Tom Doak is moving dirt in the Panhandle for Michael Keiser. Greg Norman just opened the first new championship course in South Florida in over 25 years. Streamsong is adding another one. Florida is in its biggest golf building boom in two decades, and the numbers behind it are wild.
Rounds played hit a national record last year for the fourth time in five years. Twenty-nine million Americans played on an actual golf course. More than eight million of them were women and girls, an all-time high and up 46 percent since 2019. If the game grows another four percent this year, the U.S. crosses 50 million golfers for the first time ever.
Florida is the center of all of it. We have roughly 1,260 courses. Only three countries on the planet have more golf than this one state.
So here is the catch.
Almost none of the new construction is for you. The pipeline is private clubs, resorts and high-end real estate. Chris Karamitsos of Leisure Investment Properties Group told us on Let's Go Low that a new master-planned community course in the Tampa area can carry an initiation fee reaching $175,000.
But he also said something that stuck with us. Golf is recession-proof, because when money gets tight golfers do not quit. They just find a cheaper tee time.
And the cheaper tee times are getting better. Delray Beach is putting $30 million into restoring a Donald Ross muni. Saddlebrook is in a $92 million rebuild. Bobby Jones in Sarasota already came back and became the model. Public golf in Florida is getting real money for the first time in a generation, and that is the story that actually decides whether your kid plays this game.
We broke the whole thing down for Sports Talk Florida.
Read the full article on Sports Talk Florida
Let's Go Low
