Awareness of the outside world. “The glass-bottomed, 1,312-foot long (400-meter) walkway, perched 1,000 feet (304 meters) above the floor of the Sunwapta Valley.” Columbia Icefield Glacier Skywalk in Jasper National Park, Alberta Canada. Would you? Hard pass over here.
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Altadena Valley Park
Vestavia Hills
Birmingham, AL USA
December 2024
This is the third former golf course in three months. [5K, Oct & Nov]
Is golf booming or going bust? Depends who you ask. Here’s what I found with a small amount of searching & asking around. Results not definitive in any way.
Age of Majority: The (Slow) Death of Golf as We Know It, Weiss. Golf reinventing itself as an activity with less time commitment. On the other hand, the article is not dated and may be as far back as 2017.
Golf course & real estate National Parks & Recreation: Implications of the Rise and Decline of Golf, Crompton, 2020. Pre-pandemic but interesting for the relationship between golfing & real estate.
National Golf Foundation: Big Shift for Course Closures in 2021, 2022. Closures are a correction from overbuilding.
National Golf Foundation: Golf Supply Update More Openings, Fewer Closings, February 29, 2024. ‘Closing less fast’ sounds like spin to me. OTOH, does make a good point about golf course closings being more obvious that restaurant closings.
Sports Business Journal: Interest and participation in golf, driven to new heights during the pandemic, continues to rise, Carpenter, 3.11.2024. Their definition of golf success includes “off-course participation.”
A family member who is serious about the game (waves hi!), says that golf is doing great & tee times are hard to come by.
My opinion. Golf, like riding, benefited from the interest in social distance. Perhaps there are adjustments now that folks are resuming indoor activities. Perhaps golf is rising in one place while declining in another.
As always, I was not alone in the park. Civic spaces get used. Planned improvements, Vestavia Hills Parks & Recreation: Altadena Valley Park. Having walked the park, I can tell you that the middle and lower red paths already exist. The dog walkers & I needed a way to get from point A to point B. The upper red path and the one to the far left do not exist and will be a nice way to make a full loop of the perimeter.
Any golfers care to weigh in on the current state of the sport?
Onwards!
Katherine
Virtual Brush Box 
Skywalk? I don’t think so. Just looking at the photo kicks my body into danger mode.
But that’s really cool for those who can stomach it.
Joan
The only thing I feel about golf is that once they started building the golf course at Avenel, we lost miles of trails to ride on. And for some years they used pastures as parking lots, how that came about I don’t know, and the cars did a lot of damage. I don’t think the barn is going to be there much longer, all that huge field doing nothing but grazing horses when they could build more houses there. 😦
Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said that golf was a nice walk spoiled by a little white ball?
If Twain didn’t, he should have. It was Leslie Neilsen who said “The reason they call it ‘golf’ because all the other four-letter words were used up.”
I missed that one! I’ll have to remember that.
American golf courses are notorious for their use of poisons and historically for their bigotry. I have favorite former students who played golf in high school and once coached a cross country team meet on a course, but I also have friends who live near one and the stories they tell…
You are onto something about golf and social distancing. I also think, like horse sports, it’s not cheap to do. I’d also speculate if the cost of land in some areas and real-estate taxes being so high is another cause.
As with anything it’s a complex subject. golf courses are a very complex mix of business, marketing and agronomy. Many courses are small businesses that get in over their heads or are victim of changing demos in their areas. Many are evolving away from harsh chemicals with programs like the Audubon Coopertive Sanctuary Program (https://www.auduboninternational.org) and some are not. Often it’s just a matter of course owners choosing a big check form a developer or worse local government taking a big check. I know I would rather live next to a golf course than a housing development.
If those were my only choices, I’d agree.
⛳
Golf is big in my family. Completely passed me by.