Championship rates are listed at
http://www.thevillages.com/golf/cham...s_winter09.htm
I see that Non-residents pay the highest greens fee, Resident Guests save $10, Priority Guests save an additional $5, Resident Members save another $5, and Priority members save an additional $15. The spread between Joe Public coming in off the street and Resident Members is $20.
If prices at comparable local courses are $25-$30 it would seem that the higher prices for TV courses would keep Non-resident golfers off TV courses making more tee times available for residents.
If greens fees were still “a buck a hole” for residents of TV, as was mentioned in the first VHS tape I ever received from TV, then the courses would be swamped with requests for tee times and you wouldn’t be able to play them very often because there would be insufficient capacity for all who wanted to play. As it is now, the first thing someone says to me when I tell them we are considering TV for our retirement is that it is difficult to get a tee time.
It cost a set amount to build, operate, and maintain a golf course. A Palmer course must be very expensive to build because of the Palmer name. The Lopez courses must have cost more that a non-famous name design also. The owners must strike a balance between utilizing the full capacity of the course while making as much money as possible. As long as the coffers, the tee sheets, and parking lots are full they know they have struck the right balance.
If too many people vote with their feet and there is surplus capacity at the championship courses, they might close the course and build more houses on that land as the “highest and best” use of that land will no longer be a golf course.
I think TV may have changed from its original mission and may have gone “upscale” because that was what the whole country has done since the turn of the millennium. As we are seeing now, that “upscale-ness” cannot be sustained without inflated property values and over-extended credit. Those greens fees may come down over the next few years.