In a hole? Hazards loom for golf
Is golf still on the fairway, or is it stuck in the rough? Kevin Norquay checks out the state of the game.
Agame of risk and reward, golf is all about correctly choosing whether caution or courage is the best option. Get it wrong, and a grassy or watery fate awaits.
Now, many New Zealand golf clubs are facing a similar riskand-reward dilemma, as they try to hit the right economic strategy in a rapidly changing leisure world.
With memberships slowly ebbing away, golf clubs are reduced to businesses that must adapt to modern realities, looking for a way to a smooth financial green, rather than a cash-eating bunker.
Get it wrong and rural communities in particular could find golf courses added to the list of things they once had but now go without – police stations, freezing works, dairy factories, post offices, and banks.
Around the cities, there is pressure to find new land for urban expansion – a housing versus golf tussle.
So far, New Zealand’s 390 golf clubs – the most per head of any country other than Scotland, which invented the frustrating, intriguing and addictive game – are holding firm.
Flags flutter and golfers flail from Houhora in the north as far as Ringa Ringa Heights on Stewart Island, to Te Puia Springs on the East Coast, and Whataroa on the West Coast.
There are world-renowned courses such as Cape Kidnappers and Tara Iti, costing hundreds of dollars to play, and there are country courses with a honesty box at the gate, with wire fences keeping sheep off the greens.
Early British and Irish settlers contributed to a populist golf culture that saw golf take hold in virtually in every small town. Dots on the map such as Middlemarch, Lawrence, Eltham, Te Teko, Glentunnel, Carterton, Awatere and Featherston have golf clubs. But that hold may be weakening – after 116 years of tee shots and putts, Featherston Golf Club is on the verge of closure. The south Wairarapa club considers it has too few members to make it financially viable. In July, members voted to close it, and sell the land. ‘‘There’s sadness and it has been a reluctant decision but people can see that it just can’t carry on,’’ club captain Charlie Fairbrother says.
While club closures are rare – none in six years – in the last decade golf memberships have fallen by 16 per cent. Manor Park, in the Hutt Valley, near Wellington, is also pondering its future, eyeing either a deal with Greater Wellington Regional Council, or a merger with nearby Royal Wellington Golf Club. A long-term member told Stuff falling membership was key to its woes. The future of a proud club where US Open winner Michael Campbell was once based could well be out of its own hands. One golf insider says two clubs out of every three are running ‘‘evenish’’, so ‘‘it doesn’t take much for disaster to hit’’. Featherston raised the prospect there may be too few paying golfers to sustain so many golf courses, with each cutting another’s financial throat. That is a proposition New Zealand Golf chief executive Dean Murphy rejects.
‘‘If you listened to economic forecasters 10 years ago, they would have told you half the golf clubs in New Zealand would have closed, but that’s just not the case obviously,’’ he says. ‘‘You have an incident like Featherston . . . and it brings it into focus. People start thinking about what’s going on and what’s the future, which are great conversations to have.’’ About half of the country’s 390 clubs have fewer than 200 members, with a high proportion of those in the older age brackets. Just 140 clubs have paid management; the other 250 use voluntary staff to cut costs.
Clubs are finding innovative ways to balance the books to keep their flags fluttering; cut costs, raise revenue, find a financial model that works. Subscriptions can vary from under $100 a year to several thousand, with income bolstered by green fees, sponsorship, cart rentals, corporate days, catering and the bar. Cutting subscriptions can have the effect of simply moving a money problem from one club to the next, rather than signing up newcomers to the game.
To keep clubs off the rocks, New Zealand Golf, the body all clubs are affiliated to, gives business advice. Management and education development frameworks are in place for managers. Featherston has given the organisation cause for added thought, says Murphy, whose job it is to promote golf club membership and participation.
As well, he is tasked with changing perceptions of the game, seen ‘‘as a sport for the middle to upper-class white male at the exclusion of all others’’, an 2012 Active NZ Survey found.
‘Core issues’
NZ Golf’s 2014-2018 Strategic Plan was rather more bleak. It found as ‘‘core issues’’:
■ The golfing market features a traditional membership base that is ageing and declining.
■ There is a growing casual golf population, but they are not engaged with the traditional club environment or its membership offerings.
■ Very low junior playing numbers, which offers few positive signs for the future.
■ A general slow pace of responsiveness to the changing societal preferences with regard to the membership and participation products on offer at clubs.
Murphy sees plenty of green grass on his side of the fairway, saying ‘‘there’s a lot of great stuff going on in golf’’; memberships are ‘‘holding firm’’, golf tourism is ‘‘substantially up’’.
Four new courses are being built in Queenstown, he says. As well, three quality courses have opened in the Auckland region in recent years, while driving ranges, virtual golf courses and mini golf remain popular.
One of those new courses, Windross Farm in Ardmore, came into being when Manukau Golf Club, alongside the southern motorway in Takanini, relocated after selling to developers, while another, Wainui, rose out of the sale of Peninsula, also to housing developers.
Royal Auckland and Grange in 2014 merged to form one club, while Aviation closed so Auckland Airport, which owned its land, could build a new road. Papakura Golf Club closed in 2011.
