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Ryan Moore has always done things his way.

Consider his quirky full swing, a mash-up of Jim Furyk’s and Fred Couples’. It became familiar to golf fans back in 2004 when Moore became the fourth player to win the NCAA Individual Championship and the U.S. Amateur in the same year, following Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. Also in ’04, he won the U.S. Amateur Public Links for the second time, as well as the prestigious Western Amateur and the Sahalee Players Championship, underlining perhaps the greatest season for an amateur since Bobby Jones’ 1930 Grand Slam.

Five PGA Tour wins and $33 million in earnings since turning professional in 2005 have established Moore, now 40 and a resident of Las Vegas, as a pro’s pro. But what marks him as distinct these days is no longer his swing or his ability to make cuts, cash checks and keep his card. It’s his side hustle.

He runs a golf shoe company.

For some Americans, a side hustle is a necessity. For others, it’s a hobby, something to scratch the entrepreneurial itch, to keep in touch with a hardscrabble upbringing, to be creative, to meet people, what have you. Mini-tour golfers generally fall in the former category, top-tier pros like Moore in the latter.

Tour pros have a long history of side hustles. In the early days, when prize money was rarely sufficient to live on, the Tour itself was essentially a side hustle — many players had day jobs or seasonal gigs as head professionals or insurance salesmen. That changed with the advent of the modern PGA Tour, thanks largely to Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.

The King and the Golden Bear (along with the agent they shared for a time, Mark McCormack of IMG, before Nicklaus ventured out on his own) also pioneered the role of golfer-businessman. Golf clubs, golf courses, iced tea and lemonade — their names were on lots of stuff and still are today. Their impact remains strong, too, as players famous and semi-famous swim in their wake.

These side hustles likewise fall broadly into two buckets: endorsements and entrepreneurial endeavors. Putting one’s name on a bottle of wine is one thing; owning vineyards, working with a vintner to pick the grape varietals, setting up employee health-care plans and so on is quite another. Given the demands on their time, it’s no surprise that many Tour pros lean heavily on endorsements — but not all.

Lifestyle

The business portfolio of Bubba Watson, for example, is as varied as his shotmaking arsenal. It includes a candy shop (Bubba’s Sweet Spot), a car dealership (Sandy & Bubba’s Milton Chevrolet), part ownership of a double-A minor league baseball club (the Pensacola Blue Wahoos), an apartment complex and a driving range — all set in and around his home base in the Florida Panhandle.

Two of golf’s biggest names, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, bring an altruistic element to at least some of their business ventures, as their investments in what some call “the alt-golf space” show. This includes their partnering on the forthcoming TGL Golf League, where teams will play virtual golf in front of live crowds, and their dueling high-end mini golf/entertainment/dining concepts: Popstroke and Puttery.

“Regarding TGL, it’s just another way for people to consume golf — a little more dynamic, very much technology-infused, trying to appeal to that younger demographic that doesn’t have five hours to watch a round of golf,” McIlroy says. “What we’re trying to do with Puttery, what Tiger’s trying to do with Popstroke as well, it’s all about trying to give people a less intimidating introduction to golf.

“At the end of the day that’s what we’re trying to do, to get more people into the game of golf,” he says. “It’s great to have Puttery make business sense, but if it gets more people to play golf that’s the end goal.”

Ryan Moore is scratching a different itch. In 2009, Ryan and his younger brother, Jason, helped cofound TRUE, a golf footwear company emphasizing walking players and modern designs, in their native Tacoma, Wash. (They secured full ownership in 2017.) Jason was always the business-minded one. Take, for example, the driving range that their father owned back when they were boys.

“I would spend most of my day out on the range pounding balls,” Ryan recalls, “and my little brother would set up a stand in front of the range where he sold refurbished golf balls.”

Lifestyle

Jason and Ryan have always been more ham-and-egg than Cain and Abel; the younger brother eventually became caddie to the older brother on Tour and never had to worry about getting his fair share for the week. And when Jason decided it was time to pursue his TRUE calling, Ryan was right there with him, at least to the extent possible as a full- time player.

“As of right now, I don’t have any daily responsibilities with the business,” says Ryan. “I have a few phone calls per week to go over new product and business development ideas. I sit on our board and enjoy our quarterly meetings where we review progress and go over next steps and strategy. I like to think I’m a good sounding board for the company.”

In golf terms, the business has been driving long and straight recently. An $11.25 million capital infusion from private equity firm KarpReilly in 2021 helped expand TRUE’s reach and product line. Bottoms, including pants and joggers, were launched last year; outerwear and polos debuted this year, with apparel expected soon to comprise 20 percent of sales if the strong early reception continues.

While Ryan underscores that president and CEO Jason is the one calling the shots — “My brother is the real driving force; he’s the reason TRUE has become the great brand that it is” — Ryan’s attitude toward golf and business clearly underpins the TRUE spirit. Talking about the brand, he could easily be talking about his unique swing.

“I’m never satisfied to just do what has always been done,” says Ryan. “I like to ask why and think through if it could possibly be better another way. Not being afraid to try new things and to keep exploring and learning overlaps nicely between golf and business.”

