Even from a cursory glance, a newcomer to Myrtle Beach could spot how deeply embedded the game of golf is in the area’s geography.
Myrtle Beach’s dozens of golf courses are visible from above when flying into Myrtle Beach International Airport. Whether on opposite sides of the Grand Strand in Pawleys Island or North Myrtle Beach, golf courses sit within minutes of one another, their competing front entrance signage providing a slight hint of the sprawling labyrinths of holes cut into the Lowcountry nature.
However, maintaining the public, municipal, resort and private courses that make up a significant portion of the Grand Strand’s identity is also expensive. Maintenance, employees and each course’s unique features only add to the millions it takes to ensure courses keep their high quality.
It’s an industry with small profit margins and high expectations from golfers who expect courses to provide high-quality experiences and play. Jeremy Goldblatt would know. He is the chief operating officer of KemperSports, a national conglomerate that owns and operates high-end courses throughout the United States. Goldblatt said that golf courses have high fixed costs not easily cut without damaging the course or experience, even during recessions or industry downturns.
“You’re dealing with a truly living, breathing organism here,” he said. “You have to feed it and water it and take care of it.”
This holds for Myrtle Beach’s golf courses, which present maintenance challenges. Most golf courses in the area are privately owned enterprises, as are their finances. However, the City of Myrtle Beach owns Whispering Pines Golf Course, and Coastal Carolina University owns The Hackler Course.
The Sun News filed Freedom of Information Act requests with both the City of Myrtle Beach and CCU July 30, 2024, for how much it costs to run each course and how much each course made each fiscal year between 2018 and 2024. The Sun News also reached out to both courses to interview officials who helped run them. Hackler Course General Manager of Golf and Sports Turf Chuck Johns spoke with The Sun News Aug. 27, 2024, in an over-the-phone interview.
Atlantic Golf Management runs Whispering Pines’; however, firm owner Chip Smith did not return a request for comment before publication.
Since the 2018 fiscal year, Hackler has lost money each year. Meanwhile, the number of golf rounds played went up during the same period, aside from years impacted by the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021.
Johns added that the university closed the course in 2020 during the start of the golf season, which impacted revenue and the number of rounds played.
He also notes that the price of grass seed rose during the pandemic from around $0.98 a pound to nearly two dollars before dropping back to $1.31 a pound this year.
Here’s the data for The Hackler Course:
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Fiscal year 2018: $1.3 million in revenue, $1.6 million in expenses and $315,483 lost
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Fiscal year 2019: About $1.2 million in revenue, about $1.7 million in expenses and almost $500,000 lost
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Fiscal year 2020: $922,164 in revenue, about $1.5 million in expenses and $553,538 lost
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Fiscal year 2021: $1.1 million in revenue, about $1.2 million in expenses and $57,033 lost
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Fiscal year 2022: About $1.8 million in revenue, about $1.8 million in expenses and $4,645 lost
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Fiscal year 2023: About $2.1 million in revenue, about $2.4 million in expenses and $276,293 lost
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Fiscal year 2024: About $2.2 million in revenue, more than $2.4 million in expenses and $247,539 lost
The course is almost a laboratory for students participating in CCU’s PGA Golf Management program and has minimum scholastic and course requirements. When not in the classroom, the 240 students work in the pro shop and learn about managing the course as training for being the PGA Head Golf Professionals of the future.
Johns said the course has a budget and adjusts the pricing of rounds and cart rentals to build revenue. He added that the course is part of the university’s broader mission and thus is willing to incur losses on the property to fulfill that end.
“I have to actively keep the course growing and keep rounds of golf coming in, and that’s a kind of balance,” Johns said. “But if there’s a shortfall within the year, then it’s paid for.”
In some ways, Johns has been at The Hackler from nearly the beginning. In August 2004, CCU leased the course, formerly Quail Creek Golf Course, before eventually owning it outright. Johns started in July 2005 as the head golf professional before moving to his current role.
A flat and older design, Johns said the irrigation system didn’t fully service the course at the time and was in rough shape.
“I remember the first day that we opened, we were charging $20 to the community,” John said. “(People) just knew that it wasn’t in the shape that it was. It just takes time to do that.”
Over the years, the irrigation system got replaced, cart paths re-done, green complexes redone, and other maintenance helped improve the condition of the course. Sometimes, those fixes require Johns to get his own hands dirty. Last year, he redid the par three courses by renting a dump truck, loading all the dirt and dumping it.
“Grass doesn’t take breaks,” he added. “It still grows on weekends.”
Meanwhile, Whispering Pines is not constrained by being an educational institution. Located on the former site of the closed Myrtle Beach Air Force Base that the soldiers helped build, it’s one of the oldest courses in the Myrtle Beach area still open.
The Sun News’ Freedom of Information Act request to the City of Myrtle Beach July 30, 2024, for Whispering Pines also asked for the total revenue, cost and profit generated by the course between the 2018 and 2024 fiscal years. However, The Sun News’ FOIA request did not yield complete records for each fiscal year.
The Sun News only received total revenue, cost and net operating income generated for the 2018, 2019, 2022 and 2023 fiscal years. For 2020 and 2021, the City of Myrtle Beach provided total income. The city did not provide total revenue, cost and net operating income for the 2024 fiscal year. The Sun News emailed city FOIA Paralegal Agatha Puleo Oct. 21, 2024, to obtain complete records, but she did not reply before publication.
A Smith presentation to Myrtle Beach’s City Council in September 2024 also reported that rounds of golf went up between 2022-23 and 2023-24 from less than 56,000 to almost 57,000. The report also stated that 71 percent of rounds played were by locals and proposed nearly $1.5 million in renovations to the course.
