Golf | America

Still, insiders predict that there will be at least one more year of negative net growth in the industry before the supply matches the demand. Course owners and designers don't view the reduction in courses as a detriment to the industry, though. They purport that the weeding-out process will bring the industry back into balance, and the number of courses remaining will be more accommodating once the market levels.

"I would say it's coming back to the norm," Affeldt says. "The industry went through an overbuilding cycle, and now the pendulum is swinging the other way. I actually view the decrease as a positive, not a negative."

Fazio's seen the number of prospective courses drop considerably during the recent slide. Whereas there used to be three, sometimes four, prospective greens being introduced each week less than five years ago, now there is only one. He insists that the decline has had no effect on the number of his projects but admits negative growth isn't the most reassuring piece of data he's seen within the golf course industry.

"We in America look at everything from a financial side, and I think there is a leveling out," Fazio says. "But that leveling out means that we will have closings. The question is, will we have more? And I think we probably will because of the oversupply."

Now hundreds of golf course owners are bailing out of the oversaturated market, trying to lick their wounds after having overestimated the demand. For Sale signs mark the once luscious greens and fairways that signified the industry's unabated exuberance in the 1990s. Bulldozers are replacing golf carts, sandboxes are replacing sand traps, and freeways are replacing fairways.