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Back in late April, a week after last year’s taxes were due to Uncle Sam, Talor Gooch won a LIV Golf event in Adelaide, Australia. His post-victory comments on a golf podcast made as much news as the victory itself.

“I am by no means complaining,” Gooch said, merely noting that “it sucked that 47 and a half percent” of his $4 million top prize was withheld for Australian taxes, so “once you cut it all up, let’s just say that it’s a lot less than four.” It was, the Midwest City, Okla., native said, “a little bit disheartening.”

Whether one saw this as the second coming of Marie Antoinette’s infamous “Let them eat cake” or an all-too-relatable lament of workers everywhere, it brought to the fore a question every golf fan has had watching an oversize check being hoisted aloft: How much does the winner actually take home? Trophies and record books are great, but what’s the bottom line?

Gooch will have known from his prior stint on the PGA Tour, where he won the 2021 RSM Classic, that taxes aren’t just the price we pay for a civilized society (per Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr.). They’re par for the course on any circuit for winners and for the vanquished (except for the missed-cutters who make bubkes for the week… something Gooch needn’t worry about anymore on the no-cut LIV — nor competitors in eight designated no-cut, limited-field, “elevated” PGA Tour events, too, starting in 2024).

But, when it comes to taxes, what is par for the course?

Well, mate, each foreign country has its own rules; there can be foreign withholding in Mexico (7 percent), Canada (15 percent), and the UK (18 to 20 percent) too. If the tournament is on American soil, it likewise depends on where the win occurs.

Lifestyle

“California is the toughest,” says one veteran golf agent who requested anonymity. “It withholds 7 percent of the check right off the bat.”

Other places that typically withhold include Louisiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina and South Carolina, and Ohio’s Dublin/Columbus withholds city taxes for The Memorial tournament. While other states, such as Hawaii, Florida, Arizona, New York and Texas, don’t withhold, that doesn’t mean there is no tax filing requirement later.

Regardless of the host setting, the PGA Tour notes, it is “required to adhere to all local, state, federal and foreign laws and regulations set forth by government agencies and their related tax authorities when income is paid to professionals. PGA Tour withholds taxes and reports on all income, where required by law.”

Golfers and their accountants and advisers know full well that they, too, must mark down the right numbers on the scorecard. Joe Pros wishing to decrease their tax burden do have an option that should also be familiar to Joe Blows, namely, put some of that pretax income into a retirement plan. According to the PGA Tour, its members, as well as those on PGA Tour Champions and the Korn Ferry Tour, have the option to participate in an elective retirement plan in which they can defer prize money into a retirement account, with deferrals limited by annual IRS limits.

“We recommend 100 percent of our clients max out that elective plan,” says Joe McLean, senior managing director for MAI Capital Management, which counts three-time PGA Tour winner Cameron Champ among its clients. “That’s ‘old person money,’ but it’s important to do that as early as you possibly can to use the time value of money. Check the box, make sure you’re paying yourself first and save on taxes too.”

As such, McLean’s firm always immediately puts sufficient prize money into a tax savings account to earn interest on it until those taxes are due.

“There’s very little guaranteed money in golf, and the income will spike up and down quite substantially,” he says. “If you don’t stay hyper-organized in terms of the money going in and out of your life, you can find yourself not having saved enough money to pay your taxes.”

The PGA Tour also sponsors nonelective retirement plans — the FedExCup Bonus Plan, Cuts Plan ($4,500 for each of the first 15 cuts made in a season, twice that for each additional cut) and PGA Tour Champions Plan. Contributions to these are in addition to any prize money earned and made after the season concludes. Speaking of which, win the FedExCup’s $18 million top prize in 2023 and $17 million is in cash and $1 million goes to the player’s FECBP (see chart above).

Withholdings notwithstanding, our tournament champion is still looking at a healthy lump sum. While there’s something appealingly primal about those big poker tournaments where organizers dump the millions at stake onto the table before the last two competitors play Heads-up, professional golf is a more buttoned-up affair. The Tour pays its players via several common payment types, including direct deposit, wire transfer and check, underscoring that it “makes every effort to minimize paper waste and encourages electronic payment to all professionals.” (Waste management: It’s not just for the Phoenix Open.)

To those pros, cleanliness is no doubt a distant runner-up to timeliness when it comes to getting their dough. The PGA Tour pays professionals for all income — official, unofficial or secondary event money — net of any withholdings as required by law and retirement contributions if elected “as soon as commercially feasible.” Typically, that’s by close of business the Tuesday after a Sunday finish.

“Look in your account on Wednesday and it’s there, like clockwork, just like your GOLF magazine paycheck,” says the agent, kind enough not to add, “only with more zeros.”

Taxes and retirement plans are far from the only takeaways from the take-home side of the winner’s ledger. For a win, it’s industry standard for 10 percent of the top prize to go to the bagman. That’s above and beyond the caddie’s weekly base fee, which ranges from $1,000 to $2,500 or so, and a step up from the 8 percent bonus for a top-10 finish and 6 percent on everything else in the money.

