Building a golf course is the dream of many golfers out there, who would love to have one in their backyard. Others would love to create one on a parcel of land they own. Everyone expects a golf course to be fairly expensive to build, even if it is just a 9-holes golf course.
Therefore, if you wish to build a golf course one day or just to satisfy your curiosity, you may wonder: how much does it cost to build a 9-hole golf course?
In this article, we will tell you exactly how much it costs to build a 9-hole golf course.
How Much Does It Cost To Build A 9-Hole Golf Course?
Building a 9-Hole Golf Course can cost a varied amount, depending on how luxurious you want it to be. The costs can range anywhere from a couple million to many millions. Most 9-hole golf courses will cost 5-10M$. A golf course can cost as little as the price of land and deforestation, if you do not mind it looking unkempt.
Golf courses can be very expensive, especially when you add more complexity to them, as well as amenities. Down below are some of the major costs associated with building a golf course.
Cost Of Land
One of the major costs in building a golf course is the cost of acquisition of land. A 9-hole golf course spans over 80-100 acres, which you can imagine will cost a lot of money, and more depending on the location of the parcel of land.
Buying a parcel of land with 80-100 acres alone will run you 500k-3M$. If you already own some land, you are lucky, because you are saving a lot of the costs associated with the creation of a golf course.
There are so many elements related to building a golf course, and each of them costs significant amounts of money.
Planning And Golf Course Design
The first step to building a golf course after you purchased land is to plan and design the golf course. For this purpose, you need to employ a golf course designer, engineers, workers, and sometimes, environmental regulation agents need to be involved, further complicating the process and threatening with fines.
Hiring this team of professionals can easily cost 50,000-200,000$, depending on the complexity of the project.
Deforestation
Once the build of a golf course is planned and improved, the construction team will deforest the future playing areas. This requires the use of big and expensive machinery, such as excavators, which will hike up the costs generously.
Land Terraforming
After the impeding trees are gone, the construction team works on terraforming the parcel, making sure the elevations and slopes are perfectly created according to the golf course design blueprints. The construction team typically uses laser-guided equipment to perfectly shape the golf course.
If the land purchased does not naturally have many slopes, huge amounts of dirt will need to be transported to reshape the topology of the lot. This can increase the cost of your golf course build by over 1M$.
Perimeter Delimitation
Once the terraforming is successfully completed, the construction team can permanently set in stone the perimeter of each hole, the putting greens, the fairways, the roughs, and everything else. This process alone can cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to be accurate according to the plans.
Drainage and Irrigation
The construction team lays down the different layers of ground and turf in such a way that drainage of the golf course is easy. You really want a golf course that does not hold water too long after it rains, or it will slow down operations.
The more efficient the drainage system, the more expensive it will be, by a lot.
Bunkers, Hazards, Seeding, Final Touches
The team adds bunkers and hazards, and plants the turf, carefully growing and monitoring it. The putting greens are even more carefully shaped and the final details of the golf course are fine-tuned to satisfy the golf course designer’s plans.
Final Details And Recurring Maintenance
As you can see, building a golf course is a massive endeavour that incorporates the work of many people.
Alternatively, you could build yourself a small golf course, but it will likely have bad drainage and an untidy look. For you, that may be perfectly fine, and you may be able to have the time of your life on your private golf course without anyone to bother you.
However, for commercial use, you really need a decently-sized team to build the golf course and ensure it fills in certain criteria correctly and optimally. For a commercial grade 9-hole golf course, you are likely to need 5-10M$.
On top of building costs, there are recurring maintenance costs that fatten the bill and you could easily get caught off guard by how expensive mowing golf courses year round really is. Did you know the lawn mowers capable of quickly mowing a golf course costs multiple tens of thousands of dollars?
If you want to add water hazards, bunkers, golf cart paths, and more features such as a clubhouse, your costs will increase by multiple millions. It is extremely easy for the price of a 9-hole golf course to rise through the 10M$ mark.
Unless you are incredibly rich, it will be difficult to build your own private golf course. Golf courses are usually built as businesses in order to generate revenue to pay off the construction costs. After the initial costs are paid off, it is all profit for the stakeholders.
On the other hand, you can totally build yourself 1 golf hole on a small piece of land you buy if you are fairly successful. Can you imagine how good at golf you could become by having your own golf hole to practice on whenever you want?
If you do build your own golf hole, add many slopes to make it very interesting to play for a long time. In addition, consider adding multiple tee boxes and multiple holes around the golf course so that the hole becomes a completely new challenge depending on which tee box you start on.
Conclusion
There you go! After reading this article, you were able to get a better idea of how much it costs to build a 9-hole golf course.
Do you dream of building your own golf course? Would you prefer a 9-hole golf course, or an 18-hole golf course? Let us know in the comments down below!
