At the club I am currently a member we have a problem with a decreasing number of members and need to attract more people to start playing.

A bit about the club.

-18 holes
-Regarded one of the better courses around our region.
-not many people play club tournaments.
-we have two practice greens, one for putting and one for chipping.
-decent drive range
-limited/bad possibilities if you want to practice wedges
-around 800 members
-the club covers an area of approx 25k people.

I have thought about an activity where we have free training for 4-15 year olds, with a pro and possibility to loan clubs. Also free membership for juniors that have handicap up to 15 year olds. Golf is a perfect sport if you play hockey, floorball, table tennis etc that is usually played during the winter. If you get a lot of younger people playing their parents will start playing.

What do you guys think? What are your club doing to do attract new members?

How much is a membership? Is it tiered for age groups?

That was my first question. 800 members is a ton, how many are you looking to have?

Yes, senior $650, junior $250. Then there is some other tiers as well.

Are all 800 golf members? If so, Id be ecstatic membership is decreasing. I mean that course would have to be packed every single day.

What exactly is a senior membership and what is a junior membership. Those prices already seem stupid cheap for a course thats one of the best in the area. Are there monthly minimums?

Going to need much more information to give you some good ideas

Im gonna give a litttle more about memberships when i come home in 1 hour.

Senior membership: $615
Junior 19-21: $289
Junior 15-18: $197
Junior 0-14: $104
Age 22-25: $351

Unforetunately I have no statistics about how many people are on each membership but my guess is that the majority, maybe 90% is senior members. A very low % is age 0-21.

And yes, almost all 800 are active members. Probably a small % are passive members paying $50.

For those prices you can play whenever the course is open, any time.

Basically the only time during the year that you can't just play whenever you want is saturdays and sundays in the summer, june, july and august. All other times during the season you can play. Our season usually ranges from march to october.

The problem here is the number of greenfee and members are decreasing every year and the club need a good way to start getting more active members. The club need to prosper.

Define propsper?

To me, as a consumer, a club is not prospering nor attractive if there are 1300 members on an 18 hole course that are all active members. I feel like you would always need a tee time and could never just get out and play. From a club point of view, sure its prospering if they are growing but Id imagine members could get frustrated easily. I could be wrong about this though

Those membership prices are so incredibly cheap its ridiculous. Are there minimums that need to be spent every month or any requirements? Is there a cart fee every round? I dont know any course in my area with membership prices even close to those?

I mean, I am seriously worried about the future of this club. Despite this course being the best in the area all other clubs have over 1k members. And if we don't attract more members we cant hold up the current standard and if we lower the standard people will start playing on neighbouring courses. Prosper in my eyes is where the club gets more members, better practice possibilities and maybe expand to another 9 holes.

No restrictions nor any requirements. We usually never use a buggy.

Remember, this is Sweden and we basically only have 3 months of really good golf. Then a couple of months of decent play.

Ah didnt realize you were in Sweeden. I have no idea lol. Im talking about US. Good luck

Those prices are super cheap? They are for teens but $600+ seems on the high normal rate side to me afaik.

I only ask because I used to live in Vegas and at a great club that is on the cheap side, but now where I am in a fly over state there's amazing ones. Like $200 monthly for all the perks. I found it to be very unexpected and I wonder what normal rates are.

He's talking about Europe, those quoted prices are YEARLY dues.

I know of quite a few incredible courses in Scotland where members pay less than $1000US for the entire year.

Anybody trying to compare almost anything to how it works in the US won't be useful. Totally different world.

BO

Oh wow, ty. I was of course thinking they were monthly rates, glad you noticed. Man, my super cheap country club I found costs way more than Euro land does. I'm moving there lol.

Have you tried to run scrambles open to whomever with some money going to charity or junior golf. If the course is one of the better ones you should only need to get people on the course and see it.

Even if Europe and USA are worlds apart there must be some useful information regarding pricing, advertisement and campaigns.

