David M. Fleury is planing to purchase golf club

During the golf boom with the early 1990s, the opened about 350 new courses a year throughout the country, Fleury said. Recently, a opened 12 new courses.

Based on the National Golf Foundation, about 158 courses closed across the nation this year. Like modern times, closures were disproportionately lower priced public venues, together with a large numbers of nine-hole courses, the foundation said in the online newsletter.

The foundation said the number of rounds played on New England courses was 6.3 percent reduced 2011 compared to 2010. That's from the end of September in both years.

Nationally, the number of rounds played fell 3.5 % inside same time frame.

Part of it was the current recession, said James Cassagrande, the golf pro at Northampton Country Club. People lost disposable Taylormade R11 driver income and the leisure time they once employed to hit site.

Golf business people are beginning to find out the light at the conclusion of the tunnel, particularly when they're able to attract more young adults and some women towards the game and after that get those die-hard golfers out of the home for the links every time they can, and sometimes it means letting find cheaper and quicker five- and six-hole rounds.

At a foreclosure auction recently, mortgage-holder Robert Berniche bought the clubhouse at Northampton Country Club for $600,000. The course is owned by people who just love adjacent condominiums.

Hickory Ridge Country Club in Amherst seemed to be foreclosed within the winter. Jay Craig, someone in Appliedgolf in Millstone Township, N.J., bought it for $1 million. Based on assessors records it absolutely was worth $1.3 million.

In January, Connecticut businessman Jerry Antonacci, president of USA Hauling and Recycling in Enfield, bought Hampden Country Club with a foreclosure auction for $1.4 million, $200,000 lower than its ping g15 irons assessed value.

Fleury, 40, can be an Agawam native and University of Massachusetts at Amherst grad who's worked for golf great Jack Nicklaus as a designer and builder. Fleury is now someone with Rulewich & Fleury Golf Design in Bernardston.

His group was able to buy Crestview, which hosted professional women' golf during the early 1990s, after the club's member-owners rejected a procurement to some real estate developer.

But those member-owners knew they couldn't hold on to Crestview. It had been founded in 1958 by prominent Jews who'd been excluded business area members-only country clubs.

But as time went on, a dwindling number of discount golf clubs shareholders were being asked to compensate for mounting year-to-year business losses and up with capital improvements.

Instead, Fleury offers to offer golf on the public as well as selling memberships.

He'll also benefit from Crestview's unique layout when a number of holes bring about and outside the clubhouse.