In Wellington, the popular Miramar Golf Club could see half its land gone in as little as three years due to Wellington Airport expansion.
NZ Golf has done a lot of work with golf clubs and golf facilities, to ensure their future, Murphy says. He objects to generalisations that if one golf club is battling, then all are trying to escape the same bunker.
‘‘There’s some parts of New Zealand where we’ve got an expanding number of facilities,
and the need for more; there’s other parts of New Zealand where there’s a little bit of oversupply, and there’s parts of New Zealand where we need different types of facilities – not more or less, but different types of them.’’
On the rural outskirts of what is touted as New Zealand’s largest suburb, Karori Golf Club in Wellington is one which has found a business model that works, president Jono Wake says.
Most of the managerial administration is done voluntarily by Wake and his committee, many of whom have corporate experience.
That has enabled Karori to prioritise its expenditure on course upkeep and development, without taking on major debt.
Karori turned its practice range into a 10-hole ‘‘pitch and putt’’ course and it is proving popular with learners and social groups. As well, its clubhouse intentionally ‘‘exudes an atmosphere of friendliness and camaraderie’’, Wake says.
But an insufficient membership base (325) to afford a resident pro, and a rural location with no public transport, even if only a few Ryan Fox tee shots from the capital, make it difficult to offer a junior programme.
‘‘Despite the popularity of the pitch and putt course, not many have so far migrated from there to 18-hole club membership,’’ Wake says.
In membership terms, Karori is smaller than the Wellington average (370), yet larger than the average New Zealand club (268).
Clubs in North Harbour and Auckland have the highest average memberships (almost 600 members per course), while Southland, Tasman-West Coast and Taranaki boast the fewest – in Southland clubs average just over 100 members.
Golf is not alone in facing changing times. Even rugby clubs – urban and rural – have had to close or merge with other clubs since the 1990s. No region has been immune.
There are many reasons – people now have to work weekends, drink-driving laws have eroded bar takings. The list is long.
NZ Golf has studied population projections and the like in a bid to predict what facilities might be needed, and where they might be needed based on population trends, and demographics, Murphy says.
‘‘What we find is that if you want to generalise – and it’s dangerous to – the smaller regions, more rural regions that have populations that are stagnant or declining, are the ones that usually suffer from oversupply in all sports, whether it’s rugby clubs, bowls clubs or golf clubs.’’
With Auckland’s population predicted to explode in the next two decades, and tee boxes there already crowded, it is seen as short of courses, and golf-related facilities, particularly for learners.
A mix of golfing facilities is ideal, so a learner can progress from chip-andputt, to a nine-hole course, then on to a quality golfing track. Some towns have three 18-hole courses nearby, without other options. That’s not ideal, Murphy says.
Another factor is traditional club membership may not always be well suited to modern life, where time and money are tight.
More and more golfers are craving flexibility, and prefer to pay round by round than sign on for a bulk subscription, when they might not get anywhere near a tee box for months on end.
Some golfers don’t want to be a member of a club, with the commitments that might entail – working bees, fundraisers, and monetary contributions.
‘‘A lot of clubs are doing very, very, well but a lot of others are finding the adjustment a bit stressful, and finding themselves under financial stress,’’ Murphy says.
Solid shape
World figures show New Zealand golf is in solid shape. Royal and Ancient (the world body) says from 2010-16 Oceania had 23 courses open, 85 close and five being built. New Zealand figures are stronger than that for openings, much weaker for closures, and stronger for construction. The United States has 14,794 golf courses, nearly half the world total. About 15 new full courses opened in 2017, but more than 200 closed. There are 7 per cent fewer courses in the US now than in 2006. In England, membership and participation have both climbed slightly.
Shorter version
Back home, Hutt Valley golf retailer Dave Thwaites senses golf participation moving to a shorter version of the game, away from 18-hole four-hour rambles through the rough. A director of The Golf Warehouse, he sells equipment and runs an automated driving range, minigolf and a nine-hole course. ‘‘We’re seeing more and more people at the driving range and mini-golf course, while rounds played on the nine-hole course are more static,’’ Thwaites says. People like hitting balls at the range, getting instant automated feedback on how far it flew. ‘‘Golf’s a fun activity that people like to share with family and friends and we’re certainly seeing a more diverse range of people coming in.’’
What New Zealand golf needs, Thwaites says, is another hero. Another Michael Campbell, or Tiger Woods to win a major.
‘‘The boom was in 2005 when Michael Campbell won the US Open. Our nine-hole golf course has never seen numbers like that before, or since.’’
But even Campbell taming Tiger in 2005 translated only into victory parades and balls bashed at driving ranges, not club memberships.
So back to Murphy, who says clubs need to adapt. ‘‘Some places suit a more casual model, in others membership will be around for a long time,’’ he says.
‘‘What would be fair to say is that we are going through an adjustment of how people participate, how they want to pay for it, how often they want to play, where they want to play, the kind of flexibility they are looking for, so many different venues are coming up with new ways of operating, in some ways that’s very different to what they’ve done before.’’