Nor does victory mean a week off from the player’s normal expenses, just a greater ability to pay them. To invert the old saying, failure may be an orphan, but success has a thousand fathers (John F. Kennedy, post–Bay of Pigs fiasco, via the historian Tacitus). Swing, short-game, mental and data coaches still need to be paid. And they might not only expect a little something extra, you know, for the successful effort, but be contractually obligated in that regard — many now work on a performance-based percentage rather than a weekly retainer. Then there are physical trainers, massage therapists, personal chefs and such to keep a player healthy.

“Professional service fees might be as much as 8 to 13 percent of a player’s earnings in a normal week,” notes McLean. (He sometimes recommends supplemental disability insurance beyond the Tour’s $10,000 a month plan, because an injured player’s bills keep coming regardless.) Not all Tour players have all these workers in their retinue, but most have at least some, sometimes, and they can each run $2,000 to $5,000 a week.

So, in sum: To the winner go the spoils (William L. Marcy, U.S. politician) …  and, yes, the taxes and other bills too. Still, don’t be disheartened, champ. It’s safe to say that going the deepest into red numbers for the week on the course leaves your bank account well into the black.

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The post How much does it cost to maintain a golf course? Here are the numbers appeared first on Golf.

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If you’re like many golfers, you don’t bother tracking every cent you spend on this beguiling game. Green fees? Maybe. But what about travel, clubs, accessories, lessons, wagers, hot dogs at the turn? The best you could probably give us is a guesstimate.

Superintendents don’t have that luxury.

On top of daily duties like mowing greens and cutting holes, supers also draw up detailed maintenance budgets that cover everything from machinery and staffing to fertilizer, fuel and fungicides.

So, what does it cost to keep up a course?

Lifestyle

The answer varies with a range of factors, such as climate, competition and type of club.

But every super knows his or her number.

With help from Terry Buchen, a longtime superintendent-turned-industry consultant, and data from the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, here’s a birdie’s-eye view of the averages annual expenses for 18-hole courses in the United States.

Total Maintenance Costs by Course Type

Municipal: $621,190
Semi-Private: $567,346
Private: $1,083,647
Daily Fee: $556,613
Overall Average: $810,254

Labor Expenses by Course Type

Municipal: $349,839
Semi-Private: $312,476
Private: $630,104
Daily Fee: $294,456
Overall Average: $463,163

Fun Fact: According to Buchen, public-access courses typically have 12 to 18 maintenance employees, which includes seasonal employees where applicable. At private clubs, the typical range is 18 to 25 maintenance staffers.

Largest Expense Categories

Labor: 56.74%
Fertilizer: 5.05%
Equipment Lease Expense: 5.01%
Repair Maintenance/Equipment: 4.56%
Fungicides: 4.28%
Fuel and Lubricants: 2.65%

What about water?

Water is a significant maintenance cost as well, but not all courses have to pay for it, relying instead on sources such as wells, ponds, creeks and rivers. According to a GCSAA survey, 26 percent of courses buy water, at a 13 percent cost of their maintenance budget. Not surprisingly, water costs vary widely by region. The average national outlay is $107,000 annually, with the most expensive region being the Southwest, where courses spend an average of $238,000 a year.

How much does equipment cost?

Equipment costs are often based on engine horsepower. The larger the engine, the more expensive the machine. Rough mowers, for instance, are expected to fetch about $100,000 in 2023, with fairway mowers coming in at around $80,000; triplex mowers at $50,000; and walk-mowers at $20,000. An exception to the horsepower rule is sprayers, which, depending on the size of the tank and the built-in technology, can cost about the same as a rough mower.

Lifestyle

To buy or to lease?

When it comes to maintenance equipment, that is the question. Buchen says the answer typically depends on whether that equipment is used every day, or every now and then. Every-day machines, such as mowers, sprayers, and riding-bunker rakes, are typically leased for 3 to 5 years, and then replaced when that expires. Equipment that is not used every day — think aerifiers, vacuums, over-seeders, dump trucks and such — is typically purchased. A course starting from scratch needs a lot of equipment. Buchen says that a new private club typically spends $2 million-plus to get itself fully equipped.

Sweating the small stuff

Course accessories, like flags, tee markers and ball washers, don’t qualify as a major expense. But every little bit adds up. On average, courses spend roughly $4,000 a year on these items.

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If you’re like many golfers, you’ll be spending this off-season trying to improve by stretching, strengthening, dialing in equipment and tweaking your swing and putting stroke.

More power to you. Lower scores are always welcome.

But saving strokes next year doesn’t have to be your sole ambition. As we roll toward 2023, you might also be looking to save some golf dollars.

Here are nine ways to trim your golf expenses without cutting back on how often you play.

1. Join a club or association


Many courses have men’s, women’s and mixed-gender clubs that cost little to join. They’re a great pathway to friendships (and friendly competitions). In many cases, they also come with savings in the form of discounted tee times and other deals.

