1st - As a walking golfer, being force to take a cart for playing in the morning is a non-starter. I understand that carts as an expense should be paid for buy users, but I feel that those who need them should pay for them. I have voiced this opinion to the Pro Shop staff and the erstwhile president of the OPA BoD to no avail. Carts generally do not speed up play, and that is especially true for cart path only days. I asked the pro shop staff how many days in a year were cart path only and received only a blank stare as a reply. I am told in the pro shop that as a non-member but OP resident, I am required to pay for a cart whenever I play. Not conducive to feeling welcome.

2nd - As an afternoon member, a great financial bargain, I found that the Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday early afternoon ( say noon till 2 ) were blocked by two groups of men whose play is extremely slow, or purposeful if you like. Leaving those who wish to play a full 18 holes with very late finishing times.

3rd - While a driving range annual package is available, last year the range was closed for long periods of time because they couldn't pick the range using the ball retriever and balls embedded in the surface were not retrievable using the mechanical device. I am old enough to remember when young kids were hired pick a range. Further, when the staff knew wet weather was coming they didn't pick the range ahead of time to speed up reopening the range after the inclement weather.

4th - The pro shop staff, which has since been largely been replaced, often treated members in a confrontational manner. There were instances of elderly players having their cart  taken from them on the course and the Marshall's literally laying in wait in wooded areas to observe players who might leave the cart path on cart path only days, which is fair number of the available playing days.

5th - I'm starting to feel like Martin Luther here.  I have asked our GM as well as the erstwhile President of the BoD if they have a market survey of the available rounds of golf in the OP community, only to be told that they didn't need that. So how can any plan make any sense if they don't know what the market is. Without such data they are "pushing with a string"

6th - Since it appears the LU previous experience took place on courses with Corporate sponsors, why were they even qualified to operate the OPG&CC? I think , as with the Yacht Club, our BoD and GM, Bless their hearts, don't seem to know what they don't know.

While we do have a wonderful and unique course, arguably the most difficult in this area, unless we can grow the OP resident membership we will be at the mercy of public outside play or a sizeable subsidy for the benefit of a 150 or so residents. We might as well forget the concept of this being an amenity course and go fully public and lease the property as a turnkey operation. There are about 15 high quality public course within an 30 minute drive that we are competing with and they are all operating on sound financial footing attracting both local and outside play.

With the decreasing popularity of Golf, primarily due to an aging population and length of play on many courses, we have little to no prospect of ever having a break even venture.

Of course, opinions are like belly buttons......