Bankruptcy Filing Par For Many California Golf Courses

Although Tiger Woods might say otherwise, for most people golf is a luxury and not a necessity.

So many experts aren’t surprised to see many golf-related businesses struggling to stay out of the economic rough.

The LA Times reports on a trend that is becoming par for the course in California. Jobs and property values are at stake across the state as funds dry up and once pristine property is neglected.

Hundreds of golf courses have closed up shop in the last few years, the newspaper reports. Country clubs that used to be exclusive and high dollar have cut their costs and opened access to fancy courses to the public to compensate for the drop in demand.

Overall sales in the billion dollar industry of golf equipment, clubs, balls and apparel have dropped 10 percent in the last few years. It is the courses and clubs themselves, however, that provide the most visible evidence of the recession’s impact on the industry.

According to the LA Times article, “through September of this year, at least 114 of the nation’s 16,000 or so golf courses had closed, according to the National Golf Foundation, a number that was offset only partly by the opening of 44 new courses.”

Jeff Woolson, a real estate broker who specializes in the sale and purchase of golf courses, says of the state of golfing, “people are cutting golf out of their diets because they’ve got to cut something.”

Experts estimate that many golf courses have lost 30 to 50 percent of their worth in the last few years. The Chevy Chase Country Club, which was built in Glendale, California, in 1925 and designed by famous course architect William P. Bell, was forced to file bankruptcy recently. Owners couldn’t sell the business for $6.5 million.

One loser in the decline of golfing are residents living in the neighborhoods that surround many of the courses. Joseph Leggett owns a home on what used to be the beautiful courses of the Palm Desert Country Club golf course. But the club had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, so the fairway was overgrown, and the view from Leggett’s property was spoiled after 30 years of residence.

According to the LA times, Leggett “estimated that his home of 30 years had lost half its value because of the ruined view.”