Lifestyle

2. Unearth golf balls

Cracking open a sleeve of shiny new balls is one of the great joys in golf, so we’d certainly never try to dissuade you from investing in new orbs. (In fact, here are 8 great options to choose from.) But digging them out of the dirt can be fun, too. According to one study, more than 300 million golf balls are lost or discarded in this country every year. Someone should find them. It might as well be you. You can carry out spot searches as you play (so long as you aren’t holding up the course). Or, if you really want to get ambitious, you could follow the lead of one of our staffers and go nighttime ball-hunting with the help of a UV flashlight.

3. Walk don’t ride

Taking a cart doesn’t always cost extra. But at many courses, it comes with a fee. Thinking of it this way: hoofing it not only brings financial savings but it also delivers payoffs for your physical health.

4. Embrace twilight golf

Photographers call it the “golden hour,” when the sun’s low-slanting rays cast the course in gorgeous light. What makes late day even more beautiful is that it’s also a cheaper time to play.

5. Look beyond your bucket list

Bandon. Ballybunion. Pinehurst. Pebble. No one in their right mind would dissuade you from visiting those dreamy destinations. But the world is also brimming with sleeper courses for the budget-minded. You’ll find a lengthy roster of them on our ranking of America’s Best Munis, as well as on our list of Top 100 Value Courses in the U.S., which features top-shelf designs you can play for $150 or less.

6. Act on your bucket list…from home!

Virtually everyone wants to play the world’s best courses. Now, everyone can play them virtually. You can join the fun on GOLF+, a stunningly realistic virtual reality platform that — starting at $29.99 — allows you to take on scores of storied tracks from the comfort of your living room, including Pinehurst No. 2, the Ocean Course at Kiawah and Valhalla. Just strap on your Oculus headset (sold separately), and you’re standing on the tee, with a course of your dreams unfolding before you. You can play as a single. Enter competitions. Track your stats. Even hang at Topgolf. If only real-life were always this fun.

Fitness

7. Cut the cord

That’s not a swing tip. We mean your cable cord. If you get cranky every time you see your cable bill, consider: You can transition to streaming services and not miss any golf action. Hulu+Live TV, YouTubeTV and fuboTV count among the services that live-stream PGA Tour events (subscription fees are roughly $70 a year). You can also catch select events on such services as ESPN+, Paramount+ and NBC’s Peacock. And don’t even get us started on Masters.com, which offers comprehensive coverage of the year’s first major for anyone with an internet connection. LIV fans, you’re in luck, too. The tour streams its events for free on YouTube.

8. Find a discounted tee time

We get it. Not all courses are in love with third-party tee-time services. But as consumers, we can’t ignore the fact the many of the off-peak discounts they dangle are nearly always lower than rack rate.

9. Take a chance on an NFT

Given the volatility of the crypto market, you might think NFT now stands for “No Freakin’ Thanks.” But it still refers to “non-fungible token,” a uniquely verifiable digital image that can be bought and sold online. Just this fall, the PGA Tour partnered with Autograph, a Web 3.0 company co-founded by Tom Brady, to create a platform of digital collectibles inspired by all things Tour-related: top players, competitions, stats, and more. We can’t guarantee a windfall. But invest wisely, and you never know. This is golf, after all. Risk, reward!

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The Club at ArrowCreek, a private facility in Reno, Nev., is thriving, but that wasn’t always the case.

The club, which has two courses — the Challenge Course (designed by Fuzzy Zoeller with John Harbottle) and the Legend Course (designed by Arnold Palmer) — has endured its share of financial troubles, filing for Chapter 11 on one occasion, and being roughly a month from insolvency on another. In 2014, a group of about 50 local investors took over the club, but they didn’t fare much better.

Finally, in 2018, Ray Conrad and his wife, Jeanne, members themselves since 2014, bought the property.

Conrad, who for more than two decades ran the nation’s second-largest employment background check company, quickly put his business acumen to work, and things have been heading in the right direction ever since.

“Prior to us doing that, you didn’t want to take another couple there for dinner, because you never knew how it was going to be,” Conrad said. “Now, it’s a place I can walk in and be very proud of.”

Turning around a struggling golf club is never easy work and no two turnarounds are the same, but ArrowCreek’s revival offers a lens into the investment and commitment that is required.

“The philosophy from our owners,” said Jim Cleary, the general manager, “was to elevate the member experience to be best in class in the Reno market but not just on the golf side.”

The club, which is in a community of more than 1,000 homes, recently completed a $60-million expansion/upgrade encompassing the two courses, the clubhouse and a host of amenities.

Among the new attractions: a fitness center, pool, additional dining outlets, a game room for kids and a 40,000-square-foot meeting area. In a couple of weeks, construction will be finished on indoor pickleball facilities — four climate-controlled, indoor courts.

As for the golf courses themselves, the Conrads have invested roughly $5 million that included replacing thousands of sprinkler heads, and purchasing new fairway mowers and other maintenance equipment.

Plans are also in the works, Cleary said, to hire a course designer to do a complete assessment and reimagining of the layouts.

Improving its golf offerings is one of ArrowCreek’s primary goals. With the guidance of the Troon company, which helps maintain the facility, Conrad is bullish that the courses soon will be nationally recognized.

“They are evaluating the courses right now,” Conrad said of Troon. “They’re going to work on the greens and the fairways.”

