Throughout our history, golf has been the image and vision that has kept this community in the spotlight within our little corner of the world. Wow — that has been our emphasis for many, many years.

How did it begin? In 1975, the Del Webb Corp. agreed to give the Recreation Centers of Sun City title to seven golf courses, and later, Viewpoint Lake in 1977. Quail Run, RCSC’s eighth course, came a year later. What were the original conditions of exchange for this transaction? There were several:

• Del Webb agreed to loan RCSC up to $50,000 as operation capital for 6 months.
• Revenues for members and guests for should equal or greater than expenses.
  • Del Webb will not issue any non-resident golf memberships after 1977.
• Del Webb Corp. could invite outside home purchasing prospects to golf at RCSC facilities as a marketing tool.

That’s how this all started.

As time went on, RCSC expanded on what was originally conceived by the Del Webb Corp. Today, the image of a “retirement golf community” is alive and well, and the successful model has been copied, and has morphed, changed, improved and been expanded upon by others all over the nation.

For us, in the original Sun City, what is the cost of this image? Have we investigated the data upon which we base this image? Of course, the budget is looked at and passed each year. For the last few years, the RCSC has based its data metric on rounds played, and it’s impressive. From January through June 2023, our courses had 206,520 rounds of play. Approximately 82% of our rounds are 18-hole play on our courses. For our full 18-hole play, annual pass holder, we have 100,000, (92,000 resident, 8,000 non-resident) rounds played. Resident daily, guest, and public walk-ons combines to another 65,000 plays.

Golf does generate funds for the RCSC from that action. Income for the first six-month period of 2023 was $1.6 million from annual pass holders, and an additional $2.3 million from additional daily plays. Annual pass holders have 61% use of the course, while providing 39% of the revenue. Conversely, the daily use players provide 61% of the income with 39% of course use. For many years, RCSC has created an image of inexpensive golf as its focus.

There have been many ideas on how to “fix” the issue. For now, I would like to propose the following:

• Annual non-resident pass be eliminated.
• Resident annual pass be a fixed fee plus round surcharge only and fees cover at least 50% of the expenses.
• All fees should be increased to a level competitive with those charged at surrounding facilities.
• For the months of November and December 2023, our small groups category included in the annual passes agree to include all courses in their rotation and not start before 10 a.m.

The Management Team has also proposed that tournament play be limited to Saturday and Sunday. These changes will hopefully get us a little closer to the Del Webb vision of golf being a resident first amenity for Sun City.