I find it rather interesting how many hits each day I get to my site from people searching for information on private country club’s survival.  I guess some of my SEO is working.

Looking at my analytics I find search term phrases like:

• best way to attract new members to private club
• average age of country club member
• what do private club membership dues pay for
• how much do private club manager get paid
• how to motive younger golfers to join private country club
• problems causing private country clubs to falter
• how to keep my country club from going under
• what causes country club’s budgets to be so high

…just to list a few of the more detailed and frequently asked search terms I get coming to my site

Must Be A Problem Out There

I can take it from the frequency of these searches to my site there are a few, if not a lot, of private club management personnel out searching for answers to their problems.  I applaud their efforts of reaching out for outsiders helps.  That is the first step towards finding the right solutions.  I can only hope they are finding the help they need.

I know there are many country clubs out there who are in worst shape financially than they want to public to know so looking for solutions online instead of going to the big box consulting firms probably keeps the problems they have in stealth mode.  I hope they find their answer quickly.

A collapse of any number  of private country club is a serious problem for Golf since even in this stressed economy most golf is still played at private golf clubs.  Even if a small portion of these facilities are forced into playing out their worst case scenarios and fold up, it would effect a large number of golfers…mostly business golfers. This is very concerning.

Private country club closings would cause a cascading effect across the entire golf economy spectrum forcing many to decide not to play golf for a number of reasons caused by there being fewer places to play.

So, what do country clubs have to do to keep a float during this recession? What do members of private golf clubs have to do to keep their membership affordable?  and most importantly, what does GOLF need to do to help?  All of these questions are what is promoting people to come online searching for answers.

Will More Members Joining the Club Do the Trick?

You would think that to keep things going at a private country club opening the door to more members would help.  In most cases it does.  However, in a growing number of cases adding more members puts a greater stress on aging facility’s infrastructure.  The more usage causes more fundamental problems like plumbing, electrical and structural issue forcing portions of the facility to close or be off limits.  Add more members to a club’s roster to generate more revenue could result in that additional revenue being spent on temporary repairs resulting in no gain financially.  The NET result in this case of developing a larger membership would not improve matters.

It is truly a Catch 22 for many country clubs when it comes to conventional methods of increasing revenue.  To break the vicious cycle of adding new member to cover for the old members leaving some clubs will have to take very drastic measures towards complete reconstruction of facilities in order to implement the conventional methods of revenue expansion.  Of course, this will require a huge amount of funding which is more than likely the challenge most country clubs refuse to take.  However, it probably is the only solution that will permanently work.

Tough Decisions

Innovation of country club’s management and ownership thinking towards their future will be required.  Many country clubs are going to have face hard facts that they are going to have to bite a huge bullet financially to survive.  If not, then the challenge will continue on how long can they survive.  Patches and temporary expedients waste time and money that could be spent on permanent solutions that would be good for the club, good for the economy and very good for Golf.