JC Reindl

Detroit Free Press

Michigan lost about 200 golf courses in past 15 years

Attention spans now strain to last for 18 holes

Michigan's economy has largely rebounded, but its golf course business has been trapped in a bunker lately as the baby boom generation gets older and millennials seem less interested in the time commitment of 18 holes.

Although Michigan still ranks in the top 5 nationwide for number of golf courses and is the top state for public courses, each year more course owners are selling to real estate developers or are forced to close for financial reasons. Meanwhile, very few new courses are getting built.

The problem for the game stems from previous golf course oversaturation in the state, coupled with more recent generational shifts in leisure pursuits of young people. Golf can be a huge time and financial commitment.

"Some of these clubs that are struggling and losing members want to get the young members in," said Kevin Frisch, who works with Travel Michigan to promote golf, "but they're not the same young members that they were 30, 40 years ago."

Michigan, like other parts of the country, experienced a course-building boom during the 1990s and into the 2000s as baby boomers fully embraced the game. This bubble was fueled by golf industry exuberance, developers who viewed courses as standard amenities in residential projects, and the tangible but ultimately brief Tiger Woods-related surge in the sport's popularity, according to interviews with multiple Michigan golf experts.

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The number of courses peaked in Michigan in the early 2000s with more than 970 public and private courses, according to past reports by the National Golf Foundation. Michigan ranked No. 3 in the country in 2001, behind only California and Florida, where golf is played year-round.

By January 2015, Michigan was down to 790 golf courses -- fourth place behind New York. The foundation last week declined to share its latest report with the Free Press, but a source who has seen the 2016 rankings said Michigan fell to 773 courses with just a hairsbreadth lead on fifth-place Texas.

Meanwhile, some private country clubs have lowered their initiation fees or run once-unthinkable promotions to boost membership.

To attract younger customers, a few courses such as Fox Hills Golf and Banquet Center in Plymouth and Fellows Creek Golf Club in Canton have experimented with a game called FootGolf that is a combination of golf and soccer and can be played on existing greens.

"It brings a totally different clientele out to the golf course," said Julia Grelak, sales director at Fox Hills.

Michigan golf course architect Raymond Hearn said he thinks the state could lose another 30 or so courses each year for the next two to three years before golf club supply finally matches up with the reduced demand. Many of the courses now closing are small mom-and-pop businesses whose owners barely survived the recession and know they face increasingly uncertain financial prospects as fewer young people take up the game.

"I'm not trying to be a grim reaper, but some of these courses have been hanging on by the skin of their teeth for the last eight years," said Hearn, president of Holland-based Raymond Hearn Golf Course Designs. "I don't think they can do it any longer."

Michigan -- like other parts of the country -- became over-holed by the early 2000s. Those who follow the golf industry cite a National Golf Foundation report, “Strategic Plan for the Growth of the Game," which called for building "a course a day" in the U.S. every year in the 1990s until 2000 to satisfy the anticipated growth in demand for golf. This report proved highly influential in Michigan and across the country.

The number of golf courses nationwide surged from 12,846 in 1990 to 15,487 by 2000, according to the foundation's data. Courses surpassed the 16,000 mark by 2005, plummeting to 15,372 by 2014.

"What we're seeing is some right-sizing going on," said David Graham, executive director of the Golf Association of Michigan.

The golf foundation did not respond to messages seeking comment last week.

Real estate boom

Helping to inflate Michigan's golf course bubble were some real estate developers, who saw a new course as de rigueur in every new upscale development.

"They were doing it because they were looking at golf as an amenity to sell real estate ... but not all of the people who were buying homes played golf," said Frisch, the Travel Michigan promoter and owner of Fusion Media Strategies in Gaylord. "There were a lot of real estate developments with golf that went under."

New housing also has been a popular redevelopment option for struggling golf courses -- or financially stable courses whose owners accept a generous deal to sell.

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The Bogie Lake Golf Club in White Lake Township, which closed in 2003, was carved into residential homes called The Hills of Bogie Lake. The popular, family-owned Bald Mountain Golf Course in Orion Township closed nearly two years ago and, following local controversy and a lawsuit, the 18-hole course is to become a 338-lot Pulte Homes development called Bald Mountain. The Prieskorn family that sold the course did not return a message seeking comment.

"Lots of golfers who come through here grew up playing that course when they were kids," recalled Dave Garman, who works in sales at Carl's Golfland in Bloomfield Hills. "The greens were always very fair -- very playable -- it was affordable golf and it was a walkable golf course."

"Bald Mountain wasn't ever going to be in the class of any of the country clubs or Oakland Hills," he added, "but paying $25 for a round of golf is tough to pull off at Oakland Hills."

In Royal Oak, the city-owned Normandy Oaks Golf Course closed in 2014 after several years of losing money. The course dated to the early 1970s when it opened as an overflow course for another nearby municipal club. The city recently sold 10 acres of Normandy Oaks for $3.85 million to Robertson Brothers Homes, which plans to build a 125-lot house and townhouse development for middle-class families.

The 54-hole Maple Lane Golf Club in Sterling Heights, known for its tightly-packed fairways and owned since the 1920s by the Roehl family, sold last year to Moceri Cos. homebuilders. Firm partner Dominic Moceri said last week that they plan to reduce the club to 27 holes within the next two to four years and build a residential golf course community.

The number of houses in the future community has yet to be decided, he said. Meanwhile, the firm is putting about $500,000 into course and clubhouse improvements at Maple Lane.

"We're going to put the Moceri brand and quality behind it," Dominic Moceri said of the planned development.

