LAFAYETTE, Ga. - Behind the tee on the ninth hole, while a foursome of older men prepared to swing away their Friday afternoon, a group of kids watched from under a tree.
A blond boy lifted his club in the air, head first.
"I put another dent in my driver!" he said, pointing the club toward his friend with red hair.
The boys, both in sixth grade, laughed. These were their last hours of spring break, here in the middle of the LaFayette Golf Course - a day of clubs, tees and no parents. Well, no official parents.
As the boys giggled, though, a man craned his neck over his shoulder. He kept his hands in his pockets, his left leg crossed in front of his right.
"Y'all be quiet now," said Eddie Jackson, the course's head pro.
Then, one of the older men whacked the ball off the tee. And so did another. And so did two more. And the men were off, and Jackson stood there for a minute, next to the kids.
Jackson, 57, arrives on the course every day before sunrise, just like he did when he was the same age as these kids, when his father would drop him off during the summers at 7 a.m. Jackson played all day, until his father finished work at E.T. Barwick Mills. Then the two would play together until the sun set.
Jackson got good enough to win a state championship at LaFayette High School in 1977. He then played for Middle Tennessee State. He earned his way to some PGA Tour events, though he never became a full-fledged member of the tour. In 1982, here at LaFayette Golf Course, he played in an exhibition and met a woman whose dad was fond of the game. They got married a year later.
He spent two decades managing courses in Alabama - first in Centre, then in Gadsden. Twelve years ago, Jackson's own son, now a college golfer, was hired by officials to run the LaFayette course. He walked into an operation that had been losing money for years and hoped to find solutions.
To him, the work was worthwhile. The rules of golf itself applied to his job as a course superintendent.
"Every day is a new start," he said. "You can't rest on what you did. You have to get better. You have to work hard."
The work has been hard, certainly. Though the city designates the golf course as a business-type activity, meaning officials expect fees from the service to offset costs, LaFayette Golf Course has lost an average of $150,000 per year going back to 1998.
This decade has been particularly tough. Since 2010, the course has lost an average of $230,000 annually.
Jackson and other city employees are not alone in this challenge. In fact, the city is doing better than some other municipalities that run their own courses. In February, representatives from LaFayette joined those from 18 other cities for a Georgia Municipal Association-sponsored summit on city-operated golf courses.
The municipal leaders bounced ideas off each other, trying to find out what plans were working at different courses throughout the state. They floated the idea of forming a co-op, with all the courses buying supplies in bulk to drive down prices. They talked about marketing themselves together and maybe forming joint memberships, with golfers allowed to play at all of their municipal courses.
They also discussed bringing outside sports to their courses for additional revenue: 5Ks, Frisbee golf, soccer golf.
For the most part, though, LaFayette City Manager David Hamilton said the meeting revolved around one question: How do we stop losing so much money?
In Dublin, Ga., according to the city's most recent financial audit, its municipal course had a $480,000 deficit as of last year. In Calhoun, Ga., according to their audit, the city's course lost $380,000.
In Tennessee, a golf course owned by the Cleveland city government lost more than $300,000 for three straight years before a businessman agreed to lease it in 2015. And some members of Chattanooga's City Council said in 2013 they felt the two city-operated courses - Brainerd Golf Course and Brown Acres Golf Course - were a drain on the city's finances and could be better run by an outside firm. A review of the books showed that the courses were pulling their weight financially, producing an estimated surplus of about $144,000 for fiscal year 2013-14. In the 2012-13 fiscal year, residents and visitors played 64,425 rounds of golf at the two courses, and those golfers made their voices heard. The city's other municipal course, Moccasin Bend Golf Course, is jointly owned by the city and Hamilton County and run by a third-party firm. That company pays each government $60,000 per year to operate the course under a 15-year lease that runs through October 2020.
Back in LaFayette, after the GMA summit, the city's elected officials debated last month what they should do. Some councilmen liked the idea of rounding out the course with additional sports. But they agree those measures won't help enough.
Simply, the mayor, the council, the city manager and Jackson all agreed: The course needs more golfers. Jackson said the course stays relatively busy, with about 70 golfers per day. But he thinks they need to average about 20 more.
