THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 28, 1996 TAG: 9606280607
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: GOLF IN HAMPTON ROADS: LIVING ON THE LINKS
SOURCE: BY STEVE CARLSON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 117 lines
If you want to play golf on the weekend, chances are you will pay for it sometime during the week.
Getting a choice tee time can be the hardest part of a game already fraught with difficulty. Anyone who has ever spent half an hour dialing, and redialing, a golf course at the prescribed time to call for weekend slots - only to finally get through and discover all the prime ones are booked - already knows Hampton Roads has a shortage of courses.
But if you doubt it, here's a peek at the scorecard from the National Golf Foundation:
Hampton Roads ranked 259th out of 309 metropolitan areas surveyed in 1995 for holes per 100,000 residents. That puts us in the bottom 16th percentile.
The national average for a metropolitan area is 75 holes per 100,000 residents. Hampton Roads has 59 holes per 100,000 residents.
In golf parlance, it's an unplayable lie, with no nearest point of relief in sight.
Nationwide, 468 courses opened last year, the most ever. Bayville, a new private club in Virginia Beach, is the only course to open in South Hampton Roads in the past seven years. Hampton and Newport News have both seen just one opening each in seven years.
There have been discussions recently about golf course development in Virginia Beach, Norfolk and Chesapeake. Virginia Beach, with designs on becoming a golf destination for tourists, has appointed a golf study committee to solicit and review proposals from developers for up to six new courses.
But no one is ready to move dirt. Meanwhile, we're getting left in the dust.
``In the seven years we haven't had any new courses, Myrtle Beach has probably had 20 of them,'' Hell's Point pro Tom Stevenson said.
Of the 34 courses in South Hampton Roads, Hampton and Newport News, 14 are private or military. That leaves 20 courses to choose from for the rest of the golfers in an area of 1.6 million people. Among those 20 is a dearth of what could be considered championship courses.
Throw in the tourists who bring their sticks along on a vacation at the beach, and the course clog intensifies. The National Golf Foundation numbers do not even factor in the tourist trade.
``We could stand more courses that the average golfer can afford to play,'' said Ronnie Burroughs, the Newport News director of parks and recreation.
Burroughs knows what the average golfer has to do to get on the two highly regarded municipal courses he oversees.
Last year, a man who got off work at the Fort Eustis military base at 3 a.m. went straight to the golf course once a week and slept at the front gate. He wanted to guarantee he would be first in line on the morning Deer Run accepted weekend tee times.
``I don't think a normal person would do that,'' Burroughs said.
But the normal scene on a Thursday morning at 7 a.m. at the Newport News Golf Club - home of Deer Run and The Cardinal - is pandemonium. That's when weekend tee times are up for grabs.
Burroughs said on a recent Thursday, 32 people were in line at the clubhouse by 7 a.m., and some had been waiting since 5:30. The phones ring incessantly, and the person taking times rotates by giving a time to someone in line and then one to a caller.
``That's probably my No. 1 complaint from our residents around here is it's almost impossible to get a tee time on weekends,'' Burroughs said.
All over the area, the scene is repeated weekly to some degree in pro shops. Call it golf's rush hour.
``They do fill up quick,'' said Phil Stewart, the head pro at Virginia Beach's three municipal courses - Red Wing, Bow Creek and Kempsville Greens. ``We could use a few more courses.''
The National Golf Foundation reports that the national median for daily fee courses is 33,000 rounds played per year. The organization list the median for daily fee courses in Hampton Roads at 39,500 rounds.
The jammed courses translate into slow play, particularly on the weekends when most people are able to get out. Most courses make carts mandatory on weekends during peak times to speed up play, something the three city-run courses in Virginia Beach began doing this year.
``That seems to be helping to keep things moving,'' Stewart said.
Of course, that jacks up the price to play as well. Local golfers are used to increasing costs, as more and more courses that were once owned by municipalities are being sold off to private ownership companies.
``Consequently, the price of golf has gone up because they are now private enterprise and are not subsidized by tax money,'' said pro J.B. Sangiacomo at Suffolk's Sleepy Hole, which used to be run by the city of Portsmouth before it was sold to R&A of Virginia.
Private enterprise must tread carefully on the emerald carpet. True, there is a shortage of courses in this area. But does that translate into the folks paying a few bucks to play a crowded Lake Wright dropping $40-$50 to go play a new championship-caliber course?
Hell's Point's Stevenson isn't so sure. His course, one of the few championship-caliber layouts around that is open to the public, considered building another course recently. The owners decided it might not be able to make it financially.
That, Stevenson speculates, may be a primary reason why it's not uncommon for work on a new course to be up and running, only to stall at some point during the project.
``There doesn't seem to be enough of a market to warrant building a championship course where you could charge enough for greens fees to get your money back,'' Stevenson said. ``Nobody has been able to make it work, obviously. There aren't any being built.
``If you ask golfers around here, they'd probably like to see more championship courses. But if you ask developers and golf course managers, they'd probably say there's not enough evidence to make a go of it.'' ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
D. KEVIN ELLIOTT/Staff
A LOOK AT GOLF COURSES IN SOUTH HAMPTON ROADS, HAMPTON AND NEWPORT
NEWS
Compiled by STEVE CARLSON
The Virginian-Pilot
Chart by DAVE PATON
The Virginian-Pilot
[For a copy of the chart, see page C6 of The Virginian-Pilot for
this date.]
KEYWORDS: GOLF COURSES by CNB