I can believe that the Palmer organization is upset having Arnie's name on such a poor course that it has become, but as I understand it our amenity fees do not pay for championship course maintenance.

And while the cost of playing our championship courses (if you use your won cart) is not as expensive as playing the upper end of other resort/public courses, the value for what you pay here is often surpassed by many muni's and resort courses across the country. I recently played Patriots Point in Charleston and paid $45 (with cart) and their course conditions far surpassed what Palmer had become.

Recognizing of course, that most other golf courses do not have what is pretty much a captive audience (due to the convenience of being able to drive your cart to each of them) and may therefore have to try harder to attract players, it still seems that they should be able to afford better upkeep.

That's my $.02 worth anyway. :shrug:

Played Torry to Erin yesterday, didn't see anything that would be described as terrible.

I don't understand the comparison of TV courses with courses all over the country....its apples and oranges.
Way to many factors to effect the cost to play.
Besides the travel cost to Charleston kinda defeats the $45 fee.

ColdNoMore: I played championship courses in TV twice a week when I first arrived then did the out of the bubble thing and never did I concern myself with golf fees because I knew going in and still chose to play there.

My question and perhaps it lacked clarity is if all this about Palmer's is true then will championship fees at palmers go up. Palmers is already $10 more than other courses here. and if Palmer's raises its fees will that start a chain reaction?? don't know if it is a problem??

As to amenity fees while in writing it says they can't go up there are always ways around "can't" there is always something that cause a "drift"

In fairness to the golf Admin these courses get really hard play and many golfers are not doing their due diligence in keeping with tee boxes, fairways and greens protocols

The cost of executive golf is included in your amenity fee.

Petty

I have lived here for 7 years and this year is by far the worst conditions. When we first moved here, the greens were never this bad. The championship courses are not much better. It is really disappointing. The common area flowers look great, the rec centers are fantastic, the Sharon Theater is spectacular, but our usually wonderful golf courses look terrible. I recently played Ocala National for $25 and it was in great shape. It's not the weather, it's the new company they hired to maintain the courses.

No question the Executive courses get as much play as any in the world. Some, but certainly not all, of poor green condition is lack of golf etiquette in not fixing ball marks. True story---I fixed four to five every green the last several times I played an executive course and could of fixed more. Disgraceful. And I might add a distraction to those that fix their ball marks.

Perhaps, it would help if several thousand ball mark tools were given away at all golf courses at the starter shacks to emphasized the need to fix ball marks on the course greens. I would bet that half of golfers don't even carry a ball mark tool. Enough said.

Great idea! One would think some of the companies here in The Villages would take this as a great opportunity to place thier names on the divot repair tools.

I gave up playing golf about seven years ago because of some physical issues. Recently I thought that I'd try to see if I could play nine holes of executive golf twice a week and see how it felt.

So far I've played three different courses. Two were deplorable and the third was horrendous.

We've got 60,000 households paying about $1,700 per year. That's $102 million. I would think that there should be enough money in the budget to take care of 324 par three holes in at least reasonable condition.

I worked at a nine hole par 72 golf course and our budget was about $500,000. Taking care of executives is less expensive because you don't have expansive fairways to maintain. I don't know what portion of the amenities money is budgeted toward executive golf, but I would think that $18 million out of $102 million would be out of the question. Based on my experience it shouldn't even take that much. Eliminate fairway and rough maintenance and you might be talking $400,000 or less per course. If they're spending that much money they are getting ripped off.

I don't expect Augusta National, but the condition that I see hear are unacceptable to me.

We did that at a course that I worked at and it helped a lot.

I would also like to see the Good Golf School made mandatory for anyone that wants to play golf. But the problems here are way beyond people not fixing ball marks. In fact, the fact that the greens are so bad encourages people not to fix them. Many people feel that there's no point in fixing ball marks on greens that are so bad. It's been proven that when greens are in great shape, people tend to respect them more.

Tell us all how much it costs to play a nine hole course here. If you drive your own cart?

Then compare that to a nine hole course. ANYWHERE.

Gracie, the cost of golf is included in your amenities fees. We are all paying for golf whether we play or not. Under this system it is impossible to determine the cost of a round. People who play a lot of golf pay less per round than people that don't play very often. Residents that don't play golf at all are paying for others to play.

It's the same with all of the amenities. You are still paying for the pool tables and the shuffle board courts even if you don't use them.

As far a cart fees on the executive courses, it is either $4.00 per round or $141.00 for an unlimited number of rounds in a year.

I worked at a nine hole club up north with an annual dues under $2,000. For that you got to play unlimited golf on a par 36 golf course in excellent condition. We also had an annual cart fee of about $700 for which you could ride an unlimited number of rounds. Of course we had a nine month season, but several members played every day during that season. Some got in as many as 250 rounds, most of which were eighteen holes.

They may advertise golf as FREE, but the reality is that we all pay for golf.

:agree: