ALAN THOMAS
Manteca Columnist
A question I am often asked by out-of-town golfers when visiting our golf course is, “How does Manteca do it?” How do we have the consistently best conditioned public golf course around, the best clubhouse facilities, and more tournaments and events than any public golf course in Northern California, yet also have some of the most reasonable golf fee’s anywhere?
Although this seems to be a mystery to out-of-town golfers and surrounding cities alike who wish their golf courses matched up to ours, the answer is very simple.
Over the past 43 years, our city leaders have made good decisions and done things right.
Unlike surrounding cities who increase their golf fees on a regular basis while cutting back on maintenance and golf professional services in an effort to meet expenses, Manteca has had few fee increases, have kept our city employed maintenance team intact, and have allowed me to carry out a professional game plan to operate and promote our golf course which I proposed when being contracted in 1977.
One of the most difficult decisions made by our city leaders and probably the most criticized was the building of our clubhouse facility which houses the golf shop, banquet rooms, cocktail lounge, coffee shop, and locker rooms.
In 1989, they had the foresight to look into the future and decide what would be a necessary improvement in order to help us to become one of the most successful Municipal Golf Courses anywhere.
What we now have is a facility which can service all size groups better than any surrounding municipal golf course, while other cities have chosen to stick with their smaller outdated buildings.
The results are that our Manteca Golf Course has the highest number of annual rounds played (for several years running) compared to other golf courses within a 50- mile radius. And due to this fact, we have always generated enough annual dollars to not only pay 100% of all operating and maintenance costs, but to also cover 90% of the original land building and construction costs.
As is evident in the recent City Council-approved golf fee restructuring, our city leaders also understand that increasing our number of customers is much more productive in increasing revenue totals than implementing large rate increases each golfer must pay to play the golf course.
This kind of thinking is what sets our golf facility apart from the other Municipal Golf Courses making our course one of the most popular in Northern California.