Conrad was one of the investors in 2014 who hoped to help the club rebound from its initial difficulties.

“This place was in shambles,” he recalled. “Nothing worked. Nothing was being repaired.”

There was talk, he said, of closing one of the courses to lower expenses.

Conrad soon realized that the money the local investors had put in — about $5 million — wasn’t going to be nearly enough, and that golf alone wasn’t going to keep the place running.

The only way Conrad could see the club surviving, he said, was to add a banquet room for weddings and other events, and improve the restaurants to generate additional income. The club recruited chefs from Washington, D.C., Orlando and California.

“Probably nothing else in Reno compares to it,” Conrad said.

Another of Conrad’s priorities: ensuring that every one of the investors got their money back.

“My purpose in doing that,” he said, “is that I knew I would turn it around — I had turned around businesses all my life — and I didn’t want people saying that I stole the place.”

At one point, the club was down to 300 members. Today, it has more than 800. The tee sheets have filled up, and so have the club’s coffers.

“We are at the point where it’s about breaking even,” Conrad said, “and as we continue to grow the membership, we will be in the black.”

In the black, and back on track.

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With the U.S. Junior Amateur underway this week at Bandon Dunes, a question arises that often comes to mind when elite young players meet in high-profile competitions: how did these dang kids get so good, so fast?

Talent? Training? Determination? Yep. For sure. No doubt about it. No one gets too far without them. But let’s not forget another factor. Golf is an investment. Raising a top junior golfer usually requires money.

How much, exactly? The answer ranges widely, depending on the types of tournaments you enter (staying local, of course, lowers travel costs) and the intensity of the schedule you keep, among other variables. But in the interest of roughing out a budget, we asked the father of a top junior player (he asked to remain anonymous) to give us a ballpark of the expenses.

Instruction

You can bring them into the world, and you can bring them into golf. But if they’re going to get serious about the game, there’s only so much mom or dad can teach. At some point, an ambitious junior will need an instructor. Most top-level junior teachers charge anywhere from $150 to $800 a lesson. “We usually get instruction twice a month,” the parent told us. “Sometimes more leading up to bigger tournaments.”

Annual estimate: $10,000

Equipment

Irons

Kids improve quickly. They also grow out of their clubs, which can get expensive, fast. Over the past year alone, the father told us, his son has gone through three sets of shafts to keep up with his growth and increased swing speed. The early teen years can be especially expensive for this reason. As the growth spurts slow, the costs go down, the father said. It also helps that a lot of top-level juniors get support from the major equipment makers. But a lot of good young players don’t have that kind of backing. US Kids makes clubs for kids 6-11 that run about $400. “But once they get older, you’ll want to get them fitted for a driver, fairway woods and irons,” the father said.

Cost of a full bag: $3,000, plus another few hundred dollars for custom fitting.

Accessories and Apparel

Balls, gloves, shirts, spikes. Without support from a manufacturer, these costs can get sneaky high. A rough annual breakdown looks like this:

Balls: $500
Gloves: $300-$400
Apparel: $1,000

Total: $1,800-$1,900

Training Aides

The sky’s the limit. But it doesn’t have to be. The father said his son gets by with little more than an Orange Whip to loosen up ($100). “But some kids have their own TrackMan,” he said, which will run you upwards of $20,000. Elaborate in-home simulators can fetch three times that much.

Cost: $100-$60,000

Travel

This depends on where you live and how often your kid competes. Over the past year, the father told us, the junior circuit has taken their family on eight trips outside the New York/New Jersey area, where they live. To minimize costs, they book rooms in extended-stay hotels with kitchenettes, so they can eat breakfast in the room and pack meals for the course. But there’s no such thing as an entirely free lunch. On average, the father said, the trips cost about $3,000.

Annual cost: $20,000, if your junior plays an aggressive schedule.

Tournament Entree Fees

You’ve gotta pay to play. Entry fees for multi-day tournaments range from $200-$500.

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Proximity usually ranks high atop a golfer’s considerations when looking for a club to join. The best layout, purest greens and swankest amenities won’t overcome a schlep. One exception: overseas memberships.

Many UK and Irish golf clubs, from the well-regarded to the world-renowned, offer some version of this category. The appeal for the club is obvious: It supplements the bottom line. What’s more, Americans add welcome diversity. For once, we’re exotic!

For Yanks, overseas memberships have several draws, including a reasonable price tag. “Let’s just say the membership structure is entirely different than the United States,” says one such fortunate American, who requested anonymity.

Travel

While our elite private clubs might run six figures for initiation fees and five figures for annual dues, overseas memberships can be as little as a few hundred quid to join and just into the thousands in annual dues, or vice versa. That’s not nothing, and often the more prestigious the club, the pricier it is. Still, it’s hardly prohibitive for golfers with the means to make occasional use of these memberships.

Scotland’s superb Cruden Bay, which is No. 20 on our list of the Top 100 Courses in the UK and Ireland, is just $500 to join and $500 more per year.

