How to start my own golf course and club

[tylermyers1]

First of all where do I even begin? And do I need to have money already or can I get a loan?

[meenman]

I am no banker but you generally need some kind of down payment to get a loan, so money is needed.

Also an educated business plan and an excellent credit rating may help.

[PA Golf Info]

If looking to build a new course....First if you do not have a $1M just laying around. Forget it. But the first thing is the land and the permits. If you can get past that and have cash on hand you are good to go.  But no one will just lay that kind of loan out unless you have some big skin in the game. Biggest thing is if building a new course first you want to make sure the surrounding community wants it and is on board with it or you will have a very hard time getting past zoning.

[Abu3baid]

First of all where do I even begin?

And do I need to have money already or can I get a loan?

You can get a loan, just go to your nearest hometown bank and ask them to spot you 5M with a 10 year deferred payment until you get everything up and running, and then low monthly payments of 100$ so that you don't actually have to pay the loan back in your life time.  pretty easy actually.. while your at it, call up Tiger or Phill to come design your course that will help with the foot traffic to your dream course.

[Shorty]

First of all where do I even begin?

And do I need to have money already or can I get a loan?

Is this a serious question?

[David in FL]

Is this a serious question?

I assumed not....

[MS256]

A guy I went to high school with built the course where I now work. He found some cheap land in a rural area, found a cart barn a club in Atlanta wanted to replace and they let him have it for free, bought some tractors, a dozer, and a dump truck and went to work. Didn't have a clue what he was doing but just learned as he went and it didn't turn out too badly. Did almost all of the work himself except for recruiting some family members to do things like pick up rocks. He ran the course for several years and did very well then let his kid run it. The kid did such a poor job that his dad took it back away from him and sold it to the current owner for much more than he had in it. He had the perfect timeline for getting in and out of the rural golf course business because nobody in their right mind would attempt any of that right now.

[MSchott]

Besides all the cogent responses above, do some research on the current state of golf course construction in the US. It's abysmal and apart from a small number of high end resorts (Cabot Links, Streamsong), new course construction is nearly dead these days. There is a glut of courses in the US. I don't doubt there are some areas under served but for the most part it's a terrible idea to invest in a new course.

[tylermyers1]

You can get a loan, just go to your nearest hometown bank and ask them to spot you 5M with a 10 year deferred payment until you get everything up and running, and then low monthly payments of 100$ so that you don't actually have to pay the loan back in your life time.  pretty easy actually.. while your at it, call up Tiger or Phill to come design your course that will help with the foot traffic to your dream course.

Aw what a great idea bro! Thanks for the comment! Maybe I will hit up my bud Tiger. Now, um you can shut the hell up and **** off.

[dhicks33]

Aw what a great idea bro! Thanks for the comment! Maybe I will hit up my bud Tiger. Now, um you can shut the hell up and **** off.

I have not been on this forum a long time, however in my experiences with other forums it is not a good idea to attack established members. I would bet you are a 16 or 17 year old kid (the username, the way you type, dead giveaway). You have no real sense of business and came here with no formal plan, a lack of ideas, and poor grammar. This means a few things to me, first of all you just thought of this idea. Secondly you are wasting everyones time. I know that because you have done no research at all, and you have no plan at all. Lastly, you come onto a website that is loaded with potential future customers of yours and began attacking them within your first 2 posts. I would say you are off to a fantasic start. I can almost bet that you can talk to any succesful business owner and they have a whole list of people that they know who helped make their dream of owning a business a reality, you will never get to that point attacking people on online forums. You have no idea who is out there, there could be an investor with a truckbed of money ready to invest in a project like this at the drop of a hat, how would you ever know if you are burning bridges before making any connections? With that said welcome to the boards jackass.

[wils5150]

more course are closing than being built. that said you would need deep pockets or already own the land( and still have deep pockets). best bet would be to try and buy a course thats already built.