Grand Valley golf courses count 2008 as one of their best years for revenue in recent history.
But as people stopped making green in 2009, visits to the green became a luxury for some.
People moving away from the area, job losses and a long winter that pushed back the number of days golfers could play last fall and early this spring didn’t help patronage, Chipeta Golf Course General Manager Doug Dominguez said. A long winter cut February out of the course’s season and contributed to course revenue so far this year being 10 percent below totals for the first half of 2009, he said.
Dominguez said the club’s leagues have received a boost in membership, but fewer people are buying drinks and snacks from the clubhouse, and he has ordered less merchandise for the course’s shop. That contrasts starkly with the club’s record year, 2008, when Dominguez regularly saw the course packed with players willing to buy a round of beer.
“I would have so many energy and construction workers out here in the afternoons and on weekends, and that has curtailed,” he said.