In his year-end roundup of developments for the industry in California’s Coachella Valley, golf writer Larry Bohannan cited investments by Bighorn GC and Toscana CC as a sign that “on at least one level [golf] continues to attract players and money.” The re-opening of Rancho Mirage CC was also noted as another sign that things “certainly [aren’t] as bad as a lot of people want you to believe.”
In general, 2017 was a pretty good year for golf in California’s Coachella Valley, golf writer Larry Bohannan wrote in his end-of-the-year column for The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, Calif.
It wasn’t a great year, Bohannan noted, as the region mirrored the situation in most of the rest of the country, where golf is “just kind of tread[ing] water these days, hoping that the declines of the last decade or more have flattened out.”
But the Coachella Valley also displayed “some better things about golf in the desert this year than in the rest of the country,” Bohannan added, citing these examples:
There were no course closures. “Much as we think there are golf courses in the desert still tittering on the brink of existence, no golf course closed in the Coachella Valley in 2017,” Bohannan wrote. “Okay, maybe no course closing is not such a big thing, but the idea that people might have expected two or three closures and saw no closures is a big deal. Again, maybe this isn’t about growing the game, just maintaining the status quo.”
Some clubs keep spending money. “Yes, there is a difference between Bighorn Golf Club in Palm Desert [Calif.] and the typical public-access 18 hole courses,” Bohannan wrote. “But Bighorn’s investment in a $70 million clubhouse shows that on at least one level the game continues to attract players and money. There were other examples, too, including new facilities at Toscana Country Club.”
Investing into courses. “While new clubhouses and new restaurants is a way to bring non-golfers or casual players to a course, it is the golf course that can attract new members the most,” Bohannan wrote. “Toward that end, plenty of desert courses decided in the last 18 months or so to make capital improvements on their layouts. That includes courses like Sun City Shadow Hills, Desert Horizons Country Club, Andalusia Country Club and other courses that have fixed greens and bunkers and that added some punch to their golf courses in an effort to attract new and younger players. And it is producing some better courses in the Coachella Valley.”
Rancho Mirage Country Club is coming back. “After two years of being closed, an agreement has been reached for the course at the Rancho Mirage club to re-open,” Bohannon wrote. “It won’t be the same course, but it will be an 18-hole executive course that could be open by 2020. That’s progress.”
Bohannan concluded his year-end wrapup by writing: “So there was plenty of good news in desert golf in 2017, and a lot of that news seems like it will spill over to 2018. No, the game of golf is not in the kind of shape it was 10 years ago. But it certainly isn’t as bad as a lot of people want you to believe it is.”
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