Page 4 - BusinessWest April 3, 2023

Staying the Course
Golf Businesses Expect Recent Surge to Continue into 2023
BY GEORGE O’BRIEN
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hen Ted Perez Jr. talks about the 2023 golf season, he uses the present tense — and even the past tense on occasion.
Indeed, Perez, the pro and co-owner of East Mountain Country Club in West- field, said the season — for his course, anyway — began in January, as it some- times does; this family-owned club is famous for being open whenever there is no snow on the ground.
But this January was different from just about any other that came before
it, said Perez, who said the course was probably open for play all but a few days that month. And it was open most every day the first three weeks in February as well.
March wasn’t as kind, with the course closed several days by snow and play reduced to a trickle on many others, he said, but overall, it’s been a phenomenal start to 2023.
“I’ll call this a non-winter,” said Perez, whose father, Ted Perez Sr., built this course, located just a long par 5 from the runways at Barnes Municipal Airport,
60 years ago. “I wish every winter could have been like this one.”
Elaborating, he said winter golf of this kind is a real boon for the course because the revenue generated isn’t off- set by the expenses encumbered most of the rest of the year, everything from cutting the grass to overseeding the fair- ways to paying the people to perform those tasks. “My father used to say, ‘it’s like finding money on the street.’”
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APRIL 3, 2023
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Ted Perez, long-time pro at East Mountain Country Club