re: Your one request for Baton Rouge golf

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I won't disagree completely that golf is an expensive sport, however the 3 sports you list as you describe them are also very expensive. You don't play "competitive" soccer and baseball by staying in town and paying a league fee to a local recreation department. You travel, and you spend likely a lot more money than I do on my golf membership for my family. I would bet that applies with even only one child participating. I understand that you want and need to give your kids the opportunity to participate.

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I agree completely, and moreover that is my entire point. I spend a ton of money on other sports that my kids want to play. There is no way that golf would be a priority for us or for most families with younger children who are involved in multiple sports.

If you force people to make a choice based on finances, then golf is going to lose out much of the time and the sport will lose an entire generation of athletically-inclined kids because they will never learn to play. These are the types of kids who, as they age and their competitive sports days are over, will likely want to be outside "doing something" in their leisure time and are the "target audience" so to speak for golf. I know people can learn to play later in life, but commitment-wise, there is no substitute for developing a real love of something at an early age. That is what I am watching happen with my son as he has been playing at City Park this summer.

If the overall goal is better golf in Baton Rouge, then the sport needs to have a healthy supply of participants. Golf courses have been closing in huge numbers since I was a kid--the sport has been on the decline. Something has to happen to turn that around, and so in the long run it makes sense to have a slight over-supply (as opposed to an under-supply) of convenient and lower-end courses so that new and young players have an opportunity to learn and develop a love of the game.

And if the demand for golf in Baton Rouge is so low that the number of public courses we have simply cannot be supported, I think what many people are saying is that the sport overall would suffer if those closed were LSU or City Park because of the extreme accessibility of those particular courses, both in location and affordability. Those courses attract players that would not go elsewhere to play--as a poster said earlier, some guy who normally plays solo a few times a month and then a few times with friends would often end up quitting the game altogether. And it isn't a "good riddance" kind of situation because so many of those players are young. They are the players who, if they really become attached to playing, will eventually spend money at better courses and seek out and support better golf in the area.