{"id":135148,"date":"2025-09-11T02:28:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-11T02:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/135148\/"},"modified":"2025-09-11T02:28:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T02:28:11","slug":"golf-rounds-plunge-at-u-s-courses-as-canadians-go-elbows-up-at-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/135148\/","title":{"rendered":"Golf Rounds Plunge at U.S. Courses as Canadians Go Elbows Up at Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tCanadian anger at President Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s rhetoric and tariffs<\/a> is hurting northern U.S. golf<\/a> courses that typically rely on a strong flow of cross-border day-trippers and weekenders for business. It\u2019s a crisis for some courses and suggests snowbird havens of Arizona and Florida could see fewer rounds this coming winter, too.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was one day I spent in the office answering calls, and by the end of the day, when I left the office, I had cancelled about 4,400 rounds,\u201d Scott Delair\u2014general manager of the Malone Golf Club, a 36-hole course in upstate New York that draws heavily from Canada\u2014said on a video call. \u201cOur business model is built around Canadian tourism \u2026 We typically do 7,000 to 8,000 rounds on stay-and-play packages a year, and we\u2019re trending to do less than 1,000.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEfforts such as promoting the club more to downstate New Yorkers are producing \u201csmall wins\u201d but won\u2019t keep the club from seeing a revenue drop of about 20% this year, according to Delair.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Malone Golf Club isn\u2019t alone. The New York Golf Trail, an association of 26 courses that sell multicourse play packages, has seen a 38% drop in sales this year, with an 83% drop in bookings by Canadians, according to data provided on an early August National Golf Course Owners Association membership meeting available on YouTube. While little comprehensive national data is available, a survey of NGCOA members shows 88% expect Trump\u2019s tariffs<\/a> on Canada to have a slight to significant impact on their business.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere\u2019s a fairly substantial reaction to Trump\u2019s tariff<\/a>, a feeling that there\u2019s a double crossing of decades of mutual respect,\u201d Jeff Calderwood, CEO of NGCOA Canada, said on a phone call. \u201cThe feelings are deep in Canada \u2026 It takes quite a bit to pull out the deep resentment for what\u2019s being thrown at us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRecent data on border crossings and Canadian cell phone use in the United States shows a 24% to 30% drop in Canadian visits to the U.S.<\/p>\n

\n\tCanadians who drive over the border are worth about $1,000 per person, per trip\u2014a not-insignificant blow to New England and New York courses and their communities, according to information in the NGCOA meeting.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut while the drop is hammering northern U.S. courses, it\u2019s been a boon for golf courses on the Canadian side of the border, Calderwood said.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019re not done with golf season yet, and it looks like we\u2019re going to come in a couple of percentage points better for golf this year than last year, and last year was a very, very strong year.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGolf has been trending strongly in Canada, with the country\u2019s industry up about 30% from the pandemic, which was a boom period in and of itself for U.S. and Canada courses.<\/p>\n

\n\tCanadian duffers will probably end up spending about $75 million in rounds this year. \u201cDemand is so high that revenues are outstripping expense increases, but the tariffs are certainly increasing the cost of goods that a Canadian golf course requires to operate. It\u2019s not easy street by any means,\u201d Calderwood added.<\/p>\n

\n\tAmerican course owners are hoping Canadian anger is leveling off, but Malone\u2019s Delair says he isn\u2019t seeing it. \u201cIt feels a lot like the initial weeks of COVID, but \u2026 there was federal relief funding for businesses during COVID. This time there isn\u2019t any.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHow that will impact the winter season in popular Canadian snowbird locales including Arizona, South Carolina and Florida isn\u2019t clear. Canadian business publication The Logic reported two weeks ago that data it saw on Airbnb, VRBO and other property management companies show that snowbird trips south are the same as usual.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the other hand, Air Canada has cut capacity to U.S. locations and increased it to Mexico and the Caribbean, though the outlook on winter travel to the U.S. isn\u2019t clear, according to the company on a July earnings call. U.S. course owners are hoping some of the decline is based on currencies\u2014the Canadian dollar is about 3% weaker from one year ago\u2014but the fact the Loonie has gained 4% against the greenback since Trump took office doesn\u2019t appear to have helped.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven with the mixed indications for winter golf, course owners are nervous, NCGOA CEO Jay Karen said on a video call. \u201cWe\u2019re hearing from our own members, \u2018We\u2019re actually seeing a drop, we need to get some discussion going that this is actually happening,\u2019\u201d Karen said. The NCGOA survey of members shows that 18% of course owners already are experiencing a decrease in current or advanced bookings from Canada, with another 12% of U.S. membership anticipating a decrease.<\/p>\n

\n\tNGCOA Canada\u2019s Calderwood is pessimistic on a rebound occurring for U.S. courses next year. \u201cIt\u2019s a bigger undertaking to cancel your [planned] trips. \u2026 If this trade war persists, next year will be much more severe. It won\u2019t involve canceling trips, it\u2019ll involve not making the plan in the first place,\u201d Calderwood said. \u201cSome of it, I feel, is permanent damage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Canadian anger at President Donald Trump\u2019s rhetoric and tariffs is hurting northern U.S. golf courses that typically rely…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":135149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,1376,622,82,4992],"class_list":["post-135148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-donald-trump","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-tariffs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/135149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}