Rub of the green: daily-fee courses work on their games, scrambling to lure a more diverse crowd.

• Author: Pace, Lee

A golf course near the coast hires an architect to build a set of greens designed eight decades earlier by famed Scottish architect Donald Ross. A golf pro in the Piedmont strikes a partnership with a Brazilian supermarket magnate to save a struggling course from closing. A course manager in the mountains recruits prison labor to help weed his course and rake bunkers. In the universe of daily-fee and municipal golf, prices are down, deals are bountiful, new technology is hot and operators are scratching their noggins for clever ideas as fewer people tee it up. "What used to be a $35 to $45 price range has slipped to $25 to $35 in this market," says Tom Anders, a staff member at Asheville Municipal Golf Course from 2000-12 who now works at a nearby resort. "Golfers are looking for bargains, and that seems to be the price people will pay. The dynamic has changed considerably the last few years."

At least 5 million fewer people were playing golf in the U.S. in 2013 than in 2003, when the industry peaked, according to the National Golf Foundation. Even after the 20% decline, about 25 million are knocking it around, a number that rebounded after the recession of 2007-09 and has steadied over the last three years. While reduced demand and stingier consumer spending has pressured most courses, the public and daily-fee sector has suffered particularly because of its reliance on middle-income people, who were hit harder by the economic downturn than the private-club set. "Our industry is looking to find its keel," says Karl Kimball, head professional and co-owner of Durham's Hillandale Golf Course, which operates as a public-private partnership. Beyond a tough economy prompting some people to give up weekly golf dates, many courses are selling less equipment because of competition from large retailers and Internet sales. "The big-box stores are squeezing the small golf retailer out," he says. "I took some econ courses in college, but that doesn't prepare you for this. It's a challenge--it really is."

Daily-fee courses also face increased competition from private clubs that are opening their links to outside play at slow times. "A lot of clubs were built as high-end, exclusive clubs during boom times," says Kelly Miller, whose family owns the Pine Needles and Mid Pines resorts in Southern Pines. While both properties are geared to overnight guests, they also accept daily-fee players. "Now the model is changing. A lot are doing what so many clubs do in the U.K. and Scotland--they subsidize member dues by allowing outside play. When 2008 hit, everyone was just trying to claw and hang on. It's stabilized now, but the old models don't work."

Hillandale is a daily-fee course with a history mirroring the golf industry's trajectory. It was Durham's first course, with nine holes that were among the more than 400 courses designed by Ross, a Scottish-born, Pinehurst-based architect who died in 1948. Durham banker and benefactor John Sprunt Hill opened the course as a private club in 1911 on Hillsborough Road north of downtown when the city had fewer than 20,000 people. In the 1930s, Hill formed a trust and donated the course to the city of Durham. Its layout shifted northeast in 1960 with a new design by George Cobb after part of the property was sold to developers who opened strip shopping centers. The course features tight fairways and small greens. Its fees--rates start at $11 and top out at $25--and an accessible site appeal to both accomplished golfers and hackers. Long before the advent of big-box retailers, the golf shop at Hillandale was a favored spot to buy clubs, often generating annual sales of $1 million or more, including about $200,000 in used equipment. Luke Veasey, a former club pro who is now retired, won several PGA Merchandiser of the Year awards.

"Hillandale was the most diverse place you can imagine," says Zack Veasey (no relation to Luke), who worked in the shop as a teenager in the 1970s and became director of golf and general manager in 1989. "I would sell golf clubs to a doctor from Hope Valley one day and to the mechanic who fixed his Mercedes the next." At times, the shop carried an inventory of $350,000 or more. "You could not sit down anywhere in this showroom," Kimball says. "Product was stacked in every square inch and corner of the building...