Golf courses on the Grand Strand constantly search for ways to set themselves apart from the other nearly 120 layouts in the area.
In that regard, Whispering Pines Golf Club has it easy.
The course, located on the site of the former Myrtle Beach Air Force Base, is the only municipal golf course on the Grand Strand.
The area's lone city-owned course, initially acquired by the Myrtle Beach municipality through a lease agreement in 1993 after the base closed, is now attempting the difficult task of maintaining its niche in a competitive and saturated marketplace.
"Our first and foremost [objective] was to provide residents with an opportunity to play golf at a reasonable rate at a good facility, and give them access to tee times," said Richard Kirby, Whispering Pines' general manager since the city acquired the course. "Things have changed a bit over time."
Whispering Pines was profitable through its first eight years, before the course landscape became overcrowded, rounds in the market declined and discounted local rates became commonplace, drawing from the course's core customer base.
When the course lost money in the fiscal years of 2001-02 and 2002-03, some Myrtle Beach City Council members began discussing alternatives.
"If it were to continue to lose money, and I don't know that it will, then I would want to look at other options," said councilwoman Susan Grissom Means. "I just don't feel I would be comfortable if we had to subsidize the golf course on a continuing basis."
In the past several months, with new marketing strategies and a record number of spring rounds played on the Strand for the months of March, April and May, the course has begun operating at a profit again.
"If we make money or break even, everyone is happy," said Jimmy Walters, director of cultural and leisure services for the city of Myrtle Beach. "If we're losing money, then some people have concerns."
A product of the military
Nine holes of Whispering Pines were built in 1962 by military personnel. In 1986, the Texas design firm of Finger, Dye and Spann added nine holes and renovated the previous nine, creating the 6,731-yard, par-72 course that exists today.
The golf course covers nearly 200 acres, including about 85 acres of turf that is maintained. e rest are woods, lakes and wildlife habitat.
The city began leasing the course through the military on an annual basis in April 1993. The Air Force couldn't release it to the National Parks Service, which handles the Federal Lands to Parks Program for the U.S. Department of the Interior, until it cleaned up dumps and pollution on the property.
The city was a caretaker of the layout, performing minimum maintenance, for six months before receiving permission in September 1993 to operate the course. It opened in November '93 after extensive work was completed, and course officials borrowed a total of more than $600,000 from the city within the first couple years to refurbish the property.
"This place, when we took it over from the Air Force, was far from being ready to be a public golf course," Kirby said. "We had to bring it up to normal standards of golf in Myrtle Beach."
Improvements included new cart paths, course maintenance equipment, a maintenance building, a fuel facility and fuel dispensing system, and new sewer and water pump systems. Workers also had to be hired and pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers purchased.
"People say they gave you the golf course for free," Kirby said. "And my response to that is we didn't get it for free, but we got a real good deal on it."
It wasn't until September 2001 that the city claimed the property from the Department of the Interior through a quitclaim deed.
A changing customer base
Like most munis, Whispering Pines had an initial goal to provide tee times and affordable greens fees for locals, as well as the added ability to supplement its income with tourist play to help keep resident rates at $25 or below.
As the Myrtle Beach market flourished, Whispering Pines was financially successful throughout the 1990s. According to city figures, it hosted more than 50,000 rounds three times in four years in the late '90s, peaking with 54,350 in the fiscal year of 1996-97, when locals accounted for nearly 34,000 rounds. The next three years saw local play remain near or above 30,000 rounds a year.
"Back in '93, the locals weren't treated like they're being treated now," Walters said. "That's really why we were so successful when we first started."
A building boom that flooded the Myrtle Beach market with 40 courses between 1994 and 2001 diluted profits from tourist play and made local play in the slower summer and winter months more attractive, resulting in a proliferation of reduced local rates.
By 2000-01, Whispering Pines' 45,700 rounds were nearly split between resident and outside play.
"We proved from the very beginning we could take the local business and make it a viable opportunity," Kirby said. "... The local market became a very lucrative market the golf courses couldn't ignore any more. We've had to adjust our philosophy of where are we going to get our business from. What we've had to do in order to continue paying the bills is adjust our operation so we could go after more of the non-resident rounds."
Kirby created a business plan a couple years ago to attract more visitor and package play.
In the past year, Whispering Pines has joined the Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday marketing cooperative and the Grand Strand Tee Time Network to be included in their marketing and increase tourist and package play. It's hosting two rounds of the DuPont World Amateur Handicap Championship and three Golf Holiday Summer Family Fun Tournaments, and also recently began sending players off both the first and 10th tees in the mornings to increase the number of coveted times available in the spring, summer and fall.
"We made some fundamental changes in the way we operate to accommodate more of that outside play," Kirby said.
Whispering Pines' rounds have been down to about 36,000 in each of the past three years, but after the rounds were nearly split between local and outside play in 2001-02, outside rounds have accounted for about 56 percent of the rounds played in 2002-03 and the 2003-04 fiscal year that ended in June.
Maintaining local access
While Whispering Pines has been forced to chase tourist play to survive, it still caters to locals.
"We're changing our marketing direction a little bit, but we're also still doing things that we can to benefit the local residents," Kirby said. "They can still get a tee time for the most part whenever they want one."
Whispering Pines is one of the few Strand courses that offers local rates during the peak seasons, and doesn't block off times exclusively for tourist play during the spring and fall. And local rates for residents of Horry and Georgetown counties are as low year-round as you'll find them, at between $25 and $29, including carts and taxes.
Non-resident walk-in rates range from $27 in an off-peak afternoon to about $60 in a peak period morning.
"Our rates are competitive ... with the other golf courses in Myrtle Beach we feel are in our quality and caliber of golf course," Kirby said. "We are not the cheapest golf course in town, never have been and probably never will be."