A little more steeply, Brora GC (No. 63) asks $12,500 up front and an annual fee of $400. A handful of clubs offer lifetime overseas memberships for a onetime fee. Among them is Ireland’s Carne Golf Links (No. 66) for the bargain price of $3,800. (All quotes are approximate.)

Unsurprisingly, several of the well-traveled folks comprising GOLF’s Course Rater Panel possess overseas memberships. Their experiences make clear that affordable ego gratification is the least of it. Luke Reese, a member of Chicago’s The Glen View Club, joined Ireland’s esteemed Portmarnock GC in 2000. Through his golf apparel business, he’d made friends with a member, who introduced him to other members. They became annual golf-trip buddies—and then Reese’s fellow members.

“I didn’t do a cost-benefit analysis,” he says. “I viewed Portmarnock as a wonderful place to play golf with people I love to play golf with. I thought, That’s the kind of course I want to join.”

Travel

That Portmarnock is 15 minutes from Dublin Airport didn’t hurt. After joining — “ a legitimate club process, not a simple sign-up thing” — Reese began to take the red-eye over three or so times annually, hail a taxi to the club, play 18 holes, shower, then “have a phenomenal lunch and get back on a plane” to continental Europe for business.

He found the overseas membership arrangement so satisfying that he soon joined Royal Dornoch and, a few years ago, Sunningdale. The match-play ethos across the UK and Ireland inspired Reese to write a book about it: One for the Memory Banks.

Course rater Jack Bonner, an overseas member at Scotland’s neighboring Gullane, Luffness and Muirfield, feels similarly, often timing his visits with club competitions.

“Whether they’re dinner matches or club matches, you just learn how to compete in them,” says Bonner, who, in turn, has organized many international matches at his home club, The Dunes Golf & Beach Club in Myrtle Beach, S.C. First and foremost, though, is the fellowship.

“The camaraderie you get at all three places is phenomenal,” he says. “These are 40-year friendships I’ve made. You’re welcomed with open arms.”

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The post Money Game: Why golf-course insurance is serious (and essential) business   appeared first on Golf.

The post Money Game: Why golf-course insurance is serious (and essential) business   appeared first on Golf.

No golf course is safe from Mother Nature or human negligence.

Take what happened in February at Oakland Hills Country Club, just outside Detroit.

Oakland Hills, the site of more than a dozen major championships — Ben Hogan famously referred to it as “the monster” when he won the 1951 U.S. Open there — was engulfed in a fire that resulted in more than $80 million of damage to its historic clubhouse. The cause has still not been fully determined.

Needless to say, Oakland Hills, or any course, can’t truly replace what is lost in a tragedy of such magnitude. But obtaining the proper insurance can provide much-needed help in an expensive rebuilding process that might take years.

Which is where insurance companies enter the picture. Many of the same insurers that offer protection for your home or automobile also serve as safety nets for golf courses.

Features

Travelers, which has its name on a PGA Tour event, sells golf-course insurance. So, too, do smaller shops such as Philadelphia Insurance Companies, which offers coverage to courses and clubs for everything from liquor liability to pollutant clean-up and removal.

Among the newcomers to the space is Sentry, a brand with which golfers may already be familiar; the company owns SentryWorld, a Robert Trent Jones Jr.-designed course in Wisconsin, and has been the title sponsor since 2018 of the PGA Tour’s season-opening Tournament of Champions in Maui.

Based in Stevens Point, Wis., Sentry is launching a new initiative this year to sell insurance to public, semi-private and country-club courses across the country. The company has identified about 8,000 courses to approach, with the hopes of securing at least a few dozen contracts by the end of 2022.

“We are in the business of golf,” said John Hyland, the president of Sentry’s direct writing group. “We own a golf course. We’re a title sponsor of a very significant tournament. Why wouldn’t we start getting into the insurance side of this?”

The key for insurers is identifying how best to protect courses, of which there are a number of ways. One type of coverage is referred to as “tee to green,” which — just as it sounds — would compensate courses for any damages from the tee box through the fairway to the putting surface. Typically, for that kind of coverage, Sentry will offer $1 million worth of benefits, though it can be increased depending on the specific needs of the course.

Features

“Some courses, it may cost more to replace the damage whether it be by storm damage or vandalism,” said Mike Schmike, Sentry’s chief underwriting officer.

The premiums which courses would have to pay for the tee-to-green coverage will depend on the coverage limits that are purchased, and those will vary from state to state. “If you purchase $1 million in standard coverage, it will cost you less than if you buy $5 million worth of coverage,” Schmike said.

Courses will also be able to purchase protection for errant golf balls, meaning, for example, if a golfer breaks a window of a home or vehicle, or causes an injury, a course would generally receive $1,500 per incident, Schmike said.

Courses can even insure their most sentimental design features, like, say, a signature oak that is felled by a storm.

“We have the ability to identify that tree and provide more than just the normal coverage for it,” Hyland said. “Replacing it, you just don’t want to plant the seedling in the ground. You might want to search out a more mature tree to transplant. That comes with additional costs.”

Ultimately, Hyland said, just as good teaching pros tailor their game-improvement advice for each of their student’s swings, golf-course insurers should follow the same principle with their clients.

