The winter pricing for a round of golf
 

Is anyone besides me angry about paying $46.00 for a round of golf, when you can go "Ouside The Resort" and pay $25.00 to $35.00 and in some cases get a free lunch ? I am, and I'm staging a one person protest by not playing any Championship courses here until the prices drop.

Mark

Don't be angry, it's not healthy. I find the courses outside for less are generally not as good AND you have to drive to them, which is OK if that's what you want to do. If you are not going to play a Championship course until the price drops I'm afraid you may never play one again. Or you can do like me and play the executive courses for FREE, much easier on your pocket book and your psyche (sp?).............GN

PW,

I guess you will have to wait for the summer prices. Otherwise, you're out of luck. :undecided:

Never paid that high a fee as a priority member.............enjoy your travels.;)

Even without the priority membership the highest price for 18 is Palmer which is $56 (as you mentioned the others average about $46) during this high season and you can use your own golf cart.

During my high season (Jun-Sep) the cheapest I pay is $60 with a cart ($51 walking) That is my regular course but most others are $75 and up with $100 not uncommon.

It's all about supply and demand. From what I can read about the furor over the t-time system fees, it isn't exactly easy to get a foursome during the high season.

How about playing 9 holes for half price? Is that available?

Or play the tougher execs for 'free'.

Or you can play surrounding courses as mentioned. As you probably know there are Villagers who organize outside golf leagues. I just looked at their website and the average price is about $44 for Harbor Hills, Sanctuary Ridge, StoneCreek etc. It's FLORIDA there are always options.

Russ Is Right
 

It's all about supply and demand. The courses near TV are cheaper because they're not as good, not as well maintained, or because not enough people want to play them. Do you think you could find very many public courses in south Florida this time of year for only $56? Not likely.

Then, what do the golf courses up north charge during their shorter season? The range in suburban Chicago for private daily fee courses was from about $100 to well into three digits. Heck, they're building a "name" course near our home in southwest Michigan that's going to charge charge $350 a day. That'll make the third course within a 25 mile radius that charges more than $300 a day.

It seems to me that high season golf in Florida for $56 is a bargain. Come back in July and you can play here for $20.

Thanks VK - I tell myslef that everyday;)

It's all about supply and demand. From what I can read about the furor over the t-time system fees, it isn't exactly easy to get a foursome during the high season.

How about playing 9 holes for half price? Is that available?



For what it's worth my friends and I (3-foursomes) play several times per week. We are all priority members since during the prime winter season even 1 non-priority in your group lowers your chances of t-times.

9 hole play is available from 1:30 - 2:00 through the t-time system; also all championship courses have open play (first come first served) from 4pm and later by calling the course day of play. It's unlimited, pay for 9 and keep going until dark.

Who can play at the country clubs of The Villages?
 

Being new to TOTV please excuse me if this has been addressed in another thread:

Who may play at TV country clubs? Are they open just to persons with a TV number or can a person who lives outside the community call and make a tee time?

If you are playing with other like-minded, friendly neighbors (other "Villagers") in an atmostphere of common "membership" in the country clubs, to which you can drive to in your golf cart and use your own golf cart on the course, that, to me would be preferable to going "off-campus" to save a few bucks. Myself, I'm looking to live an uncomplicated lifestyle. Seems to me getting the priority membership and paying a trail fee would be the way to go.

My regular foursome has taken regular golf trips in March to play in the Orlando area (Kissimmee, really) for the last several years.

Are the best TV courses equal to, say, Falcon's Fire or Orange County National or Mission Inn or Champion's Gate or Celebration or Grand Cypress or the Disney courses? We averaged $100/round at the courses we played last year.

I've also played Swiss Fairways and Palisades. They were $25-$30, and were OK, but were nothing to write home about. I know the greens fee at Remington in Kissimmee includes some food, but that's a heck of a drive from TV. Orange County National greens fees used to include lunch, but they stopped that as of January 2008.

BTW, can you walk the Championship courses or must you use a golf cart?

For the most part, The Villages golf courses don't come close to courses like the Disney courses. Palmer is very nice right now, but the condition of all the courses seem to vary depending on the season. We played last Spring and Palmer was quite dried out in places, although the greens were nice. Lately Mallory and Havana have been hard like concrete, although I'm hoping the recent rain softened things up a bit. There are quite a number of very nicely conditioned courses in the area just outside of The Villages that run specials for around $30-$35, that include cart. If you do the math, that is cheaper than taking out a priority membership. The downside is you have to drive to them. There is another thread that talks about local courses off campus: https://www.talkofthevillages.com/fo...ad.php?t=19512

As I've said before, golf in The Villages may be cheaper than what you've paid in New York City or Chicago or south Florida, but by my research of central Florida standards, is not cheap. I was told in a previous post that if I didn't like it I should leave. Just for the record, when I made my decision to live here, it was based on a variety of factors, considering the pluses and minuses. The pluses won out, at least for now.

I'll answer what I can from my knowledge as a TV visitor:

I have never seen anyone walking the Championship courses... that is an excellent question because I prefer to walk... I hope we get an answer and I hope it is OK to walk them.... I assumed one couldn't

You can walk the Champioship courses, I see people do it all the time, but on some (Palmer for instance) there are some long walks between the green and the next tee.

IMO, Championship courses here are as nice as Disney....GN

Many people posting on this thread keep referring to the high prices they paid when they were living in their pre-retirement State. Granted, the prices were higher there. This is a retirement community. People are lured here by low prices. Unfortunately, the prices are no longer lower than outside courses. I came here 7+ years ago and the hype was that you could play the Championship Courses for a dollar a hole ($18). Seven + years later, no such thing exists. If you think $56 to play Palmer is OK now, wait a few years when your income is a bit lower than it is now. You, too, will be complaining that prices are too high. They get you here, and, then WHACK you with price increases. Pity the poor golfers in the Historic Side of 441 who were lured here with free to just plain cheap golf. In just 7 short years I and my spouse have been priced out of the golf game on Championship courses. Thank God for the Executive Courses. If not for them, we would never play golf again. Each year higher income newbees move into the Villages thinking that things are cheap, only to find a few years later that the even higher income people moving in are finding that ever increasing prices are reasonable for them. Hang around, you satisfied golfers, unless you hit Power Ball, you, too, will be complaining in a couple of years.

Supply and demand...it is always about supply and demand...
 

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.