Tom Doak, renowned golf architect was reminiscing in a podcast about an old rule that helped course owners understand how much a new golf course would have to charge, based on how much it costed to construct. While this is not gospel, if a golf investor wanted a desirable payback, the formula was “for every million dollars spent on project, that would be $10 of green fee”. A $3 million dollar project could probably get away with $30 green fees.
Fast forward to modern times… cheap uninteresting land near population would be $20,000 an acre. You need 150 to build a course. That’s $3 mil, you are already at $30 green fee and the bulldozers haven’t arrived. An 1800 square foot ranch house now costs $500,000, so a no frills clubhouse would have to cost $1.5, so you are at $45 green fee. You need to approve, permit, design, shape the holes, let’s call that $2 mil. You are at $65 green fee. You need a maintenance building, mowers, carts, irrigation, drainage, pumps, infrastructure, seed, equipment, grow in and all your basic start up costs, I have a feeling that’s around $3 mil conservatively. You are now at a $95 green fee.
And this is an example of a very simple golf course. As I have said in the past. You will never see a new course that costs less than $150 to play. It’s impossible. Our green fees are under $50. You should never be disappointed to play golf at RSPGL. It’s probably as good as it gets.
