Country club adding alcohol, offering membership deals
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By Dave Taylor
There’s a lot of “out with the old, in with the new” going on at Windward Heights Country Club lately, after the end of decades of industry support but with the addition of alcohol sales and consideration of a new music event, plus a greater emphasis on its pool, the only publicly available one in the county. The new push for memberships and support is aimed at saving the 54-year-old club, which is also the home golf course for the Hornet golf teams.
“We’ve got various package options for folks as far as swimming and golf packages and fishing,” said president Rob Kruse, adding that they’re running specials on three-year memberships for individuals and families.
After a slow decline in interest in golf, matched by a decline in memberships, the already cash-strapped club learned this year that its final industrial supporter was ending its practice of buying five memberships for its employees to use.
“After 40 years of support we lost the paper mill,” he said.
Domtar told the club they couldn’t justify the cost of the memberships when its employees didn’t use them enough.
“They paid $5,400 last year for their golf memberships and only handed out 35 golf passes the whole year,” he said.
Kruse said he understood that they weren’t using the five so he asked them to continue to support the club with just fewer memberships.
“But I couldn’t even get them to take one membership,” he said.
Club manager Terry Lindsey said the loss of revenue hurt but she felt like the low use was because many of the employees didn’t know it was available to them, including one woman who is a Domtar employee who plays without using the company membership.
“She didn’t even know she could get a pass,” Lindsey said. “She comes down and pays and plays.”
While interest in golf spiked with the rise of Tiger Woods, it also mirrored his decline.
”As silly as this sounds, when Tiger Woods went down, golf lost a lot of its popularity,” Lindsey said.
The Hancock County High School golf team has seen a similar decline, with just a handful of members when it once had around 20.
“If we lose the course we lose the high school golf teams,” Kruse said.
He’s working on a plan to entice better golfers to play the course by soliciting donations to go toward the prize money in a two-man scramble.
“I’m trying to get about a $3,000 purse to broadcast statewide so that’ll bring in the big hitters,” he said. “That’ll make it a big annual event that’ll raise a couple thousand dollars a year for the club.”
But Windward Heights Country Club is more than just golf, and it’s trying to spread the word that even those who don’t golf can bring their families or just themselves to the club and enjoy other activities, like swimming in the pool, exercising in the fitness center or fishing in the six-acre lake.
“We’re just asking the community to be supportive. If you don’t golf, look into the swimming and fishing,” he said.
There are annual memberships for the pool only, or for the entire club, which grants access to everything, and for which the club is running a special deal.
“We have two plans, one is for the family, and if you join for one year you get a little bit of savings, like $160 off,” Lindsey said. “If you join the family plan for three years it’s $945 a year for three years… That’s saving you like $318 a year, so that’s the best plan.
“And the same goes with the single plan,” she said. “If you join for three years it’s much cheaper than joining for one year.”
After a disastrous 2018 season where a now former greenskeeper allowed the greens to die, the club brought back longtime member and course expert Barry Griffin, who has revitalized the course.
“Our greens, they’re going to be amazing this year. They’ve come back,” said Lindsey. “This country club looks as good as it’s ever looked up there. It really does.”
Lindsey estimates that with a bare bones budget it costs around $150,000 a year to run the club, and the sale and clearing of some timber on the grounds of the club netted around $87,000, but still Kruse is pushing to increase the number of members as well as the sources of funding from
