How much did you pay for your last round of golf?
If you played Sharp Parkjust south of San Francisco – the only municipal coastal course in the country designed by Alistair MacKenzie – your green fees totaled $86. That’s roughly a fifth of what it costs to play Hobbythe next closest site with public access is MacKenzie, 50 miles down the coast.
Both courses share a designer but differ greatly in conditions, atmosphere, clientele and layout. The price gap of around $350 reflects this. However, for all that separates them, the properties represent just two points on a spectrum that stretches far in both directions, from small fees of $5 in the local municipality to north of $1,000 at the higher end. This wide range is a hallmark of a game that is thriving like never before.
Between 2019 and 2025, golf participation in the United States grew by 41 percent and is now approaching 50 million participants, according to the National Golf Foundation (NGF), which counts participants as people who played either on a green or at an off-course facility such as a golf course. a field or simulator. Annual rounds played have reached record numbers. But that headline figure obscures another statistic worth noting: market research shows that 7 to 8 percent of golfers account for roughly 80 percent of total in-game spending. The boom is real, but it is not evenly distributed, an imbalance that helps explain what has happened to prices.
The increase, of course, hardly counts as bad news. But that has come with complaints, and not just from golfers who have to wake up earlier, or click sooner, to capture a moment on their favorite course. A common sentiment among consumers is that gaming costs have gotten out of control.
The data, at least at the national level, tell a more sober story. A recent NGF analysis of public access rates found that from 2019 to 2025, average green fees rose by around 29 per cent, an increase largely at the pace of inflation and relatively modest by sports and entertainment standards. By comparison, the NGF reported, the cost of attending an NFL game has risen about 50 percent over the past six years. The price of a movie ticket has increased by about 60% over the same period.
Such aggregate photos can be valuable. There is much to learn from them. However, there are limits to what they show.
“The national numbers are huge,” says Jon Last, founder and president of Sports and Leisure Research Group, a New York-based marketing research consultancy. “But they only get you so far if you don’t have a good understanding as a facility operator of what your specific situation can handle.”
A more detailed portrait reveals what Last describes as a “hyper-local reality”—a picture that shifts dramatically from one zip code to another, and one that reflects a K-shaped economy running through American life. The rich are getting richer, and they are spending accordingly. This is most evident in the proliferation of high-end private clubs with small memberships and exorbitant fees. But public access numbers also show this phenomenon. Since 2019, NGF reports, average resort green fees have increased 36 percent, with average peak season rates at those properties now exceeding $100. The figure does not account for a list of variables, including seasonal discounts and recurrence rates. But no matter how you slice it, it’s significantly more than the average of just over $41 in municipal and day courses.
What’s true in other sectors, from air travel to automobiles, also applies to golf: the price gap grows faster the higher the rate of spending.
As the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the game widens, the middle of the market risks thinning out. The most at-risk courses in the current climate are private, daily-fee properties near big cities, where land and labor are expensive. Those are the ones most likely to close, says Jay Karen, CEO of the National Golf Course Owners Association (NGCOA), and are unlikely to be replaced.
“Nobody I know is building an 18-hole daily fee golf course in a high population area,” says Karen. “No more pencil to do it with.”
Distance courses are a different story. The distance golf craze is due in part to the quality of the designs and the beauty of the settings. But he’s also driven by a less romantic factor: those are the places where golf makes business sense. Location, location, location. Call it a new spin on an old rule.
As for green fees, Karen says the rising numbers need context. During a 15-year stretch from 2005 to 2019, when golf participation was largely flat or declining, prices lagged behind the cost of living. In real terms, the game became cheaper. The fact that courses now pay more does not mean that they are in high profits or prices. Many are simply playing catchup, either pouring money into deferred improvements or putting them aside for a rainy day, such as the day the irrigation system finally gives up.
“Goalies for the most part don’t realize how expensive it is to run a course,” says Karen. “The truth is, if you want your course to stick, you have to pay a reasonable price for it.”
In past generations, golf course development was driven primarily by real estate: subdivisions with floor plans stitched through them. Those days are gone, Karen says, and they’re not coming back, “unless we want to start building course housing in the middle of nowhere, which I don’t see happening.”
What supply might look like in future generations ranks high on Karen’s list of concerns. The viable path forward, many in the industry agree, runs through public land. Karen and others see the municipal sector as the game’s most sustainable outlet for keeping traditional golf within reach of the average golfer. Not only is the NGCOA bullish on munis, but private supporters have also gotten behind them, in initiatives clearly aimed at keeping high-quality golf affordable and accessible. Projects like Patch in AugustaThe park in West Palm Beach and Cobbs Creek in Philadelphia have attracted serious capital and ambition.
This is a sunny side of the story. At the same time, Karen says, “we’re also hearing pain points” caused by the post-Covid boom: packed sheets, for example, squeezing discounted youth programs and players who can’t book at all. No one wants to see their neighborhood course become like the restaurant Yogi Berra once turned down: so popular that no one goes there anymore. Access remains a stubborn issue. Alt golf venues – short courses, simulator ranges, gamified areas and such – have tackled it on the margins. The traditional game is working hard to keep up.
Further complicating consumer patterns is a shift that economics alone does not capture. Since the pandemic, and against a backdrop of global volatility, consumers across a range of income groups are increasingly prioritizing leisure time now, says the Last of Sports and Leisure Research Group. Even players who have never studied Latin appreciate the phrase carpe diemand they are acting upon it, whether or not their wages are equal to their expenses. How long this will continue is impossible to know. But in the meantime, the industry continues to add to its catalog of sprays.
The result is a different kind of bifurcation—not separate rules and equipment for pros and amateurs, but different experiences for golfers.
Does a round count as a bargain or extravagance? It’s complicated. But as Karen sees it, such complications are a strength of the industry.
“Golfers have all kinds of motivations for where they play and why, and price is just one variable,” he says. “The complexity of golf’s economics has allowed it to survive over time. If we were a monolith, and prices suddenly fell off a cliff, we could see disaster. But somehow for 150 years, we’ve had an industry that has ebbed and flowed and changed with time and people. And I think that will continue.”
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