I’m not a big fan of the Survivor television series, but I know enough to understand that, until the very end, the competitors survive by forming allegiances. That is true of the rest of the animal kingdom. In the jungle, only the strong survive, and they typically do it by consolidating their efforts.
So it is in the supermarket of golf, Myrtle Beach, SC, where a current recession has collided with previous irrational exuberance to put independent golf course operators into survival mode. Those who don’t consolidate just might be thrown off the island.
My, how times have changed.
When I first visited the Grand Strand in 1969, I had a choice of 19 golf courses a short distance from the beach. I thought I was in heaven. Today, that number has grown to just over 100, which is actually down from 120 last decade. Total annual rounds fell more than 15% last year, and despite aggressive discounting this past winter, no one expects a dramatic turnaround soon. There are just too many golf courses to support local and vacation golfers, and too much competition from places like Pinehurst and the balmier Florida destinations, also hurting from the recession and offering hard to beat bargains.
The Thistle Club joined with other Brunswick County (NC) golf courses to form the Brunswick Isles Golf Trail. The move helps coordinate marketing activities.
A survival instinct has emerged among Myrtle Beach’s golf operators, forcing them into each other’s arms –- or into the arms of white knights from outside the area. A few multi-operator agreements have helped spread marketing costs. For example, courses on the south end of the Strand formed the Waccamaw Trail a few years ago, basically a way to entice package golfers to stay at Pawleys Plantation or Litchfield Beach for easiest access to the famed Caledonia Golf & Fish Club, True Blue or other local tracks. Likewise, a group of courses in Brunswick County (NC) formed the Brunswick Isles Golf Trail, which includes such excellent tracks as Oyster Bay, Tidewater, The Thistle Club and even Bald Head Island Golf Links, which is closer to Wilmington than to Myrtle Beach.
These arrangements are good for all, but provide only incremental improvements to cash flow. Relatively speaking, they are nibbles. More boldly, some local operators are using the
current recession to corner a few wounded golf courses (just to extend the jungle metaphor). Late last year, Myrtle Beach National, which already operated 11 local courses, took over the 27 holes at Wild Wing. (Before the recession, Wild Wing included three 18-hole courses but owners sold half the golf holes to a real estate developer.) Myrtle Beach National, which owns or manages the largest number of courses on the Grand Strand, is in negotiations with the owner of Pawleys Plantation to add that well regarded south Strand course to its portfolio. Also last year, Signature Golf acquired River Oaks, bringing to nine the number of courses it owns or manages in the area. Burroughs & Chapin, Myrtle Beach’s largest residential and commercial developer, owns or manages 10 courses of its own.
Even golf resorts have gotten into the act. The Legends Golf Resort decided in the last few years to bracket geographically its three core courses in Myrtle Beach with Oyster Bay, in Sunset Beach, NC, and Heritage Club, on the southern end in Pawleys Island.
A few singly owned courses remain on the Strand, but like the Meg Ryan character in “You’ve Got Mail” whose small neighborhood bookstore was put out of business by Tom Hanks’ conglomerate, they may be dying a noble death. Georgetown, SC’s Wedgefield Plantation, the most southerly course of all on the Grand Strand, went belly up at the end of 2008 only to be rescued by new owners last year. Despite an interesting Porter Gibson/Bob Toski layout, Wedgefield has a steep climb in order to survive; it is 10 miles beyond the next nearest course, the Founders Club in Pawleys Island, and doesn’t have the juice to attract enough package players. Its future may rely almost exclusively on local play. Georgetown, however, has an unemployment rate above the national average.
Private clubs are in just as fragile a position as public courses in Myrtle Beach, in some cases more so. A few years ago, I played the Surf Golf Club in North Myrtle Beach, which had made an atypical move from public to private course. (Myrtle Beach has only a half dozen strictly private courses.) I called today and asked if they were still private. “Oh, yes, the nice young lady answered, but we do accept outside play.” At a time when revenue is scarce, you can be sure Surf Club members do not mind the green fee players.
We have reported as recently as yesterday about The Reserve Club of Litchfield Beach, whose members voted overwhelmingly last year to throw themselves into the arms of a white knight, the McConnell Group, for just $1 in exchange for promises of course improvements and remaining private for the next decade. Those plans were tossed into a cocked hat when former members sued to get a portion of their equity payments back, which the bylaws stipulated but which current members and McConnell agreed would not be part of their deal.
Yesterday in a Charleston court, a bankruptcy judge decided he needed more information before a planned auction could proceed. The McConnell Group was the only registered bidder but today’s Myrtle Beach Sun News indicates that another local group, led by developer and course designer Larry Young, is interested in vying for The Reserve.
The judge says he will rule next week, but the clock is tolling for The Reserve…and other Myrtle Beach courses desperately seeking a white knight or another way out.
Pawleys Plantation (16th hole shown) is reportedly in the final stages of a sale to the Myrtle Beach National Group.