This article was originally published in November 2017.

The old paradigm of an 18 hole golf course providing sufficient content to sustain an interesting and vigorous club can now be seen as out of time, out of tune and out of favour. Life has quickened, family time is precious and parents increasingly follow the leisure interests of their children rather than their own. The only age group which does have abundant time on its hands is the retired community. Age groups from 15-50 years old aim to mix a variety of leisure and sporting choices into their day or half day where each activity is of much shorter duration than a four to five hour round of golf. Team games such as cricket have always taken a long time (and even T20 is not that short), but it used to be that golf’s flexibility as an individual’s leisure sport was a significant advantage in time allocation – nowadays for many it is often simply too long a unit of time.

18 holes of golf, then, takes up a long time and a lot of land. Can we create a better balanced allocation of both in the modern day? If so, can new housing/development be an intelligent and profitable option that benefits both golf clubs and communities?

One century apart – two distinct waves of golf course construction

A hundred years ago the original “golden age” era of golf club expansion (1895-1925) saw the majority of UK inland (as opposed to the earlier coastal links courses) courses and clubs created. That period’s low pressure on land use enabled such courses to be laid out on ideal sites chosen for their free-draining sandy soils, melodious topography and sympathetic vegetation of heathlands and woods.

Their locations were available at the fringes of towns and city suburbs or carefully chosen by developers to pioneer newly accessible areas delivered by the expanding railway and road network. These early successes were in a position to combine golf courses with real estate – creating small groups of houses and communities to be built around the golf course and expanded over time to surround or intersperse the 120-150 green space acres of the golf course itself. The local real estate beyond the immediate surrounds of the golf course also benefitted – the physical presence of the golf course still anchored and nurtured a new community, albeit from a relatively low demand base, and vice versa.

The template was one of healthy recreation, commutability, a core population of local interest, a planned mix of property sizes and scalable expansion of the housing numbers over the years. Unsurprisingly, the best planned of these were runaway successes. In addition, this perfect formula produced the invaluable effect of golf courses (even those which were not top-drawer designs) preserving substantial tracts of open space while conurbations expanded and grew around and beyond them. In time, these courses became mini green belts providing regular pockets of green lungs and biodiversity deep within the ever-expanding built environment.

In contrast, a century later, the second wave of golf course building in 1985-2005 differed fundamentally by mainly placing golf courses on agricultural land well beyond zones allocated for dwelling. The golf courses were not community-based: they were more an isolated destination some way from their customers, relying primarily on joining fees for initial payback of build costs and membership’s annual fees for ongoing revenue streams. Unsurprisingly, given this less secure business model, a much smaller proportion of this second wave have succeeded as busy and vibrant ventures. In the longer term, some of these outlying courses can be expected to evolve as ‘mini green belts’ if and when housing development zones are allowed to reach and then surround them – and if they are still in business!

However, as a parallel issue which will also affect their longevity, many such “second wave” courses fall well short of producing interesting golf in the first place – soils unsuited to drainage and fine leafed grasses, layouts conceived and constructed by farmers and unskilled ‘designers’ rather than qualified golf course architects. In addition, some are set in landscapes yet to grow the flattering patina of wooded maturity from their nascent tree planting programmes – and maturity of environment is highly prized.

General over-supply – or is it actually supply of the wrong kind for the 21st century?

Inevitably, most second wave courses, conceived as stand alone golf clubs, were not designed with real thought to future integration with either housing or with other sports and leisure pursuits.

Natural selection and market forces are showing up a number of courses that are straining to be relevant to their nearest communities or viable for their owners (whether proprietary or member owned). When examined in detail a familiar pattern is:

• the green space (100–175 acres) is valuable but not well utilised, there is only one offer on the menu and it is one which takes too long for most potential customers,
• location is too far from the number of customers necessary to fill a facility focused on only one activity, and
• the failing club is too cash-poor to invest in infrastructural change and product diversification which could attract more customers.

In commercial terms, they offer just one product – golf – and this is offered in one size – 18 holes. It is hard to think of any sport or business that has adapted less to modern life – despite there being some 4 million ‘regular’ golfers in the UK. A substantial number of women and children would be easily brought into such a healthy and gregarious atmosphere if only the facilities (sporting, leisure and social) were designed – and, in many instances, managed – to better suit their interests and were more aligned to the needs of a 21st century family.

There is a further technical issue in that many older courses and some newer ones laid out by inexperienced practitioners are simply too small in acreage to accommodate 18 holes in the modern day – safety margins are too small, holes are squeezed too narrowly together to allow the width necessary for interesting variety of strategic design: the prerequisite of interesting, enjoyable golf. Trees planted in days gone by now intrude into the playing areas.

The solution is common sense. Reduce the number of golf holes to nine, 12 or another number, possibly adding options of shorter duration (par 3 courses, putting courses) and use the land released to accommodate other facilities that do appeal and will attract new members and visitors (e.g. cycling, jogging, croquet, bowls, tennis, garden spaces, communal allotments, skate parks, even a swimming pool). The design revision can offer a biodiverse enrichment of released land – both as protected nature reserves and as public open space.

Finally, the real estate aspect is crucial – it creates the opportunities for people to live around and participate closely with a development of their choice which is socially positive and integrated rather than ‘exclusive’. It can create the capital necessary to transform the mono-use golf course to a mixed use, economically viable proposition.

Golf is by no means a busted flush – it is a sport with beneficial healthy qualities. Its relevance to later-life living is easily recognised and set to rise. The potential for a more even balance of female and child participation is huge: currently UK female participation at c15% is well behind the 40% rates in much of continental Europe. Also beyond doubt is that a format of golf that takes much less time to play than four or five hours is a pre-requisite of providing a product that customers under the age of 50 will embrace.

Property development: is it an answer to golf’s headaches?

The core challenge for golf is to adapt to meet its market. This brings a fundamental opportunity for the property development community to examine how the two can work side by side to mutual benefit. The prospect of bank lending to finance reorganising a golf course business is presently unrealistic and “vanishingly small” in the current phrase. In contrast, creating new residential or commercial build alongside a golf course has potential to unlock funds that can substantially transform the content of the golf club’s business to create a product aligned to the 21st century.
In that golf courses vary considerably in shape, size and requirements for change, there are as many different detailed solutions as there are courses. Spare acreage on golf courses is usually scant. However, a surprising number could find space to accommodate some degree of new build even if no, or just minor, modification to the layout of the 18 holes can be made.

Others may be more radical and determine that a fundamental reworking of their land would allow a substantially different business model to be pursued – either adding a new variety of activities or a significant quantity of housing. In bald terms, there is a trade-off correlation between reducing the area under golf (i.e. reducing the number of holes) and land available for new activities and real estate. How far along such a continuum a particular property might be taken is a multi-faceted analysis to be undertaken by specialists taking account of planning regulations, golf architecture, the club’s commercial planning and wider leisure industry interests.