A golf course operator is touting membership at multiple courses it runs in New York and New Jersey in a drive to increase corporate memberships from business people and companies who want to entertain clients near where they live.
Empire Golf Management, a Pomona-based company that designs and builds courses, created its Club Max USA program to manage joint memberships to four metropolitan New York City courses it owns, as well as two in southern New Jersey and one in Royal Palm Beach, Fla. The company owns Hollow Brook Golf Club in Cortlandt Manor.
Over the half decade it has been building up its Club Max program, Empire Golf Management has signed up 1,500 members, during a period when public and private golf clubs have been battling declining interest in the sport even as new courses have sprouted linked to residential developments.
Similar to fractional memberships in time-share properties, the strategy allows a club to appeal to a broader cross section of potential members. New York City-based Tour GCX offers membership in more than 30 courses nationwide, about half of them in the New York City area and last month signed an endorsement deal with PGA star Jim Furyk. According to Fortune magazine, Tour GCX has not published the names of its member courses in the past in order not to spook traditional members who do not want to see “part time” golfers teeing up.
The industry needs all the participants it can get. In a 2007 survey of its members, the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America found that 77 percent of those polled blamed commitments to work and family as the primary factor why golfer participation hasn”™t grown in recent years, and 67 percent cited the amount of time it takes to play a round, mindful of other social commitments.
Just 57 percent attributed the decline to the cost of memberships and fees, a perhaps surprisingly low number given survey results published by USA Today last week showing that initiation fees for private clubs average $50,000.
Many courses have increased the interactivity of their Web sites to ensure that patrons get updates on tee time availability and other information affecting the pace of play.
In a bid to increase memberships, at least a few clubs nationally have “outsourced” their membership sales to golf management companies ”“ a once-unthinkable prospect for the country club set.
Empire Golf has been tinkering with various membership programs in the past year to make it more financially feasible for people to join, given the economic realities facing both the golf industry and the region.
“The golf market is very oversaturated,” said Rudy Virga, Empire Golf Management”™s director of operations who attended Central Connecticut State University on a golf scholarship.
“I think we are ahead of the curve with private membership (in multiple courses).”
Virga distinguishes the Club Max concept from more informal reciprocal arrangements many clubs use, in which members at Club A can play at Club B on a limited basis and vice versa.
Under Club Max”™s corporate program, a company”™s employees can designate a “home” course in the region, but can also play the other courses.
“If the company is spread out, they can pick the club closest to them,” Virga said.
Club Max has no current plans to acquire a Connecticut course to add to its portfolio, he added.
