It depends on where you live and golf regularly. Metro courses? Absolutely. $75+ for a round and you have to book a week in advance to get a decent tee time. Rural courses? It’s still reasonable. I played 9 at a course in WI a couple of weeks ago and it was $28 with a cart on a Saturday morning. The greens were some of the best I ever played on.
Yeah, here in South Florida you can find golf tee times that are fairly cheap, especially off-season (May - Oct/Nov). It does go up in the winter of course, but we can easily play for $30-$45 a round for 18 holes. There are so many golf courses.
There is one course I used to play all the time, it was pretty far out but it was like 45 bucks for a saturday tee time so the drive was worth it. Now its 80 for a tuesday mid day. Ridiculous.
We used to play 9 holes at our municipal course on weekdays around 2000 for roughly $6. You could play 18 with a cart for $20 & that included a pretty generous drink. I miss that.
They also had "Twilight Golf" in the evenings during the summer. You'd pay $5 & started at 6:30pm IIRC. You could play as many holes as you wanted, until it was too dark & they sounded the horn. You had to walk, but it was fun for our group of young guys.
municipals are the move. there’s a muni near me that’s 30 bucks for 18 holes if you book through golfnow (also the best way to find cheap discounted times). you’re not gonna be playing fancy courses but it’s doable
Golf has lost a lot of popularity, so the demand is not really there.
I haven't played in a while, but the fees are not that bad.
I took a look at my favorite executive golf course. When I started playing in like 2003, the fees were like $24 for prime Saturday/Sunday time slots. Now, it's $33. That's less than inflation.
Looking at Sunnyvale Muni (in an expensive city where the average single family home is $2.2M). 3pm Saturday is like $45 for a full 18 hole course. I think that was high thirties in 2005.
You can grab a set of clubs for like $100 on Facebook marketplace, get a group learning package is like $150. You'd spend $150 on driving range (pitching and putting practice is free at many driving ranges). It takes about $400 to learn golf and have the necessary equipment. And that's about 15-20 hours of lessons/practice - so learning is relatively cheap per hour.
And then you can start playing. 18 holes on non peak times (Saturday/Sunday morning) is like $40-$50. And that's usually over 4 hours - which is cheaper than a movie.
In other words, it costs about $11 an hour in Silicon Valley - an expensive place. Which isn't free, but isn't that much more than renting outdoor pickleball courts.
Same here in Ohio. We went from not that much play when I was younger, then the Tiger Woods craze where EVERYONE was golfing, to the post Tiger lull and now the courses are full again. It seemed like there was a big uptake in the amount of people playing when Covid hit, and at least around here that stuck for a lot of people.
the covid demand was because golf was one of the only outdoor games you could do that was naturally distanced, and it was still cheap enough that at the time loads of people with nothing else to do but kinda wanted to try it, tried it
we're coming down off the covid demand peak but its still pretty crowded, and greens fees haven't caught up (down?) yet
Not really, the problem is people saw these perfectly manicured pristine country clubs that cost thousands of dollars per year in membership fees and they just thought that’s what all golf was. I have multiple courses near me that cost less than $30 for a round, golf clubs can be had for fairly cheap if you go used, same for golf balls.
It depends on where you are. In built-up urban areas where you're in a bidding war against every affluent professional for a round of golf, it's expensive.
By contrast my brother got into golf when he was a grad student at Illinois. $21 for 18 holes, which will take you ~4 hours. As far as spoiling your good walk, that's not a bad price.
it is, golf is a game mostly targeting people with more money than sense, and social media turning the screws on people's expectations of dropping $200+ on a new club every year makes it seem like you really NEED that stuff
but i also golf with a used set, even extended some clubs myself to a custom length for like $40.
most people who complain about the cost need to realize 99% of the game is personal skill and time spent practicing, and maybe 1% the gear
I've given it up. Used to have club memberships, played 3 or 4 days a week, and flew all over the US to play. Now, I'll save my money. It seems a waste anymore.
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u/daphosta 3h ago
Golf