Adam Smith grew up in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, near the last 18 holes designed by Old Tom Morris and just a bit down the road from St Andrews. Not sure if he played golf but economists and Jeopardy fans know his name for originating the theory of supply, demand and competition that drives a free market. Applied to golf, it tells us that rates will continue to rise at privately owned golf courses as long as players continue to pay them – and you can take that to the bank. The increase in golf’s popularity that began in 2020 has made the game more expensive everywhere, even (and especially) in Scotland.
However, when it comes to municipal golf courses owned by cities, counties or recreation districts, it seems reasonable to hope that values higher than greed factor into the fees. So I turned to Scott Rethlake, the Colorado PGA’s reigning Executive of the Year and director of one of the biggest municipal golf districts in the nation, Denver Golf, to find out why green and cart fees seem to be rising 10 percent or more every year.
“What hasn’t been rising?” Scott said. “Everything we do has gotten more expensive. Labor's more expensive, fertilizer's more expensive. Equipment is insanely more expensive. Construction, if you're fixing concrete or improving something, has gotten extremely more expensive in the last three years.
“And I'm not talking going up 10%, 15%, 20%. It's tripled! An irrigation system that we could put in for $2 million five or six years ago is now $6 million. Everything's gone up, and we have to pass that all along because we have no other source of revenue or funding other than our green fees, cart fees, et cetera, because we're an enterprise fund.”
When he put it that way, I wondered, why hasn’t golf at the likes of the new City Park, historic Wellshire and Overland courses and fun, quirky Evergreen gotten way more expensive than the current dynamic range of $38-$67 per 18 holes?
“Because these are municipal run golf courses and we want to keep them reasonably priced,” he said. “Some people will say it's not reasonably priced, but when you look around compared to other golf courses in the area, we feel like we're kind of right in the middle, if not toward the lower part of the middle. Some say, well, why isn't golf free, it's city-owned property – ‘I can go to the park and I don't have to pay.’ You still pay for that park, you still pay for that rec center … in tax dollars. We don’t have tax dollar revenue coming in. We have to pay for everything we do.”
Public golf entities that do receive tax dollars generally keep rates lower for their taxpayers and jack them up for visitors and non-locals. There’s no justification for Denver to do that, so discounts are given to seniors and juniors, with some early-morning, late-day and pass discounts appealing to others on limited budgets. It’s the same for Aurora’s stable of courses.
Tax-funded public golf entities often are hamstrung by having to send a percentage of their income back to the municipality rather than putting it into maintenance and improvements. Denver Golf does not have to line other pockets and puts all income back into the courses. The $23 golf cart fee, for example, pays for the purchase of the cart, the care and maintenance of the cart and funding for its eventual replacement.
But Denver Golf also needs revenue to exceed operating expenses every year so there’s money left over for depreciation, capital repairs and capital maintenance. Front and center is a huge capital expense: replacement of the deteriorating, 70-year-old clubhouse at Kennedy. “That's what that money goes toward. It's not buying me a new Mercedes or a condo. It’s not going to the mayor. It stays in the fund and it goes back to either operating costs or capital improvements or maintenance.
“By playing the golf course, you're supporting the golf course and making the golf course better, because now we have funding to take care of it and improve it.”
From what Mr. McMulligan and I have seen of other parts of the U.S., we’re feeling pretty lucky here in Colorado to have the likes of municipal golf districts including Arvada, Grand Junction, Lakewood and South Suburban. As for the privately owned public courses, their days of twilight discounts and bulk passes are probably over, at least as long as Colorado has more golfers than tee-times.
Do you have a question about golf etiquette, golf relationships or the culture of golf in Colorado? Email it to Molly McMulligan, the CGA’s on-the-course advisor on how to have more fun on the golf course, and follow @MollyMcMulligan on Instagram. Her creator, researcher and writer is golf journalist and CGA member Susan Fornoff.