Does Anyone Else Wish Golf Returned To Pre-Covid Times?

I’ll sound like an arrogant jerk in this article. And, well, the haters have a valid point there.

Regardless, I will press forward with my argument:

I miss pre-pandemic golf.

Before you start launching 9-irons through my apartment window, let me concede that this is a nuanced discussion.

Of course I am thrilled the golf industry has, on the whole, been surging the past few years. MyGolfSpy benefits from that increased interest. Courses, driving ranges, club manufacturers and many others are on the list of beneficiaries.

I’m also excited so many people have discovered joy out of this great game. That’s something to celebrate.

However, that rise in popularity has come with some harsh realities like courses being packed to the gills, rising costs across the board and certain destinations reaching a point of near-absurdity as it takes one or two years of advance planning to secure your spot.

In one sense, it is a golden era for golf. In another sense, there is little structure around this growth and the consequences are frustrating.

Let’s talk about it.

Courses are jammed and the clientele has changed

This is the area I am personally affected by the most.

Is it just me or has the experience of playing golf deteriorated?

Decidedly mediocre golf courses that used to charge $35 a handful of years ago are now charging $65. I just paid $72 at a local course here and conditioning was so bad that I wouldn’t have paid $22 had I known in advance.

And I get the reasons for that price spike are not all golf-specific, but courses certainly have the hammer when it comes to pricing.

While exact measures are hard to pin down because so many courses have dynamic pricing, some estimates put the green fee jump at around 29 percent compared to pre-pandemic times.

That is because popularity has exploded.

According to the National Golf Foundation, a record 532 million rounds were played in 2024, which is roughly 10 percent above the supply-demand equilibrium.

After many years of golf course closures and talk of demand being too low to match the exorbitant number of facilities, now the demand is too great for the number of courses available.

One report suggested that, if this current demand continued, another 1,000 courses would need to be built around the world in order to accommodate everyone appropriately.

The continued growth has confounded many in the golf industry who have long been expecting a cooling off period after the Covid-inspired rush of 2020-2022. It is inevitable that a decrease will happen at some point, but we haven’t got there just yet.

The net result is that it’s harder (and more expensive) to get a tee time.

I live in Nashville and just about every course in the area is completely full—not just on weekends but even on weekdays. It’s forced a lot of people to drive well outside of the city to get tee times.

Playing as a single has changed drastically. Unless you drive a minimum of 45 minutes out of town, you are guaranteed to be paired with someone and subject to a lengthy round of golf.

Golf has becoming increasingly geared towards foursomes.

And perhaps the biggest frustration in all of this is that there is a growing number of golfers who don’t respect the game. They are using golf as an excuse to get drunk, blare music and trash the course. They don’t have any concept for basic etiquette (aka don’t be an asshole).

And, hey, I don’t mind having a good time on the course. Not every round has to be a proper round of golf. And I’m cool with music at decent levels.

I’m just saying that golfers need to show some fundamental respect for everyone around them.

Courses don’t police this behavior at all. It’s going completely unchecked, based on my experiences.

This is anecdotal evidence, but I almost never see a course ranger roaming the course these days. You barely see them at the first tee. There is nobody enforcing pace of play or basic standards every golfer should meet.

This is not anti-beginner. I love when someone new tries the game.

But I also think there needs to be more education for beginners. Start at par 3 courses or pick your ball up after you’ve reached a certain number of shots. You don’t need to be playing the blue tees on a regulation layout.

Bad golf is usually slow golf, but that doesn’t have to be the case.

The overall cost of golf is getting out of hand

I wrote about this last year, so I won’t spend too much time on this section.

The bottom line is that everything is more expensive, and golfers largely aren’t getting the value of the extra money being paid.

I’ll bring up one example that is indicative of the issue golfers are facing.

There is a very popular driving range in Nashville. This is a huge property. It is consistently busy and can easily handle some 100+ golfers given the wide expanse of tee boxes.

This is not a special place. It’s basically a shed on the side of a road, a huge field, a putting green, a chipping area and a small par-3 course. It’s in mediocre but serviceable shape. You can hit off of grass most of the year, but the grass isn’t great.

The range balls are a mixture of scuffed balls and relatively new balls. There are way more demented balls than good balls. I’m talking the kind of mutated balls where you can see the flight change abruptly after impact.

You pay upwards of $20 for a bucket here. If you want to hit just 45 balls, that will be $10 (the cheapest price). And if you want to chip, you need to pay an extra $5 to get a shag bag, pitching those scuffed balls to greens that do not react like regular greens.

They are printing money while making little investment in the facility. And wouldn’t you do the same thing? They don’t have any incentive to get nicer range balls or invest money into the facility. You could give people balatas and they would still pack that range.

And then you will say to go somewhere else—but unless it’s a private club, you will be hitting off a mat with similarly scuffed range balls, all for a similar cost. And, in my case, I would be driving farther away to do it.

You can take that concept out to green fees, equipment, accessories, apparel and more.

The incessant demand has given some of the golf industry license to do whatever they want with pricing and lack of investment.

Some golf trips require a professional event planner

For this section, I will direct your attention to a Reddit post about advice for booking a golf trip to Bandon Dunes.

“Start checking almost daily to see when the booking window opens or see how long they are booking through,” one commenter said. “I spent 2+ hours on hold to book our lodging and tee times 19 months in advance.”

Now, Bandon has added a lottery system since then. That is good. It takes away some of the strife with online hypervigilance.

But if you wanted to enter that lottery to potentially play at Bandon in the fall of 2026—about 18 months from now—you have already missed the deadline. Sorry about that.

This is nothing against Bandon. They do a lot to help golfers, including replay rates at half cost.

I’m just commenting on how many of golf’s top destinations are so crowded you have to plan a year and a half in advance just to play.

A lot of life happens in that time. And prices at these places are consistently increasing.

Golf’s boom is a blessing and a curse

This all feels like the “favorite band” cliche.

You find a group you like playing at a bar. You are listening to unbelievable music in an intimate setting without crazy crowds.

And then other people like the band. They play some bigger venues. Then they have a radio hit. Then the fan base grows.

A few years later, they are suddenly on an arena tour.

You’re happy for them but also perturbed you can’t go back to that same bar and listen to the same music in relative peace.

I feel the same way about golf.

I’m happy for golf and incredibly grateful for everyone coming to MGS because they love golf—but my personal experience as a golfer is worse because of the historic levels of demand.

I don’t know if there are any great solutions. It would be cool if there were certain courses geared towards more avid players (like requiring certain handicaps) and other courses catered for beginners, but that is about as likely as airports splitting security lines between those who know how to navigate TSA and those who apparently have never traveled before.

Tell me if I’m nuts, but I miss the pre-pandemic days. It was cheaper, less crowded and had a higher percentage of true die-hard golfers.

Golf’s boom—it’s a blessing and a curse.