It may only be a game to some people, but golf has a benefit to any area where a course is located: economic punch.
Tom King, the golf pro at the Carbon Country Club and Kris Abegglen of the Millsite Golf Course made their point when they spoke to the Business Expansion and Retention members recently.
“The benefits to the surrounding area include direct golf sales, food and beverage sales and some retail as well,” King told the group. “About 40,000 rounds of golf are played on the Carbon course each year.”
King said that while local players make up the bulk of the players there are a lot of “travelers” who play golf all over the country and even internationally that visit each year.
“We know how many locals we have play and we also know how many from out-of-the-area come here, because we keep track of their zip codes,” he said.
The out-of-town players spend an average of $100 in the area per day that they are here to play golf. That includes food and lodging in the local community.
“The tournaments are what bring a lot of players from the outside to our area,” he said.
Black Diamond impact
He concentrated his presentation on the one that he thinks has the most impact, the Black Diamond Tournament.
“That is a three day tournament and 51 percent of the amateurs are from out of town and 100 percent of the pros that play in it are,” he told the group. “There are a lot of multiple night stays, fuel purchases and lodging nights associated with that tournament.”
The golf course uses room blocks for those who want to stay and they also use a national tracking system that is 99 percent accurate for measuring golf’s impact.
A golf course can be a Mecca that draws people to it. King said that the key is not only that the course has a unique setting but it is also about the personal touch of the operators.
“A course speaks for itself,” he said. “We have to concentrate on customer service, making people feel welcome and making sure the course is in good shape for play.”
Course conditions are important because word travels fast in golf circles. King said that a course needs to have green grass, a low rough and smooth and consistent greens to keep golfers happy and coming back.
He also said a larger purse will not only draw more players but it will also promote more practice rounds.
King said that the course is also important to business in a different way.
“When businesses are looking to relocate to an area one of the things they look at is if there is a good golf course located nearby,” he said. “This is not only because many businesses do a lot of business on a course, but also for their employees and their families to have opportunities for recreation.”
However, many golf courses are closing in the state and nation. One of the things that happened up until the great recession was that courses were overbuilt and many were connected to real estate developments that either went bust or that were built to attract buyers. Once the development was finished, in some cases the developers lost interest in maintaining the courses.
Abegglen was the golf pro at the Carbon course when the nine holes were added to it in the 1990s. He said that the overbuilding and saturation is a problem in some areas and across the nation last year 219 courses closed while only 14 new ones were built.
He then went on to talk about the Millsite Course which has a lot of narrow fairways and which he says is a “target course.”
“We attract a lot of people who want to play because of the unique scenery there,” he said of the course that is set against the pale yellow and tan cliffs of the area near the Millsite State Reservoir. “We are working on more ways to make it more for tournament play.”
He said one of the major hurdles for the Millsite Course is that the support services in the area are not as numerous as they are in the Price area. There are less places to eat and less places to stay nearby. Abegglen said that players who golf there have three main questions when they come to the course.
“They ask ‘Where do we eat? Where do we stay? What can my wife do while we are here,’” he said.
“The fact is that we are in competition with many other communities right now,” he said. “You really have to listen to your customers and act on what they are saying.”
He said that the county and management is working on a plan to make the course better as well as a plan to get it to break even in five to seven years, since it has lost money almost every year since 2008.
“We have to bridge the gap by accounting for capital costs and putting reinvestment money away,” he said.
The two also discussed the possibility of some kind of traveling tournament between not only the Carbon and Millsite Course but also by including the Green River Golf Course in the mix as well. That could generate a unique experience for golfers that might be appealing.