Running scrambles with the buy in going to charity is a good idea.

Another thing that I personally would enjoy is some kind of activity when the big tournaments are. Golf tournament and afterwards eat and drink beer watching the US Open. It is perfect because golf during the day and eating and drinking to broadcast US Open which is in the evening.

Dante, I don't have an answer for you, but I do have a question:

What would make you leave your golf club for another? And why?

Hire the Swedish bikini team to do an event at the course. That will get the old guys out there.

I think they have to increase the size of the hole. The game is too tough for beginners. It is brutally tough for even very good players.

Many country clubs in America will have to be like in Europe where the public is allowed to play a couple of hours a day.

Nine holes should be the normal booking. People just can't get away for 5 hours.

Waste areas to save water.

Restrictions on playing back tees to certain handicap levels. Just like in Europe.

Amazing to see all the country clubs that were once hard to join that are now begging for members.

The golf industry will have to work hard just to maintain their current numbers.

Increasing the size of the hole would end up being much more beneficial to good player then to bad ones.

Agreed. Not the point.

It is about attracting new people. Kids can kick a soccer ball into a goal at age 4. They can make a basket with a low hoop. They can hit a baseball off a tee. They can swim a lap in a pool.

How much practice would it take to for a kid to even make a bogey on a 440-yard par 4? How about an adult who starts at age 30?

If they started the game today, there is no way they would make the hole 4.25 inches. A bigger hole would make speed up play dramatically.

I don't think it will ever catch on though. "Golf" would rather slowly decline than make such a drastic change. So, golf participation will decline.

Does the "First-Tee" program of the PGA Tour even produce active golfers?

Most people don't even bother putting out anyways. I go out a lot as a single and like to always putt out and it never fails to amaze me how few other people do the same when I get paired up with a group. When you're taking gimmes from 4 feet you're really not slowing the game down by having a small hole. What I do wish people would do is realize that it really isn't that important to line up a 30 foot putt. Getting a good, but imperfect read should be pretty damn quick and since you're not gonna be making the putt too often even with a perfect read it really doesn't matter a lot since missing by 8" or 3'6" is the same to the person not putting out.

Yeah I don't take to much time lining up a 30 footer. Just general direction might take a little more time if it has a double break. Pretty sure I saw something where they had a robot hit the same putt from 20 or 30 feet on the exact line and it still missed way over half of them, so much randomness on a live grass surface.

Golf will just go back to where it was in the 80s. A niche sport. The crazed overbuilding because of Tiger Woods without the real demand there has led to the severe contraction. A lot of developers just thought they can build a golf course and people will come.

Country clubs will have to adapt. Just too expensive and time consuming for all but a select amount of people. 400 people can't support acres of land and scores of employees.

i pretty much agree.......

i almost never see a guy out with his GF or wife who is learning to golf.... it's all people who already golf and are quite good. seldom see a really bad player. maybe 70 year-old european immigrant types who just picked up the game.

i also think that mixed public/private is the future for all but the best courses........ basically get people $discount for playing alot and then they support the facilities/services. and then charge people $80+ for a casual round. good for everyone.

suggestions i'd have for many courses:

set up mini-golf or even better a putting course. maybe a putting course with a few very short "hitting" holes

people love contests and prizes....... have contests every single day and make it so many people are winners. many of the prizes can be stuff that like you used to get for winning on the carnival midway - like a pen. dollar stores have tons of neat stuff you can get 3 of them for $1. that sort of thing.

as per putting courses, i was at hyatt indian wells. they had little putting course. told my dad "this will be a joke. we'll get a 2 on every hole".... so after 10 strokes on 3 holes, i was shaking my head. "not that easy"

I see bad players all the time at the course 2 minutes from my house. Like really really bad who I doubt would break 130-140 playing by the rules. Won't touch the place on weekends do to pace of play. Hell I teed off a 2 pm last Friday and it was a 5 hour round. The course is easy though, (69.8/114) in the 6400 yard range from the tips.