A leading golf industry professional has warned that there could be another spike in golf course closures as a ‘monster iceberg’ is on the horizon in the UK.
Phil Grice, the Head of Venues at consultancy firm Custodian Golf, reckons that despite a brilliant year for golf, the persisting cost-of-living crisis is looming over clubs that have an ageing membership and won’t invest.
The number of rounds played in 2025 is expected to reach record highs, but he claims running golf operations and employing staff remains a huge challenge.
“From utilities to insurance, to pesticides, to compliance, absolutely everything is on the rise,” he told bunkered.co.uk. “So, operating a golf club is only going one way.
“It’s not a massively healthy situation out there for what you deem as the 30% of the clubs at the bottom of the barrel that don’t reinvest and try to run on a shoestring. The lack of investment to these clubs is catching them up all the time and they’re just not using their money wisely.”
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Since the coronavirus pandemic, only a select few clubs have recognised that their water situation is dramatically changing, while others spend a ‘disproportionate’ amount of money each year to keep their irrigation system alive.
Those financial decisions, Grice fears, could be catastrophic.
“It’s not just the everyday costs of running the club that are going up,” he said. “There is a huge amount of clubs that are trailing behind because they just have not invested in so long.
“We’re not a million miles away from the Environment Agency (EA) changing the laws and saying you can’t just turn the tap on and irrigate your golf course. So, those clubs should be looking to invest.”
But at the bottom end, clubs are scared because it would mean increasing their fees. “[And] it means passing it on,” Grice added. “The reality is the younger guys and girls that are coming into the game, they’re going to be expected to pick up the costs and put in an irrigation system.
“So, they just turn away from it and they’re happy to then spend 15 or 20 grand a year keeping that system operational.”
Meanwhile, the average age of a golf club member in the UK is approximately 59 and around 20% of club members are over the age of 75. According to Grice, that demographic is “beyond scary” and a result of golf boasting an aged community.
Clubs that have adopted schemes like a points-based membership are ‘flying’ because they’ve recognised the value of ‘part-time’ members who buy a certain number of rounds per year.
A common misconception within clubs is that a golfer who buys a £600 membership is more valuable than somebody who spends £1,300 on an all-inclusive membership. But worrying times are ahead if courses don’t welcome golfers who invest less but provide a much higher yield per round than inclusive members.
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“If you’re not tapped into progressive membership styles and digital marketing and using social media and driving new business in, you are slowly, slowly dying off,” Grice said. “That for me is the concern that these clubs don’t have the budgets. They don’t see a way out of it.
“They’re constantly cutting services and constantly cutting staff and constantly relying on volunteers, pure and simply because the cost of employing somebody is fairly significant now. Over the next three or four years, it’ll really expose the clubs at the bottom because they’re not replacing members with younger people who have got that little bit more disposable income.”
Housing developers have also swooped in to takeover golf courses this year, and Grice has predicted that will ‘massively expedite’ over the next two years if clubs don’t address their structure.
“These clubs will just go overnight,” he said. “Golf clubs haven’t got the wherewithal and the capacity and the skills to replace that membership faster than it’s going to go and that means that there is a monster iceberg on the horizon.
“People are starting to recognise that they have to be more customer focussed and the customer has changed. If they want to bring in new customers and bring the average age down, then they have to adapt.
“There’s going to be some pain for the smaller clubs that just refuse to look up and see what’s happening out there because the world is dramatically changing.”
