When Your Budget Gets Whacked

How come there weren’t more golf course superintendents at the Golf Industry Show last month? Simple, their courses and clubs didn’t have the money to send them. It’s no secret that money’s getting tight these days. And nobody has to look further than the golf course maintenance budget to see that.

Every year, as part of our annual reader survey, we ask superintendents several questions about their maintenance budgets. Earlier this year, we asked about 575 superintendents: Did you cut your maintenance budget in 2009? Here’s how they responded:

• Yes, 5 percent to 10 percent: 41 percent
• Yes, 10 percent to 20 percent: 19 percent
• Yes, more than 20 percent: 5 percent
• No: 35 percent

Superintendents’ answers differed significantly according to facility type. For instance, 38 percent of superintendents from public courses said they didn’t cut their maintenance budgets at all compared to 31 percent from private clubs and 31 percent from semi-private or resort clubs.

Forty-seven percent of superintendents from private clubs said they cut their budgets 5 percent to 10 percent compared to 39 percent from public courses and 32 percent from semi-private or resort clubs. A whopping 30 percent of superintendents from semi-private or resort clubs said they cut their maintenance budgets 10 percent to 20 percent compared to 19 percent of superintendents from public/municipal courses and 17 percent of superintendents from private clubs.

Not surprisingly, 92 percent of superintendents across the board cut labor to reduce their budgets. Fifty-five percent reduced fertilizer applications.

Cutting the budget — specifically what you cut — can be a tricky measure. I recently spoke with a longtime superintendent who cut the fall fertilizer application on the course he oversees when the economy began going south in late 2008. The superintendent said he regretted his action the following spring when the fairways failed to live up to expectations.

In the end, the harm caused wasn’t worth the money saved.