After hiring Touchstone Golf in January 2012 to manage and maintain the municipal golf course, the Mountain View, Calif., property is reporting an increase in foot traffic. A frequent players program offers a discounted membership that has resulted in the enrollment of over 350 players, and the course now hosts three times as many tournaments.

With the help of an outside private management group, the Shoreline Golf Links in Mountain View, Calif., has made strides to attract players and lessen its drain on the city’s resources, the Los Altos (Calif.) Patch reported.

Just a few years ago, Mountain View City Council members debated what to do about the $700,000 they lost annually from the city’s municipal golf course, Patch reported.

The city assumed control of the public course in 1995, a little over ten years after its completion, Patch reported.

San Jose resident and veteran golfer Steve Banally noticed a dismal number of players at Shoreline, and pretty much everywhere else, during the recession, Patch reported.

“[Before the recession] you couldn’t exactly get the tee time you wanted, you had to adjust your schedule to go there,” Banally said. “[Later], you could just about walk on any time you got there without a tee time.”

The city of Mountain View outsourced the management and maintenance of the course to Touchstone Golf in January 2012. The agreement saved the city nearly $1 million annually, according to their budget report.

Since that time, Robbie Gray, Director of Marketing at Shoreline Golf Links, said they’ve done a number of things to successfully increase business. A new frequent players program offers a membership with discounts, a major change that has enrolled over 350 players. The course also hosts three times as many tournaments. The course is in the “best condition it’s been in for years,” Gray said, due to a number of renovations, including new sand, Patch reported.

“Shoreline has done a good job, I’ve seen them making an effort out there,” John Moraski, a Mountain View resident and frequent player of the course, said. Moraski has golfed on and off at Shoreline and also at the Palo Alto municipal course for the past three years, but said lately Shoreline has become his main course, Patch reported.

The course has seen a major increase in play and has become “quite busy now,” Gray said, even sometimes resulting in a bidding war of sorts for tee times. Moraski’s only complaint has been the course’s flow with increased foot traffic and slow players, a sentiment echoed in Shoreline’s Yelp reviews, Patch reported.

Shoreline also faces complaints a bit more out of their control, like the course’s blustery morning winds and the constantly renewed goose droppings (the course shares the land with Shoreline’s bird sanctuary), Patch reported.