The tee sheets are packed. There are now waiting lists at many private courses.
People who had left golf are returning in droves and people who had never played before are taking up the game.
These last two years have been great for golf.
Really?
Junior golf tours are struggling to find venues to hold their events. Is that good for golf?
Even provincial golf associations are struggling. Golf Ontario has been forced to go with smaller fields, cancel some events and pay higher fees. Is that good for golf?
At some courses, the number of junior members has been restricted and senior greens fee rates have been eliminated entirely. Is that good for golf?
Some courses have eliminated late afternoon and early evening men’s leagues because clubs argue they are now guaranteed to sell those slots at full rate. Is that good for golf?
Even the National Golf Course Owners Association is getting pushback from some member clubs about their highly successful “Take a Kid to the Course” program, arguing they can’t give that kid a free round anymore. Now tell me that’s good for golf.
Okay. I think we can agree that all this interest in golf is good for the sport, even if we have to get up at 6 a.m. and hope that we don’t get a busy signal when we’re calling the course to try to book a tee time a week out.
And no one denies that the golf course owners deserve every right to make a profit, especially since so many of them have struggled over the past decade or so when interest in golf seemed to be waning, or at least stagnant.
The question seems to be, do those same owners owe any responsibility to the game itself, to the seniors who helped build the sport, to the juniors who are the future of the game, and even to the elite players who inspire all of us to get better at it?
“I’d be very surprised if in general (owners) don’t want to support those sorts of things. I just think owners are nervous about the bottom line,” says Harry Brotchie, who is president of the National Golf Course Owners Association.
“When the tee sheets are not full you can find an empty space and it’s not as big a contribution to make, and in general, courses want to support junior golf and provincial tournaments, and even national events.”
Laurence Applebaum, the CEO of Golf Canada, thinks the phrase “unintended consequences” is what his group, as the governing body for golf in this country, is facing.
“We’re coming into the second season with this boom in golf because of Covid and there are capacity issues at every municipal, private and public club that I’ve talked to,” he says.
“For a long time, we’ve had a lot of people invest in their business and things are booming right now so I understand from a business perspective this is an opportunity for people to take advantage of the great boom in the game.”
Golf Canada is largely unaffected in terms of their national championships because many of them are booked years ahead and many courses are anxious to host Canadian championships.
“I’m really happy to see that so many people are playing and so many are doing well but, on the grow-the-game side and the tournament side we have committed to figuring out solutions from some of these partners,” said Applebaum.
“I know that these operators of clubs want to support junior golf, they want to be part of it. They just have to find that right balance. We have to be creative and we have to be flexible and that may be what the challenge is.”
One organization in that bind right now is ClubLink, which for decades had been a huge supporter of junior golf and hosted many junior tour events for the Canadian Junior Golf Association and other junior tours.
“We’re not hosting events, other than a few charity events that we will try and find a way to put on our tee sheets later in the year,” says Brent Miller, vice-president of corporate operations and member services.
Most, if not all private clubs, have quota limits on juniors and non-members.
“We’ve actually put a moratorium on all memberships and we literally have a waiting list protocol for every single one of our clubs,” said Miller, who also noted that their current members are playing 35 per cent more golf this season.
“Our attitude toward juniors and intermediates has not changed. We’re dead serious about junior golf. It’s been an important thing for us, forever, and we are absolutely committed to that. We just have to take a pause right now to accommodate this crazy pandemic demand situation.”
Long term that’s good news for junior tour operations like the Hamilton-Halton Junior Golf Tour. Short term, not so much.
“It’s been quite a challenge,” says PGA of Canada professional John Najev, past president of the HHJGT who is in charge of securing venues.
“I’ve been in contact with probably 25-30 golf courses throughout our area and I’ve only been able to secure four venues. One for a qualifying day and three for the seven-event tour. It’s been very frustrating.”
It’s not as though the HHJGT was an upstart. They’ve been operating for 37 years and their graduates include PGA Tour player Mackenzie Hughes, Sean Foley, one of the top coaches on the PGA Tour, and Mike Kelly, the CEO of Golf Ontario.
Earl Fritz, founder and CEO of the Canadian Junior Golf Association admits that they have had problems getting courses this year and even courses that were willing to host them often put in new restrictions.
“Some courses have come back to us and said: ‘we’ll hold your tournament but you have to play within so many hours, every group has to be a foursome, and if you have a threesome you have to pay for a foursome,’” said Fritz.
“And ironically, we are in the same situation as the golf courses in that there is a great demand for junior golf events because there are no other sports for kids to play.”
Fritz said one of the things that helped them was moving their headquarters to Bathurst Glen Golf Club north of Toronto.
“They wanted to give something back to youth, so we relocated there and they asked us to run 10 events a year there,” he said.
Even provincial golf associations are not immune to the difficulty of finding venues and running tournaments during the pandemic.
“We’ve had to drop two events this year and change the field size in some of our tournaments to allow members some access to the golf course every day,” says John Lawrence, manager of rules and competitions for Golf Ontario. “And it’s the same with our qualifiers.
“At the end of the day it means that some of our competitors are going to be shut out. Unfortunately, that’s where we’re at in this market.”
