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It's not like home where the have's play the $100 courses or join the $5k country clubs and the have not's golf after 3pm on the cheap.
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Wellll.... yes it sort of is.
The country club green fees are fairly expensive and people who cannot afford to play on them play on the par three courses for free. I was told when I came here that there were 30 odd "Executive Courses". These are actually nine hole par three courses. The definition of executive course that I learned was simply a shorter course with par threes, fours and fives. What they call executive courses here are actually nine hole par threes with in some cases one or two very short par fours. This is the free golf for life that is advertised.
The "championship" courses, (another term that is often misused) have a green fee of somewhere around $50.00. Not bad in today's world, but if someone wants to play full sized golf every day, that $350 a week or over $18,000 per year. That's dues for some of the finest most expensive private country clubs in the world and a lot of money to play public golf courses. Albeit very good public golf courses.
I no longer play golf because of physical issues, but I have friends who play down here and go outside The Villages when they want to play full size courses. I find that kind of sad.
What surprises me down here is that there are no full size golf courses that offer golf for an annual dues like back home. What they call country clubs here, (another misused and deceptive term) are actually just restaurants located near the "championship" golf courses. Again, these restaurants are open to the general public. You don't even have to be a Villages resident to eat in them.
Where I come from, championship golf courses are 7,000 yards long and have usually had some kind of national championship or PGA tour event played on them. A country club is usually a private, member's only club where one pays an annual dues and possibly an initiation fee for the privilege of playing unlimited golf. None of that seems to exist around here.
Now, please don't get me wrong. I love The Villages and if I played golf, I'd be happy playing the free golf courses and maybe one of the championship courses once or twice a month. But, to me this is one of the few things that is not as advertised.
Getting back to the post that I quoted; there are a lot of people that cannot afford to play the championship courses and play the executive courses all the time. It's not a case where everyone has equal golf opportunities. If you don;t have a lot of money, you are not going to play with the wealthy people on the championship courses. If you are, it might be once is a while.