
“Countywide, rates are going up,” says Rick Howard, general manager at Strawberry Farms Golf Club in Irvine. Howard says his prices last year were $85 to $125, with a probable uptick coming this year. He also plans to go to a “modified” rate structure, dividing the week into thirds as does Tustin Ranch, but grouping Monday with Tuesday, Wednesday with Thursday, and making Friday a weekend day.
“Thursday is our busiest day,” says Howard.
That being the case, it makes sense that golf courses would angle to make Thursday pricier, trying to capture the golfer looking to start his weekend a little early.
In fact, the increased parsing of the week and of tee times appears to be a way for courses to better match supply and demand while maintaining their top ticket price.
Last October, Tijeras Creek raised its price, from a range of $85 to $110 a round, to a flat $125 anytime. However, with that fee, the golfer now gets free range balls, free soft drinks and sandwiches and unlimited golf on a space-available basis.
Golf operators peg average numbers at courses charging $125 or more on weekends at between 40,000 and 55,000 rounds per year, down from 60,000 to 70,000 in the earliest part of the 1990s. Total rounds for the eight to 10 courses in the county at that price are about 400,000, golf pros say.
National Golf Foundation statistics for all daily fee courses in this area show that in 1997 (most recent year available) the median course played 52,500 rounds.
“We’ve been in the low 50,000s for each of our first two years,” says Howard. Lichty also puts his numbers steady at that rate. At Monarch Beach Golf Links in Dana Point, General Manager and Director of Golf Rick Winter says his production is holding steady in the low- to mid-40,000s.
Lichty and Winter say that continued economic expansion in the county and new efforts by golf courses to attract outside play justify the rates. Everything is more expensive, notes Lichty, since people can afford to pay more in an economic boom. Winter pegs some of his optimism to a 400-room resort hotel planned near his course.
And Orange County Golf Coast, a trade group of top-tier courses here, has begun direct-mail and advertising to pull non-OC play.
“We are trying to supplement the local base with the tourist,” says Lichty, who ballparks locally sourced rounds at 70% to 75%, with the rest coming from LA, San Diego, the Bay Area and outside the state. “We want to make (the second group) a larger percentage,” he says. n
