After touring all seven golf courses in East Baton Rouge Parish over the past three days, PGA of America consultant Rich Richeson says BREC could increase play at its underutilized courses by as much as 5,000 rounds per course, per year, provided the recreation department steps up its player education, outreach and marketing efforts.
“If you do serious golf instruction and get group classes going you can get 200 new players per course, per year, which translates into roughly 5,000 rounds,” Richeson says. “That would have a huge impact on your operations.”
BREC’s courses, including two nine-hole courses, have lost money for the past three years as the game’s popularity continues to decline. So far this year, the courses are barely breaking even, and critics regularly urge BREC to close and consolidate courses to save money. BREC Superintendent Carolyn McKnight-Bray, who asked Richeson to come to Baton Rouge, agrees Baton Rouge has many courses given the city’s size, but says for now she’s not interested in closing any.
“My focus for a while will be on increasing player development,” she says. “We didn’t talk (with Richeson) about which courses it might make sense to close or not. At this point, we’re focusing on creating more play.”
BREC’s courses lost $1.2 million last year and $1.4 million in 2010. So far this year, golf operations are about $600,000 ahead of expenses, thanks to cost-cutting measures for food service and grounds operations, among other things. Still, play continues to decline. In the first eight months of the year, BREC courses saw 92,824 rounds of play, about 500 or so fewer than the same period last year. Nationwide, the situation is much the same.
“We’ve gone from 31 million participants to 26 million participants in the last six years,” Richeson says. “We’ve overgrown in course development but haven’t kept up in growth of play.”
Reversing that decline is one reason the PGA of America created Golf 2.0, a player-development initiative Richeson spearheads from his office in Dallas. He and fellow consultants are traveling around the country, helping municipal recreation departments come up with ways to rekindle interest in the game.
“We focus on instructional program offerings to retain and strengthen your core customers,” he says. “We also work on developing new players, primarily women and juniors. Then we show these departments how to market and promote these programs.”
Richeson says his first impressions of BREC’s courses are favorable, but declines to weigh in on which, if any, of the department’s facilities should be closed and repurposed.
“That wasn’t our reason for being here,” he says. “That’s a decision the city would have to make.”
