Once again, I have looked at green fee inflation on the top 100 UK golf courses and, once again, the results are sobering.

But first, a little bit on methodology. The rates compared are the rates for peak summer green fees at the top 100 golf courses in the UK who allow green fee play. The list is an amalgamation of the top 100 lists from Today’s Golfer, Golf Monthly, Top100golfcourses.com and National Club Golfer.

Most of the green fees are weekend rates, but some courses don’t allow unaccompanied visitors at weekends so, in those cases, I’ve taken the highest available weekday rate. Of course there will be special deals at some courses for twilight times and the like, but this seemed the best way to compare courses across the board.

This research was carried out over a few of weeks so some rates may have changed (and there is always the risk of errors from fat typing fingers) but here are the peak summer green fees, and the changes from last year.

Some Highlights

The average green fee has risen 12.3% this year, from £179 to £200. In 2021, the average was £161.
88 of the 100 courses increased their prices this year.
Only 5 of the top 100 clubs have green fees under £100 a round
The average rate for a top 25 course is now £288

Costs are up…

Of course, it’s important to understand some context for these increases. Inflation in the UK is running at 10.4%, so clubs are obviously having to pay more for materials, equipment and energy.

Here are the kinds of cost increases clubs are facing:

Sand: Up 15-23%
Fertiliser: Up 8-12%
Seed: Up 10%
Haulage: Up 15-20%

Brexit has taken millions of people out of the workforce and that impact is still being felt. One club told me the are paying 20% more for catering staff than they were in 2021, and are still finding it hard to recruit.

So, some clubs have had to put up green fees just to cover these cost increases and stay afloat.

But these increasing costs are far more of an issue for clubs with lower incomes.

Clubs with £100 green fees and not receiving many visitors are likely to be putting up their green fees in at attempt to balance the books and simply to survive. These are the ones we should be embracing.

But, for clubs with bigger budgets, the costs increases are less material to their overall P&L. In fact, as one committee member of a top 100 club told me, some clubs are increasing green fees ‘just because they can’.

The tourists are back

Visitors from overseas, particularly the US, have come back with a vengeance. Golfers from across the world are flocking back to play our golf courses. And they usually don’t mind paying an extra £50 to play. Such is the cost of some of those trips, it just gets lost in the rounding.

One tour operator put it to me like this, ‘A lot of foreign visitors have decided since Covid they will do whatever it takes to come to play in the UK and Ireland. Hotels, transport and green fees are all going up but I barely have a single discussion about the overall cost, they just want to know they can get on the courses’.

I have talked before about the weird phenomenon where some clubs have increased their green fees considerably over recent years because overseas visitors believe it must be a better course if it’s so expensive!

Courses are full

As a result, some of the top clubs are finding themselves with an embarrassment of riches. Royal County Down, Royal Portrush, Royal Dornoch, Muirfield and North Berwick have all had full tee sheets for 2023 for many months. But it’s not just them.

Many others clubs are turning guests away now too - basically, these top clubs are full. They could have charged £50 or £100 more for every tee time and it would have been the same. Golfers would still have booked them. But the clubs have all the green fee money that they want for the year, so they’ve closed their books. And let’s not forget their members are playing more than ever now, and reasonably expect to be able to get tee times on their own courses.

Leading to record profits

Many of the top clubs now rely on visitor green fees. For some, it’s not unusual to have 70%+ of their income from these green fees. The explosion in demand, irrespective of the record high green fees, means that some clubs have made record profits last year.

We are now seeing a new phenomenon where members are voting to keep their subscriptions flat while green fees go up.

Others are taking a different approach and reducing the number of visitor green fee tee times available. They can still make all the money they want from the overseas visitors, keep members’ fees down and increase availability of tee times for members.

‘But we don’t make profits’!!

This is a refrain you will hear from some clubs. They are mere custodians of the clubs for their members and profit is not their ambition. It’s a worthy statement but scratch away at it and it doesn’t always bear scrutiny.

Some clubs have got themselves in to a horribly vicious circle and, in order to justify the high green fees, they are spending money that maybe they don’t really need to.

One club manager told me recently that they were having to spend on a clubhouse project, not because the members thought it was needed, but because they thought that the overseas visitors expected a higher standard of furnishing for the green fee charged. Once you are on the green fee drug it’s hard to get off.

Too much money is a threat to our courses

It gets worse. There are some clubs sitting on so much cash, burning a hole in their pockets, that they start commissioning totally unnecessary course development projects. Such moves risk damaging the thing that got them into this position in the first case - the quality of their golf course.

Just shut up and be thankful?!

I am sure in the replies to my tweet this subject there will be some familiar responses. One will be ‘Just be thankful you can play the courses in the first place, you can’t play Augusta can you? Just shut up’. Another will be ‘It’s up to the clubs they say what they charge - it’s market forces’.

Of course both these are absolutely true. But they don’t change the fact that many of these top 100 courses are now simply out of reach of the average golfer, and that feels like a crying shame to me.

In 2000, the average cost to play one of these top 25 courses was £88. Had that price gone up with inflation it would now be £155. Instead it’s £288. Playing the top courses has become a rich man’s game.

What’s a golfer to do?

If you can’t get onto one of these top 100 courses this year, either because it’s too expensive or because they’re booked solid, I would absolutely encourage you to find a course a little bit down the perceived pecking order. You’ll probably find a course where your green fee will absolutely make a difference to the success of the club, where they will spend it on things they need, possibly to survive.

Today’s Golfer’s list of the best courses under £60 is a good start.

A plea to clubs

Here’s an idea. Why don’t clubs take one week a year when domestic golfers can get access at a reasonable rate? I don’t mean a week in November or February, but maybe May or September. What about courses where the current visitor green fee is over £200 all choosing a week when visitors can play for, say £75 per person instead?

The impact on their P&L would be negligible but it would mean that more people would have a chance to see these great courses at their peak. I wonder if anywhere is brave enough to give it a go?