talking points Is the Golf Business Sustainable?

Some of you may know Golf Club Atlas, a web-based forum where just about anything and everything related to golf design is discussed and dissected by a bevy of architects, builders, writers, historians, and assorted hangers-on.

Mike Young, an Athens, Georgia-based designer, recently posted a piece at GCA called "Golf Is No Longer Sustainable as We Know It." This isn't a new topic for Young -- he's been issuing similar wake-up calls for years -- but it's one that resonates today, in light of the recession that's flattened the U.S. golf industry.

I've trimmed Young's post to sharpen his argument, and I've taken the liberty of editing his text a little. (Sorry, Mike. It's the magazine editor in me. I can't resist editing text.) To read Young's post in it entirety, and exactly as he wrote it, visit GolfClubAtlas.com. You might also want to check out Young's website, MYDgolf.com.

Here it is:

The golf industry that we know today has been a false industry since the mid-1980s. Much of this was due to the real estate development business, and many of our golf courses were developed with that in mind and no concern for how we would maintain these golf courses or even justify their existence in the future. . . . We continue to act as if this problem will go away, and we will go right on down our merry path. . . .

When it comes to golf course design and construction, that is an entirely wild wild west. We have thrown so much BS on the unknowing club committees and developers whereby they think the answer to all problems is to spend more money and to always be sure you spent more than a club down the street or the development down the street. But the truth of the matter is that neither the design business or the construction business is a sustainable model within golf itself and for itself. . . .

We can have all of the industry meetings to explain how things will turn in the future, but at some point we have to face the facts. There is no design and construction industry in the United States and will not be for a long time. That is not to say there will not be some work, but it will not be enough to sustain anywhere near the number of people in the business. And it is wrong to continue to act as though there will eventually be work to sustain these people.

Now there is nothing wrong with this, and it's probably a good thing. Think back to the days when so-called golf design was a fledgling business, and you will see that it was usually done by people who were somehow involved with golf on another basis day-to-day. And that's how it will be again. We have blown enough smoke and created enough false plateaus in the last 25 years to do us for the next 50 years.

I have never put a tee in a set of plans, taken a divot from a set of plans, or made a ball mark in a set of plans. The average old owner knows that. It was the committees and developers that wanted something else, and even they only wanted to pay for a huge marketing fee disguised as a design fee. That's all over. The new model is straight from Larry the Cable Guy: "Git ur done."

I am not saying any of this to be adversarial. There will always be exceptions -- private clubs that can afford these conditions and a few resorts -- but the sport of golf throughout the country cannot sustain what we have created, and we can either accept it and do something about it or continue down this path of thinking it'll right itself.

And it will, but it will be in the opposite direction.