🔒The short game: Smaller golf courses are looking to attract busy people with less time to spend on their game

In the late 1990s, the golf business was booming.

Riding a wave of enthusiasm brought about by Tiger Woods bursting onto the pro golf scene in 1997 with his stunning win at The Masters, courses were opening left and right across the country, looking to capitalize on the newfound interest in the sport. Americans played 63 million more rounds of golf in 1997 compared to 1996, according to Golf Datatech.

Then, a reckoning came. Even before Woods’ dominance at the PGA level faded, interest in the sport was waning. Between 2003 and 2018, golf saw a decline of nearly 7 million players and more than 1,200 course closures, according to a June 2020 article from the National Recreation and Park Association.

The slow decline of the sport halted in 2020, with the arrival of COVID-19. With time to explore new hobbies and a desire to get out of the house, golfers were once again hitting the links in droves. The increase in popularity has largely held, as the golf industry has taken steps to ensure the post-COVID boom isn’t just a flash in the pan.

One key aspect of continued growth will be the opportunities provided by shorter golf courses, which can be enjoyed by scratch golfers and novices alike. New, shorter courses have popped up in the region in the last decade, with another one in Framingham expected to open in late 2025 or early 2026.

“All these golfers that were either reintroduced to the game or brought to the game for the first time, these short courses have been a wonderful way for them to get involved, but also to engage avid golfers.” said Stephen Hanjack, director of marketing & communications for Mass Golf, the Norton-based governing body for the sport in Massachusetts. “It's been huge for the growth of the game.”

Time is money

Central Mass. features five executive golf courses, a catch-all term for any course with a par lower than a full-sized regulation course. Some are strictly par-3 holes, where the green can be reached with one shot, while others mix in par-4 or par-5 holes.

Some, like Berlin Country Club, have existed for decades, while others, like the par-3 course at Shining Rock Golf Club in Northbridge, were constructed to take advantage of growing interest in shorter courses. Shining Rock’s short course opened in July 2024.

The biggest benefit to executive courses is fairly obvious: They take less time to play, allowing business types and others with a packed calendar to work on their game without taking the four or so hours it takes to complete 18 holes.

But beyond just taking less time to play, short courses can give experienced players a platform to work on their short game, while novice players often find the easier-to-play courses to be a more fun and inviting way to experience the game, said Kurt Calderwood, who runs Berlin Country Club alongside his wife Kimberly Calderwood.

Kurt and Kimberly took over operations at the course nine years ago from Kurt’s father. In the time since, attitudes about short courses have begun to shift.

Once seen as a less-than-perfect substitute for playing on a full-sized course, golfers have begun to specifically seek out courses like Berlin.

“People don't have the time these days,” Kurt Calderwood said. “So they're in and out of there in an hour and a half to two hours. That's a big thing. It's great for beginners to learn the game. It's not too hard, and it's not as intimidating.”

Berlin Country Club offers a home for the sport as the small town’s only course, hosting everything from birthdays to bereavements in its clubhouse. It offers a place to play for high school golfers from teams at nearby Assabet Valley Regional Vocational Technical High School and other area schools.

Entering her first full season as general manager, Kimberly Calderwood has overcome the challenges of being a newcomer to a small town where it seems like everyone knows each other.

“That was a little intimidating for me to step into,” she said. “But everybody's been really good and very positive and looking forward to our changes.”

The course will open for longer hours this year to accommodate more players.

In full swing

The increase in popularity of golf simulators and high-tech driving ranges like those owned by Dallas-based TopGolf often serve as a gateway, leading players to move on to short courses before developing a full-blown obsession with the sport, said Hanjack of Mass Golf.

“Once they're taking a full golf swing, that's when [new players] are first considering the game,” Hanjack said. “From there, it doesn't matter where your golf ball goes. The new and trendy TopGolf is a great intro, but a [traditional] driving range could be just the same. The idea is first getting a few swings, and then from there, once people start to realize that they have some sort of interest in the game, the next progression would naturally be some sort of short course.”

Attempting to learn from the mistake of taking the Tiger boom for granted, caretakers of the sport like Mass Golf and the U.S. Golf Association are taking a more strategic approach, said Hanjack.

“The industry has really been smart about trying to make everyone comfortable,” he said.

Part of that growth is fully embracing executive courses as a legitimate way of enjoying the game. In 2024, the USGA lowered the minimum length requirements for courses to be eligible for course and slope ratings, two measurements used to help determine the difficulty of a course.

“Short courses are an important piece of the full puzzle,” Hanjack said. “So whether it be youth golfers, golfers new to the game, or older golfers, they're so important to what we do. I wouldn't be surprised if more and more [short courses] start to make their way.”

Corporate, yet casual

Golfers seeking short courses in Central Massachusetts are set to have one more option soon, as a former executive at Acushnet Co., the Fairhaven-based company behind the Titleist and FootJoy golf brands, is planning on opening a nine-hole, par-3 course in Framingham.

Michael Mahoney, founder of WedgeLinks, is planning the course on a 10-acre plot of land behind the headquarters of Staples. A lifelong player of the game, Mahoney said the big breakthrough for short courses came in 2017. Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina, one of the country’s top courses and four-time host of the U.S. Open, added a nine-hole, par-3 course that year.

“For most people, when you say par-3 golf, they think of what they might have experienced 25 or 30 years ago, which was often a nondescript plot of land with 9 or 18 holes of unremarkable golf and unremarkable design,” he said. “Places like Pinehurst that really put an emphasis on a much different experience.”

WedgeLinks Framingham is being designed to take advantage of the parcel’s natural topography with minimum disturbance of the natural environment, said Mahoney. He wants challenging-yet-approachable course to represent what the next generation of short courses can be.

Despite its location near a corporate campus, he wants WedgeLinks to be a place where anyone can enjoy the game.

“We’ll tend to have music playing, and you’ll be able to walk the golf course with a drink in hand,” he said. “It's very casual in that regard. There won't be a dress code or anything like that. I expect a lot of people to be playing in flip flops.”

Two nearby shorter courses, Millwood Farms Golf Course in Framingham and Stonybrook Golf Course in Southborough, closed during the post-Tiger reckoning, but Mahoney believes his course will show the new staying power of executive courses.

An added bonus of par-3 courses is they require less alteration of the environment, creating a course more eco-friendly and more reflective of the original state of the land.

“There's far less to take care of [with par-3 courses], and we're going to ensure that almost everything that is outside of the playing area will be natural to the environment that's there now,” he said.

Newly developed grass types and other technology are driving the game’s environmental impact down, he said.

The Framingham course will serve as a test case for future WedgeLinks short courses in other markets, potentially allowing the brand to follow in the footsteps of TopGolf’s rapid expansion. In the midst of raising funds for the course’s construction, Mahoney is hopeful it could be completed in time to squeeze in a few rounds before winter.

Eric Casey is the managing editor at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the manufacturing and real estate industries.