While Capitol Hill wrestles with granting approval of banking access for the fledgling but poised to explode marijuana industry, another green-based business — golf course management — wrestles with a crisis that desperately cries for reinvention.
I live in Colorado and, along with Washington, our state has moved to legalize marijuana purchase and use. The state government has wrangled on how to administer the will of the people while preserving two primary objectives: maximizing tax revenue and minimizing the gang influence and illegal drug trade have on home soil.
Tax revenues cannot be maximized without banking access — specifically electronic payments — which to this point have been illegal to those associated with marijuana. Weed merchants cannot bank; and therefore theirs remains a cash business. As long as the pot industry flows the way it always has — with cash as currency — there is zero chance tax revenues will come anywhere close to appropriate levels. Cash means the underworld thrives. Electronic banking legitimizes the industry and creates tracking and audit trails.
When state voters, by a wide margin, approved marijuana usage at the polls, an entire industry seemed to mushroom to life overnight. Stores were ready to open, inventory filled the shelves, ads were run in local street newspapers, and potheads ignited in celebration by the tens of thousands.
The pot industry’s overnight creation seemed to be an instant miracle. But all of the knowledge, inventory, logistical management, supply chain resources, and peripherals were in place long before any vote took place. Everything was already there, simply out of sight.
The weed business is a multi-billion dollar industry (estimates go up to $120 billion) which has strained law enforcement resources, clogged the courts, created social debate over compliance, and now seems to have benefited at the polls from the seeming inarguable position that someone high on marijuana is a lot less harmful than an angry drunk.
Meanwhile, the golf business, a different type of green industry also found throughout every town in America estimated to generate $76 billion annually — $25 billion in domestic goods — faces big problems virtually everywhere except for Asia, where the sport is growing rapidly.
Club membership is declining, revenues are dropping, and median and mean player age is increasing. Fewer young people are taking up the game, which means the funnel is not being refilled.
I recently returned from New Zealand, a small country that sports the second most golf courses per capita in the world, trailing only Scotland.
What happens in New Zealand, therefore, is a harbinger. The average age of Kiwi golfers who regularly play is 64; and clubs are struggling to reconcile the business math of increasing costs and declining revenues. Some clubs are selling portions of land to pay off debt, shortening holes to offset lost property. Others are trying to hold the line on membership costs and borrowing money to pay bills, forestalling the inevitable since they know that each hike in dues means more members out. Many are cutting way back on irrigation and maintenance, which devalues the property and playing experience.
Some clubs, like Auckland’s Remuera, are rebuilding their course one hole a year and the results are impressive. They have turned a good course into a great one, trusting that members will stay to play a premium product and guests will pay a premium for quality, too. So far their approach is working.
Another club in suburban Auckland, Manukau, is taking a boldly different tact, opting to sell off its old, historic tract in favor of building a new, modern facility five miles east that will be far better suited to serve a wide variety of players with an innovative approach to customer service.
The Manukau decision is bold and brave but presents what the club believes is its best chance at sustaining itself long term. Its focus is diversity and quality: to serve the young, the hurried, and new players, while better suiting those pressed for time and money with multiple start options (holes 1, 10, 12, and 15), along with an expanded putting, driving, and short game practice area that invites and encourages repetitive use.
Manukau is re-merchandising the entire golf experience — a bold and novel approach in an industry that has never operated that way.
The new course will be player friendly, its fairways generous, the rough cut to two levels, with 41 bunkers and 25 acres of water keeping things interesting. Tee choices will suit beginners as well as professionals.
Manukau’s members are all for it, believing this new approach to an improved golf experience is necessary to avoid the slow-dripping financial death the numbers are reporting at courses throughout the country. The members were involved in the planning process, which was done with great transparency, and are proudly looking forward to teeing it up on their course of the future when it opens for play in 2016.
What these two industry situations say about society — the explosive growth of a lazy man’s sedentary preferred impairment versus, as Mark Twain called golf, “A good walk spoiled” — time will tell.
The choice for me is easy — I’ll go play golf with friends and strangers who, after 18 holes, become new friends too. I don’t know anyone who has accomplished much in life with bloodshot eyes and a numb face but I respect the rights of all Americans to pick their vices of choice. If the bong bowl need burn like a fireplace, so be it.
These are disparate industries, one on the rise and one on the fall, and the direction each is heading does not seem fair.
Given four hours to reflect, I will lean on my Odyssey putter, listen to the songbirds, look at the flowers, and cherish the scenery.