“It’s really working with each individual course to understand what’s unique about them and designing a program that meets their needs,” he said. “The last thing you want is a cookie-cutter approach.”

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The post Money Game: How affordable new launch monitors are redefining the range for recreational players appeared first on Golf.

In the 1980s, my best friend’s parents had a mobile phone — aka “the bag phone” — that they lugged around in their car. We could look at it. We could touch it. We just couldn’t use it because making a call was so expensive. It also was heavy.

But, if you had the money, the bag phone allowed you to call while you were driving, and it certainly conveyed cachet.

Until recently, full-room golf simulators with big-dollar launch monitors reminded me of those 1980s bag phones. They were a definite statement of your golf bona fides and willingness to invest in your game. But they were expensive and, to function, required a room in your house with high ceilings. Nice perk if you could get it, but, realistically, these fancy setups were the provenance of touring pros and rich amateurs.

Now, a slew of portable and affordable launch monitors have penetrated the market at all different price levels. It’s a Golden Age for knowing how far you really hit the ball (goodbye memory of the 7-iron you launched 185 yards), critical feedback for game improvement and learning to better navigate a course.

Gear

Though they employ an array of different technologies, this new batch of launch monitors — some designed for indoor use, some for outdoor use, or both — aims to provide the same key metrics for players determined to understand where their ball is going. They also are coming in at prices that range from the equivalent of the cost of a new driver to the price tag for a buddies trip to Bandon Dunes.

But their primary selling point is that they don’t overwhelm golfers with data. TrackMan and Foresight have cornered the high-end market for outdoor and indoor launch monitors, respectively. Both start at around $20,000 for their most popular models, and, for that kind of dough, they generate a vast trove of data: spin rate, face angle, swing plane, dynamic loft, club speed, etc. That’s fantastic for professional golfers, instructors and hardcore amateurs, yet the market is trending toward making all golfers comfy with new tech.

More affordable monitors from Bushnell, Full Swing Golf, Rapsodo and SkyTrak offer fewer data points — at least right out of the box — but give highly accurate readings on the swing data they do measure. SwingBoxAI even uses artificial intelligence to create a three-dimensional picture of your swing.

Which one do you pick? Depends a lot on your wallet and your infatuation with numbers.

“Launch monitors are a fun category, but it can be a bit overwhelming,” says William Flood, product manager at Bushnell Golf, whose Launch Pro model starts at $2,999. “Do I want just a launch monitor, or do I want it to be the brains of my home simulator?”

Bushnell partnered with Foresight to create its personal monitor. Flood says the key was focusing the tech on spin, more so than ball speed or launch angle. “If I’m getting the wrong carry distance because the spin rates are wrong, that’s not helping the 15-handicap or the 5-handicap,” he says. Think of those driver fittings where too much spin causes the ball to balloon while not enough causes it to fall out of the sky.

Full Swing Golf is expanding on its reputation for building out complete, in-home systems — the ones that cost $40,000 and up — used by pros like Tiger Woods and Jon Rahm. The company’s personal launch monitor, the Full Swing KIT, starts $3,999 and leans into numbers a bit more heavily.

“We are going after any golfer who takes their data seriously,” says Ryan O’Keefe, senior director of marketing at Full Swing Golf. “We have 16 data points after every swing and a built-in high-resolution camera.”

Meant for outdoor use, the Full Swing KIT, like several other similar products, works by placing it on the ground — behind the golfer, in this case, as opposed to in front of the golfer with other monitors — and syncing it with your smartphone.

The people at Rapsodo are making a smart play too. Their MLM model, which starts at $499, is aiming to be the ultra-affordable launch monitor. The low price is about the “democratization of data and the ability to improve with data,” says Art Chou, Rapsodo’s general manager of North America. “The MLM really is more for the person who still wants the data but doesn’t want to invest that much.”

Less, of course, can be more. Top instructors say most golfers could benefit by using personal launch monitors for just two things: hitting the driver as far as possible and dialing in wedges from 120 yards in.

“A launch monitor is a tool,” says Joe Hallett, a GOLF Top 100 instructor who uses SkyTrak (around $2,000 and up) with students like LPGA star Stacy Lewis. “If amateurs know how to use it, it’s going to really improve these two ends of their game. Part of it is, are you getting the maximum distance out of your driver with a controlled golf swing? Anything but swinging harder makes you a better driver if the ball goes farther. If you want a fun day at the range, take your [clubhead] wrench and see what you can do with your driver and a launch monitor.”

When it comes to wedges, Hallett says a launch monitor can teach players to hit to very specific distances—with consistency. “You don’t have to hit your number all the time, but if you keep your shots within a range you’re going to hit within two to three yards every time.”

So simple. Now, if only they worked with putting.

Want Paul Sullivan’s advice on all things golf-related in personal finance? Send your questions to moneymailbag@golf.com.

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The post Money Game: Why competing on the elite amateur golf circuit is costly in all sorts of ways appeared first on Golf.

The post Money Game: Why competing on the elite amateur golf circuit is costly in all sorts of ways appeared first on Golf.

