In a hole? Hazards
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,