Here’s the data for Whispering Pines:
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Fiscal year 2018: Less than $1.8 million in total income, more than $1.2 million in total expenses and $385,943 in net operating income
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Fiscal year 2019: Less than $1.8 million in total income, more than $1.2 million in total expenses and $421,022 in net operating income
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Fiscal Year 2020: More than $1.5 million in total income
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Fiscal Year 2021: Less than $1.9 million in total income
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Fiscal Year 2022: More than $2.1 million in total income, more than $1.3 million in total expenses and $642,869.36 in net operating income.
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Fiscal Year 2023: About $2.4 million in total income, more than $1.6 million in total expenses and $624,847.47 in net operating income
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Fiscal Year 2024: More than $2.4 million in total sales
While a clearer picture of how much it costs to operate a golf course in the Myrtle Beach area, it’s still not a complete view. Tracy Conner is the executive director of the Myrtle Beach Area Golf Course Owners Association and also serves as interim Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce CEO.
In an August 2024 interview, Conner said that the business models of both The Hackler and Whispering Pines are different, as they benefit Coastal Carolina’s vision and the city. Meanwhile, other courses in the area don’t have those mission statements, although operating both kinds of courses comes at great expense.
“You’re mixing things that you can’t compare,” Conner said. “(Golf course) expenses are far greater today than they were just a few years ago, in all aspects, especially insurance and fuel, fertilizer, those things are far more costly.”
Goldblatt is also familiar with those costs and operating a Myrtle Beach golf course. In August 2023, KemperSports purchased Tidewater Golf Club, one of the area’s In 2023, Sun News readers voted it as one of their five most favorite courses, finishing second. According to Horry County Land Records, an LLC representing the firm paid more than $6.7 million for the course.
“The challenge is you see one golf course. You’ve seen one golf course,” Goldblatt added. “Market dynamics are different. Cost to operate are different.”
Goldblatt said that, generally, courses want 20 percent of their revenue to go towards bottom-line profit, but the makeup of each course and its business model can make that equation vary wildly. A new irrigation system can cost millions of dollars, redoing cart paths goes for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and bunker projects can range from a half million to a million.
Even seemingly basic renovations are rather expensive.
For instance, Goldblatt said it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to renovate Tidewater’s bunkers in 2025 and change the course to make it more compatible with golfers of all experience levels. He added that Tidewater was in good condition when bought in 2023, reducing the burden of more extensive adjustments.
However, Tidewater provides additional maintenance concerns due to being so close to the water. Its marshy location makes storm surge a concern, and maintaining the natural environment around the course provides different costs than more land-lock courses. Goldblatt added insurance costs rising along the Grand Strand and elsewhere in the United States also factor into how expensive it is to maintain a course.
There are also other ways for golf courses to make money. Rounds of golf make up a majority of a course’s revenue, but Goldblatt said that food and beverage and hosting events like weddings can provide supplemental income.
He added one growing source of revenue for golf courses is specialty clothing sales. Instead of selling collared shirts or quarter zip jackets that one could get at Dick’s Sporting Goods, Goldblatt said the emphasis is on unique items, souvenirs and collectors items that golfers can buy to remember their golf trips at the high-end course. Goldblatt added that the rise in popularity of golf wear has also given courses like Tidewater the chance to build in cash flow.
“When I go on a golf trip, I tend to come home with stuff, and my wife yells at me (about getting) another quarter zip, another ball marker,” he added.
Indeed, Tidewater isn’t the only high-end course in the area looking for new revenue opportunities in the crowded Grand Strand golf economy.
Bart Romano is the PGA Director of Operations for both True Blue Golf Club and Caledonia Golf and Fish Club, both of which consistently ranked highly on lists of the best public golf courses in South Carolina. Indeed, True Blue also features a golf school. In an Oct. 4, 2024, interview, Romano said that both courses require maintenance.
The two courses have yet to undergo massive renovations recently to their greens or bunkers, but both have things to focus on. True Blue’s the bigger of the two, and its big bunkers and fairways need the most attention, while Caledonia requires more fine detail work.
“We call those first-world problems, as far as the details, the flowers, the azaleas, the oak trees, the moss conditions of the golf course,” Romano said about Caledonia.
Romano added that crews removed trees from courses and overgrown areas to improve playability and open the courses up more. He also said the combined revenue for the two courses is between $5-10 million but declined to provide a total cost range, adding, “It’s a lot.
Romano added that the course garners additional revenue through its other service. Romano said the courses’ breakfast and lunch offerings created a dedicated community of people who live in the area and visit. Both courses also sell gloves, golf bags, balls, shirts and other accessories that are on-pace to move about two million dollars in merchandise this year.
Another additional is the introduction of Finn Scooter to both courses, which allows players to zoom up to the green to put. Romano said that the scooters are partly to cater to a burgeoning crowd of younger golfers starting to pick up the game.
Unlike previous generations, new golfers like a less formal setting and instead want to have more fun. Romano also said that the balance meets the demands of younger golfers while serving the preferences of older players who play rounds at both courses.
“Our age range now is just significantly widened,” he said. “We are a golf course for the people, literally, everyone and anyone, any time of the year; there’s a date and a rate for every golfer in our 12 months of the year.”
Yet despite this, the fundamentals of running a golf course are always present, and even minor changes can lead to big expenses. Romano said that driving range renovations at both courses and clearing trees for playability add up quickly.
“(Profit) margin has always been small, but once you start adding in extra things ... the cost of doing these things is significant,” He added. “As much as I love for everyone to believe I’m out there with a chainsaw (cutting down trees myself), that’s not reality.”
