The Myrtle Beach Golf Association - The Definitive Myrtle Beach Golf Source!

With these exciting new changes, the Myrtle Beach Golf Association continues it’s long and unchallenged commitment to providing the traveling golfers with the most complete information on Myrtle Beach golf anywhere. The Myrtle Beach Golf Association is recognized as the traveling golfers’ definitive source for candid, insider information on each of the 100.5 Myrtle Beach golf courses, as well as the Player’s Top 25, the Myrtle Beach Basement golf courses and lodging properties, Myrtle Beach restaurant reviews,  Myrtle Beach weather conditions, Myrtle Beach golf course ratings,  Myrtle Beach golf course rankings, Myrtle Beach golf maps and much more than any other Myrtle Beach golf website.

MBGA.COM is the only Myrtle Beach golf website providing golfers with current and candid Myrtle Beach golf course rankings and Myrtle Beach golf course ratings, which are actually based upon feedback from the traveling golfers and Myrtle Beach golf industry insiders.

Myrtle Beach Golf Association has struggled too!

Needless to say, Myrtle Beach Golf Association has taken our share of hits as well.

While profits have never been a consideration in the Myrtle Beach Golf Association’s 11-year history, our costs have escalated dramatically and our team of dedicated and professional Myrtle Beach golf industry “insiders” has grown smaller, while the challenges of keeping track of the golf courses, restaurants and, especially, the golf packagers have intensified four-fold.

Good News: The good news is that the vast majority of the remaining Myrtle Beach golf courses are in excellent shape, and housing construction on the vast majority of them has virtually ground to a halt.

Furthermore, while the remaining Myrtle Beach golf courses, especially the top ranked ones, are charging top dollar, there is a monstrous lodging glut here, and therein lies the financial wiggle-room where the golfers can wheel and deal.

Therefore, with the lodging properties struggling to fill all of their rooms and the courses holding firm on their rates, golfers should book all-inclusive packages, not ala carte!

As to the Myrtle Beach Golf Association’s travails, after a multitude of lengthy, and often heated discussions, and in-order to continue to be able to provide the travelling gofers with the candid inside information on Myrtle Beach golf which they have come to expect from MBGA.COM, the MBGA Team decided to add online tee time booking and some limited advertising.

Bad News: The dreaded 6-hour rounds are still more prevalent than they ever should be, especially at some of the high-end tracks, where, at the prices they’re charging, they should be totally non-existent!

Myrtle Beach Golf Industry Continues To Reel after 22nd Course Closes!

Prior to the economic crash, the Myrtle Beach golf industry had been in a slow but steady decline since 1998, culminating in the loss of more than one million paid rounds of golf annually; the closing of 21 golf courses and the loss of over 2,000 golf industry jobs.

With the recent announcement that Island Green Golf Club had unceremoniously closed, bringing the number of golf courses closed to 22, with other closings, primarily in the lower-tier courses, looming large, things here continue to cause great concern.

2008 was one of the worst years ever with the first double-digit decline, and 2009 was even worse with a 15-25% decline, depending on the golf course or lodging property surveyed.

Needless to say, everyone expected business to rebound in the Spring of 2010 as the economy began to turn around, but alas play was dramatically down (-22%) once again. The remainder of 2010 was basically more of the same bleak news.  Depending on the property, play was down 18-27% area wide in 2010.

Thus far in 2011 paid rounds at the upper-tier courses is up 6-8%, while green fees remain flat. As is evidenced by the Island Green closing, play at the lower-tier courses continues to decline anywhere from 8-14%, depending on the track.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF MYRTLE BEACH GOLF

Begun in the late 70’s to compliment Myrtle Beach’s summertime beach vacation economy, area hospitality leaders began to aggressively market all-encompassing spring and fall golf packages, which included lodging, a free welcome gift, breakfast, green fees, cart, free evening events and taxes, all for one flat price.

The concept was a huge success, and saw Myrtle Beach become the destination of choice for American golf vacations, which, in turn, fostered dramatic golf course development in the area. This winning recipe continued unabated through 1998.

In 1999, golf rounds began a slow and steady decline.

While the Myrtle Beach golf industry’s so-called golf marketing gurus and their henchmen in the lodging industry, many of whom you can find listed in the Myrtle Beach Golf Association’s Lodging Basement, cite over-building, competition from other destinations and the dog ate our homework excuses for the decline, the cold hard fact is that they themselves were and are the clown posse who killed the Golden Golf Goose.

The first big wheel flew off the Myrtle Beach golf bandwagon when the greedy morons at the original Sands Resorts gutted the all-encompassing golf package, forcing the golf courses to charge for carts, which caused a backlash for the courses and began the industry decline, while the real culprits at Sands Resorts skated.

Over the last 12-years the Myrtle Beach golf cabal has frittered away an estimated $35 million dollars in precious and sorely needed golf marketing funds on harebrained schemes, which included $11 million dollars on the PGA Tour’s - Energizer Senior Tour Championship fiasco; the squandering of an estimated $20 million dollars to build and operate the TPC of Myrtle Beach and their most recent multi-episode travelogue of dopey and embarrassing episodes called “The Myrtle Beach Road Show” on the Golf Channel, which was overnight dubbed “The Myrtle Beach Road Kill” by golfers and golf industry movers and shakers alike, and cost the Myrtle Beach golf industry an estimated $1.3 million dollars.

All had hoped that things would turn around for the surviving Myrtle Beach golf courses, and for a while it appeared that they might, but despite the tripling of the Myrtle Beach golf advertising and marketing expenditures the Myrtle Beach golf industry continued to flounder badly.

To add insult to all of this misery on the links, golf itself is battling to remain relevant in today’s “instant gratification” society.

TV golf ratings, which were already in the toilet prior to Tiger’s antics, his return last year and poor play since his return, has only shown a tiny uptick in the 55+ demographic, while the all-important 18-34 year old segment is tanking.

The highly touted First Tee program, along with other golf industry attempts at growing the game of golf, like Play Golf America, Get Golf Ready and Ready, Set Golf, have all done nothing significant to grow the game. Add to that the economy still struggling, along with the crazy weather all across the country, and the 2012 outlook for golf in general, and Myrtle Beach golf in particular, continues to look bleak.

Needless to say, all of this is indeed cause for great concern, not only for Myrtle Beach golf but for the entire golf industry as a whole.