Average cost of a round of golf? It may be less than you might think.
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Are you used to fighting bots on weekends? Tried to book your dream golf course only to find out it's sold out for the next year? Googled the price of a course you watched on TV only to find out it's $900, like the big payout at TPC Sawgrass?
You are not alone. And all of that is true, because most people play a lot of golf.
By 2023, Americans will have played 531 million rounds of golf, according to the National Golf Foundation, the highest single-year total in history. For the fourth year in a row there were more than three million golfers who tried the game for the first time. The four years since the start of the Covid pandemic have been a time to intervene, and demand is peaking in 2020 and has been high ever since. There was also no significant change in provision during that period; it takes a while to build a golf course, after all, and golf courses were closing faster than they were opening for more than a decade before this recent surge in interest.
This is fun for the life of the game and the life of the course of your community and the conversational life of a group of golf friends. But it can be distracting, too. It may sound like all the decent public courses are too crowded, too expensive or both. No one wants to pay $200/player for a six-hour round on an average golf course. I get it.
But I bring good news. The data suggests that nationally, the median income has not risen as much as you (or I) might think. In 2020, before the golf boom, the average fee for an 18-hole public golf course (excluding resorts) was $32. That was a relatively suppressed number, the NGF suggested at the time; payments did not keep pace with inflation given the downward spiral of golf at the time.
(Sidenote: That last bracket “does not include resorts” seems to be the big deal here. Before 2020, consumer behavior had shown more interest in resort-style travel — think Bandon Dunes, Pebble Beach, Cabot Links, Streamsong is everywhere in between. And Bandon, to use just one example, just raised its prices from $295 to $450 and can charge more for more than a year; because it has its own interesting story to tell.)
Now? Those daily fees rose to an average of just over $37. The NGF report shows that the steep increase in green fees – about 16% in that period – is in line with inflation after years of lagging behind. That's still a significant increase, and you may live in an expensive golf town where those numbers seem good, but it's a reminder that they exist, those $37 rounds. They are in the middle.
Where does that five dollar increase come from? The NGF report cites demand as a major factor. At the end of 2021, after all, more than two-thirds of course operators told the NGF that they had made some change in their fee structure last year. But the report cites other factors, including rising costs for “labor, supplies and maintenance.” And nearly half of community facilities received “significant” course or clubhouse investment last year, which is an encouraging sign for their golf future – and yours.
I suspect there are other variables at play here, too, where word got out about not just the best courses but the hidden gems. Cool, trendy courses in your neighborhood may find a price bump or need to appear in Instagram posts, “best of” lists or YouTube golf features. In my twelve years at this company the prices of our Top 100 Courses, for example, have risen dramatically, changing the dynamic of how we write about “best value,” which once featured the best courses under $50. but now it has a limit of $150. Pricey they got the highest price.
But it seems some — those everyday public courses that make up the fabric of American golf but might not make it onto your Instagram grid — have had a limited rise. That's what I find interesting about $37. Although golf is expensive too can be it's ridiculously expensive, not all versions are as expensive as people think. Not every round is a $1,250 trip to Shadow Creek or a $2,500 stay-and-play deal at Pebble Beach. That $37 number puts golf well south of other experience-based hobbies like buying a lift ticket to go skiing ($142 for hiking, according to one study) or going to an NFL game (more than $300 on the secondary market). Concert tickets have gone up in price post-Covid, too, and if Taylor Swift takes up golf we could be in real trouble. But for now it's a good reminder that a game that's notoriously expensive and exclusive can still be easily accessible. May require driving.
And a friend eager to book a tee time.
You can read more about the NGF report here.
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