Golf courses make nice cemeteries

Recent losses include the 18-hole Rogell Golf Course in northwest Detroit, which closed in 2013 after 99 years of operation. The public course, named for the late Detroit Tigers player and longtime City Councilman Billy Rogell, was owned by the City of Detroit until 2004, when it sold for $2 million to Greater Grace Temple.

The church continued operating the course until it was no longer economically feasible, said Martin Hardy, chief of staff at the Temple. The church had a deal to sell the course to a cemetery company, but it fell through after the city, amid neighbors' protests, denied the necessary zoning permit.

Now the church is in negotiations with another potential buyer for the golf course. Hardy couldn't say what the would-be buyer wants to do with the land, but he said it would not involve a cemetery.

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"The Rogell Golf Course was a very popular course at one time in history, and a very challenging course," Hardy said. "But what happened with us is what's happening all over. The golf course business is not what it used to be and our primary business is not running a golf course."

On the western side of the state, the 27-hole River Bend Golf Course near Hastings closed in 2012 and was bought and turned back into farmland by the same family who originally built it 50 years ago. The course's last owner, Denny Storrs, said the course was still financially viable, but he had just turned 65 and was open to retiring when he received the farmer's attractive offer for the 185-acre property.

Storrs said the course had been getting less play in recent years and was suffering from an overproliferation of golf courses. His playing fees were $25 for 18 holes and every formerly private course around him has since become a public course.

"There are so many golf courses in this area that when the economy got tough, the private courses started letting people on and the higher-end public courses then had to lower their fees," he said last week. "So it pinched everybody."

"There is another 18-hole golf course right here in town less than a mile from us, so they were able to absorb our membership and it made them stronger," Storrs said.

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The last owner of Sunnybrook Golf and Bowling along an industrial corridor in Sterling Heights made a similar decision.

Randy Shank said his 27-hole course and its attached 58-lane bowling center and 60-room motel was still in good financial shape when it closed last fall. Business had improved from its recessionary lows.

But he received a buyout offer he couldn't refuse, he said, given the precarious long-term outlook for golf. Sunnybrook is now being redeveloped for manufacturing uses.

Shank said he was growing nervous because potential players in their 20s and early 30s -- dubbed millennials -- don't seem to be taking up golf like earlier generations. They also seem less excited about the time investment for 18-hole outings and league play.

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He recalled his recent visit to a high-end driving range in Las Vegas aimed at younger people that presents golf more as a social activity than a sport. That type of setup might be the future, he said.

"Our golf leagues were 18 weeks and they have a hard time committing to 18 weeks," said Shank, who said he thinks six-week leagues might appeal better to millennials.

Commerce Township charts new course

The El Dorado Country Club and Links at Pinewood in Commerce Township both closed around 2007. They were purchased by the township's Downtown Development Authority, which cut a new roadway and spearheaded ongoing commercial and residential projects for the golf course lands, including a new Wal-Mart.

The Links at Pinewood was a newer course and the more popular of the two, and it was said to be in decent financial shape when the development authority bought it.

"It was one of the Up North-feel type courses with the tall pines that you just don't find in this area," recalled Dan Shaw, a manager at Oak Management, which ran both Links of Pinewood and the El Dorado.

Commerce Township has since repurposed Links of Pinewood's clubhouse and made it the township hall. The old hole yardage markers are now lined up outside the hall like gravestones.

In a similar manner, the old El Dorado clubhouse, bar and banquet hall is now the Commerce Township Community Library. The only surviving mementos of that building's previous life are golf cart trails and two golf balls embedded in concrete around a back entrance.

Hawks and alligators

While the courses are gone, many golfers retain fond memories.

"Losing one of these courses is like closing a family member," said John Collier, 72, of Farmington Hills, who used to play several of metro Detroit's now-closed courses.

He will never forget the time at Detroit's Rogell Golf Course when a hawk swooped down from a tree and nabbed his ball on the 10th hole. The hawk carried the ball up to the tree, eventually dropping it closer to the hole. Collier accepted his good fortune and played on.

"I've seen all kinds of things like alligators on the greens in Florida, monkeys on the greens in the Caribbean, but this was the first time that happened to me," said Collier, a former Free Press photographer.

It can be tempting for golf courses facing financial pressures to try and save money on maintenance and renovations. But such decisions can exacerbate their problems, said Hearn, the course designer.

"They're just doing nothing and they're slowly decreasing their maintenance budget each year, and that is the worst thing to do," he said. "Finally the patrons start noticing, and it's like a slow death march until they go out of business or sell at a very reduced rate."

A new innovation?

Even as more courses close across the state, this summer will see the opening of a rare, all-new golf course in Michigan. But it will be a course like no other.

The Forest Dunes Golf Club outside Roscommon is preparing to debut North America's only 18-hole, fully-reversible golf course on June 27. The course, designed by Tom Doak of Traverse City, is named The Loop and can be played clockwise one day and counterclockwise the next. It will be Forest Dunes' second 18-hole public course.

"We are not just building a golf course. We are building the world's only reversible golf course," said Lew Thompson, an Arkansas trucking magnate who bought the Forest Dunes club in 2011. "Just building a regular golf course right now would probably not be a good idea in Michigan or any other state."

Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter@JCReindl.

Total number of golf courses in U.S.

1990: 12,846

1995: 14,074

2000: 15,487

2005: 16,052

2010: 15,890

2014: 15,372

Source: National Golf Foundation

Top 5 states with most golf courses (public and private)

1. Florida

2. California

3. New York

4. Michigan

5. Texas

Source: National Golf Foundation

Top 5 states with most public golf courses at end of 2015

1. Michigan (660)

2. Florida (640)

3. California (625)

4. New York (577)

5. Texas (553)

Source: National Golf Foundation