Columnist Dean Juipe: Golfers pay more and play less

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, April 11, 2001 | 10:32 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

As a resort city that once was well behind the curve, Las Vegas can never have too many golf courses.

A mere 10 years ago there were only 15 courses in town and securing a tee time required a certain persistence and flexibility. There was nothing automatic about it.

Back then, if you wanted to play you fit in not so much at the time you requested, but at whatever inconvenient time might be available.

But today the number of local courses approaches 40 and, as a result, getting a tee time is at least a viable proposition.

Golfers are more or less appreciative, even if the greens fees here are typically high and sometimes exorbitant. At least the courses are there, if you have the money.

And they seem to be doing just fine, handling the steady flow of traffic their builders correctly foresaw.

At long last, supply seems to have matched demand.

But here's something curious, even with the sport experiencing an unprecedented boom that may be fueled in part by Tiger Woods and better-than-ever junior programs: There is a concern at the national level that golf-course construction has exceeded demand.

Maybe we in Nevada can't relate to this "problem" but statistically it's there. The National Golf Foundation reports that the number of rounds of golf played in the United States has remained constant over the past decade.

When you factor in the number of new courses that have been developed as well as the increasing popularity of the sport, the bottom line is that the typical golfer is playing less than he or she once did.

Playing less but paying more, as it turns out.

There are 17,000 courses open for business in the U.S. today, with 524 new courses having opened in the year 2000. And over the past six years, 2,800 new courses have opened, 87 percent of which are public.

The feeling by those who have studied the numbers is that high greens fees are negating these course additions to some extent, and that an economic downturn will only accentuate the lack of use some of the nation's courses are experiencing.

The average cost to build a new public course is about $3 million, with a high of $15 million. To retrieve that investment, course owners usually charge $10 in greens fees for every $1 million spent in designing and constructing the course.

Hence, with this formula a $10-million golf course would be within its rights to charge a $100 greens fee.

Las Vegas obviously has its share of $10-million courses, so the fees we're paying -- while certainly having an impact on our wallets -- are probably equitable with what is considered the acceptable going rate.

But we're also a city with money and with tourists willing to spend a buck, which makes us, in theory, better able to handle a stiff greens fee like $100. Not every city in America can say the same.

The reality is that while golfers were once squeezed out by a lack of courses, today they're more apt to be squeezed out by the high price of playing a round.

In that respect, Las Vegans can relate.