The course also has 60 members paying an $1,800 annual fee - members peaked at 125 around 1999 - as well as about 250 holders of a premier discount card that costs $60 a year and features rounds between $22 and $26.
Snowbirds are offered three- and 10-round discount cards, and Whispering Pines participates in the Grand Strand Senior Center Golf Group program that most snowbirds and many retirees now belong to, as well as hosting some senior golf group play days. Whispering Pines was among the first courses on the Strand to offer a snowbirds discount program before the senior center program began to flourish.
The course also focuses on area junior golfers. It hosts three-day junior clinics for $30 each, the national Hook a Kid on Golf introductory series, which includes four half-days of instruction and a set of starter clubs for $125, and a local qualifier for the Golf Channel's Drive, Chip and Putt Junior Challenge.
The balance sheet
Whispering Pines was established by the city as an enterprise fund, which is designed to be financially self-sufficient. The city's water treatment plant, for example, is an enterprise fund because bills paid by water and sewer customers support the plant. The city covers any negative budgetary balance.
According to city budget director Michael Shelton, the course had a surplus balance through the 2000-01 fiscal year, and had paid back nearly $350,000 of its initial $600,000 loan. But the course suffered a loss of $200,000 as rounds fell in 2001-02, and a $300,000 loss the next year.
Factored into the losses are an annual $155,000 enterprise fund indirect cost allocation, loan payments owed to the city, and a property depreciation value of about $75,000 a year.
The indirect cost allocation covers the expense of services the city provides to the golf course including attorneys, budget directors, accountants, computer support personnel, administrative support personnel, etc., that the course might have to pay for if they weren't provided. The assumed depreciation isn't actually paid but is counted against the course's income.
Much of the course's operational losses in 2001-02 were incurred when it closed for 11 weeks from July to October to change its greens over to TifEagle Bermudagrass. In doing so, it rolled over the more than $250,000 owed on its previous loan into a new $200,000 capital improvements loan, and Shelton says it has since paid back about $75,000 of the combined $450,000.
Some of the greens were from the original 1962 design and were push-up greens without sufficient drainage or irrigation, and with a native soil rather than a sand base.
"We decided if we really wanted to maintain the golf course ... at a high caliber, we had to redo the greens," Kirby said.
Head pro Alan Chasteen wanted to close earlier in the summer to have the hot growing season for the Bermuda, but with the annual budget beginning on July 1, the course wasn't able to close until late July. The transition from winter overseed grasses the next year was poor, and with a cold and wet 2003 winter affecting the Bermuda on many Strand courses, Whispering Pines had major problems with its greens last summer. The combination of poor conditions, alerting players to the problems before they decided to play, and the cost of revitalizing the course further hurt the bottom line.
The overseed grew in well this past spring season, and this summer the TifEagle has fully grown in.
"The golf course is in great shape. The greens this spring and summer have been the best they've ever been," Kirby said. "I think we've finally cleared that hurdle.
"I really think with the golf course being back in good condition ... I would hope within the next budget year we should be fine."
The city's benefits package makes Whispering Pines one of the best courses in the area at which to work, as evidenced by its retention of employees. Both Kirby and superintendent Bob Warner, who is the current president of the Carolinas Golf Course Superintendents Association, have been at the course since it reopened in 1993, and head pro Alan Chasteen has been there five years.
However, in order to cut down on expenses, Whispering Pines has eliminated the three full-time positions of assistant pro, assistant superintendent and groundskeeper since 1999. Kirby said the course has also cut down part-time hours one-third by essentially eliminating the starter position, and there are only nine full-time employees on the maintenance staff, which is a low number for Myrtle Beach standards.
And maintenance equipment is now leased, rather than purchased.
"When the finances started going bad and we lost a lot of money, it's not like we just kept on doing everything like we were doing," Kirby said. "We tried to do things."
The debate, and options
The quitclaim deed the city received from the Department of the Interior in September 2001 specifies restrictions on the property's use.
If the city doesn't use it for recreation, such as athletic fields, tennis courts, a campground, nature park, etc., thereby breaching the deed agreement, it reverts back to the Department of the Interior. And if the city wants to change how the property is being used, it has to explain itself in writing to the department and receive approval.
Though the deed agreement allows the city to provide a recreational facility by contracting with a third party, it also precludes it from selling, leasing, assigning or otherwise disposing of the property, unless it's to another eligible government agency that the Secretary of the Interior approves.
Course officials are required to report to the National Park Service biennially on the success of the property.
"I've always been a fan of it," city councilwoman Judy Rodman said. "Right now I'm willing to let them ride and see what happens. I think they offer something to our constituents they can't get anywhere else, and absolutely something to our young people that they're absolutely not going to get anywhere else."
Whatever happens to the property, the city will still have to maintain it. And if it's converted to something else, there would likely be an initial capital improvement cost, then maintenance fees.
Many city-owned recreation facilities, such as ball fields, are merely expenses for the public's benefit.
But while baseball and softball fields are in need, not everyone believes losing another course on the Strand, be it the only muni or not, would be a catastrophic loss.
Means said there are no concrete alternatives for a change on the table.
"We're just keeping an eye on it to see how the numbers stack up each year," she said.
Whispering Pines is one of just three courses within the city limits of Myrtle Beach. The other two are Pine Lakes International Country Club, the first course on the Grand Strand, and Grande Dunes Golf Course, one of the last few courses to open in the area in 2001.
Walters says the course and surrounding property constitute the largest tract of recreational land the city owns.
"This is 200 acres of green space right in the middle of Myrtle Beach that forever will be a green space," Walters said. "And 20 years from now there won't be much of that around here.
"It's another component in our recreation facilities. When people come here to live, they can look and see what we have to offer."
Source: The Myrtle Beach Sun-News