At the final of the 2021 U.S. Senior Amateur, Gene Elliott, then the second-best senior amateur in the world, faced off against Jerry Gunthrope, a construction services professional who, as an amateur golfer, had been competing at the national level for only two years. As Bill Murray might say, it had the makings of a Cinderella story.

In the end, it wasn’t to be. Elliott took the title with a 1-up win over Gunthrope, but that took nothing away from Gunthrope’s accomplishment. At age 57, and little known on the elite mid-amateur circuit, he’d blown through the field at the Country Club of Detroit, which was stocked with hardcore amateur players, to make it to that last match.

“I looked at Gene in the finals and asked him how many USGA championships he’d played in,” Gunthrope recalls. “It was my second. It was his 36th. People said to me, ‘Where in the world did [you] come from and why [are you] here?’ I did it differently.”

Amateur golf doesn’t get the headlines it once did — when, for example, Bobby Jones, at age 28, won the Grand Slam in 1930, collecting the U.S. and British Opens and the U.S. and British Amateurs in the same year. But non-collegiate amateur golf still occasionally has its moments. Jay Sigel, a former insurance man, and Stewart Hagestad, who once worked in real estate, are now golf-world names of note, as are Carol Semple Thompson, dominant for 30 years starting in the 1970s, and current senior-am dynamo Ellen Port, a retired coach and educator. Both women have won seven USGA titles — Jack has eight, Tiger nine.

What’s little talked about is just how much money it costs these amateurs to compete at the highest level. It’s not the world of country club member-guest tournaments, which can still cost more than $1,000 for a three-day event. It’s the lure of getting an invite to play in storied mid-ams like “the Coleman” at Seminole, “the Crump” at Pine Valley or “the Thomas” at Los Angeles Country Club. How men and women — with jobs, spouses, kids and many other obligations that kill practice time — manage to compete at this level is not easy or cheap. When it works, it’s a fine balance; when it doesn’t, it’s costly in all sorts of ways.

The money spent on a typical four-day event, with practice and competition rounds, averages about $3,000, which includes entry fee, caddies, airfare, hotel, food and drink. It’s not uncommon for an elite amateur to play 15 events a year — to the tune of $45,000. Top seniors, freed from work and kids, might play 35 events a season in an effort to earn enough points in the World Amateur Golf Rankings to automatically qualify for events like the U.S. Senior Amateur. That campaign can cost them more than $100,000.

Lifestyle

“It’s not much cheaper than playing the PGA Tour, but you’re not playing for money; you’re playing for gift certificates,” says Billy Mitchell, 57, a personal trainer in Buckhead, Ga., who briefly played professionally in his mid-20s. “It’s an expensive habit.” But one that Mitchell, who won low amateur honors at the 2021 U.S. Senior Open and made it to the quarterfinals of the 2019 U.S. Senior Amateur, is certain helps his business.

“Once you get a taste of it, it’s really hard not to do it,” he says. “I don’t play golf much for fun because I would just rather compete. What’s the return on investment on this? You don’t calculate that. But I can tell you this: If I don’t play at the level I do, then I don’t train the Tour players, and they bring the club players [and their business to me].”

For some elite amateurs, there are financial costs beyond those of tournament week — like the price of staying sharp if you live somewhere with four seasons.

“It’s hard to come from Vermont and play at Seminole in April,” says Eoghan O’Connell, a member of the winning Walker Cup team in 1989 and a two-time winner of the Coleman.

For others, that off-season gives them the energy to get ready for the next year — and to save some cash.

“It keeps that fire going in me, and it helps with the balance of things,” says 34-year-old Julia Potter-Bobb, who has won the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur twice while based in Indianapolis. “I’m not sitting here in a bad financial situation, but you still have to make sure you know where your money goes.”

Lifestyle

Gunthrope made the decision to limit his travel, and thus his costs, when the last of his kids was born.

“My wife was pregnant with our third child, and I was playing in the Michigan Amateur,” he remembers. “I got a talking-to about how tough it was to have two kids and be pregnant with a third. That put the end to me being away.”

Balancing family commitments is as much of a challenge as the game and the finances.

“People playing in mid-am events are usually younger and don’t have kids,” says O’Connell, who is married with five children. “Once you have kids, you don’t want to do it as much. The weird thing for me is my golf began to deteriorate as I had kids!”

Port, the decorated women’s amateur, says her husband, Andy, was always supportive, creating a team atmosphere to bring their kids on board. She also worked as a teacher for three decades, which gave her summers off to practice and compete.

“I learned how to kick it into gear at the right time,” she says. “It made me that much more hungry and fresh. I knew I had only a few opportunities each summer.”

Hagestad, who at 30 just won his second U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship after playing on his third Walker Cup team, says he’s begun to pare down his schedule to just the top events. He’s in his last year of business school and focused on what comes next.

“I’ve been lucky to do some special things in golf and meet amazing people, who have become friends,” he says. “I love competitive golf for sure. But I didn’t turn pro for a reason. It’s the balancing act I’m most proud of.”

Want Paul Sullivan’s advice on all things golf-related in personal finance? Send your questions to moneymailbag@golf.com.

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