He said the economy began in 2009 driving away some of the older players, those with families to feed and retirement funds to preserve and disposable incomes that keep dwindling. He said younger players actually enjoy the game, despite the complaints he hears from older golfers about millennials and their expensive cellphones and time-consuming video games.
But Jackson said there is another problem: keeping those younger players. He's watched a generation have fun on the course through middle school and work hard on their craft through high school. And then he's watched those same kids disappear.
They're not like he was when he was young.
"You don't see as many kids getting out of college and coming back to their home club to play," he said. "They're getting out of college, getting good jobs, getting married and moving on. They're getting into gyms and things like that. You never had that in LaFayette when I was a kid."
City officials aren't sure the course can ever capture a large enough group of players, no matter how passionate Jackson is. And so if the course can't make money, its presence spurs a debate about the role of a local government.
As much as some local conservatives insist that they must operate a municipality like a business, LaFayette officials know this isn't exactly true. There are plenty of operations that simply can't make money but are necessary for the day-to-day lives of residents.
But does a golf course fit that category, like a road department?
Supporters of the course in LaFayette say it does, arguing there is an "intrinsic" value that improves the city in ways that can't be measured. They talk about health benefits. They talk about the course as an ornament that helps draw more business to town.
Others are more cautious, especially without hard evidence of the course benefiting the city, especially when those annual losses sit in the hundreds of thousands.
"We've got to figure out a way to increase the cash flow coming in," Mayor Andy Arnold said. "That's increasing the amount of people playing."
Across the country, the number of golfers has dipped in recent years. According to the National Golf Foundation, 24.1 million people played at least one round last year. In 2011, that figure was 25.7 million.
In 2015, 203 golf courses closed while only 14 new ones opened. Since 2006, according to the NGF, the number of courses in America has dropped by 5 percent.
Still, officials with the NGF argue that trend stories predicting the death of golf are exaggerated. They argue the closing of some courses is really the result of the bubble: The number of courses in the United State increased by 40 percent over two decades before the decline began.
In LaFayette, Councilman Wayne Swanson predicted that the course's revenue will soon increase. While the course has lost more than $100,000 for 12 consecutive years, the deficit used to be more manageable. The course lost $50,000 in 1999. In 1998, it lost $12,000.
Swanson believes more people will play golf as a younger generation of pros continues to win majors - the way Tiger Woods did back in the late '90s and early 2000s. In other words, domination from a golfer like Jordan Spieth could mean more money for LaFayette.
Like Jackson, Swanson grew up on the course. He was a caddie as a teenager. And as an adult, he served as the course's manager for 15 years in the '70s and '80s.
Even if the course continues to lose money, Swanson said, the value the community receives is still worth it. People in town have an opportunity to get exercise, especially people too old for other sports like basketball.
"I was raised on that golf course," he said. "That really kept me on the sort of more straight and narrow. I would have been in a lot of trouble if not for that golf course."
Swanson said that the course attracts businesses, though he didn't name any particular company that came to LaFayette because of the course. Keith Barclift, the project manager for the Northwest Georgia Joint Development Authority, which recruits businesses to the region, also could not name a company that came to Walker County because of the golf course - but he said its existence has an impact.
"The city's golf course is a huge plus in a qualitative factor that is hard to measure with hard metrics," he wrote in an email. "Quality of life in the region is often overlooked when it comes to why a company chose to locate to an area."
Even if that is the case, others in the city say, they struggle with the course's $200,000 annual price tag. If the course was losing $30,000-$50,000 per year, Arnold said, the course's "intrinsic value" would hold more weight. He isn't sure if that can happen, pointing out that the council has been debating the issue since he was first elected in 2002.
"It may just be that it's a dying sport," he said. "You had the golf course for a long time. And now it's dying. We don't know what to do."
Hamilton and Jackson said they have tried this year to recruit more golfers. The city is scheduled to hold 110 tournaments and special events this year to bring more business to the course. By comparison, they held 86 events last year. Jackson said they added a church league and are starting a couple's league this summer. He also wants to launch an instructional league to teach kids how to play.
During the GMA meeting in February, city officials from LaFayette, Dublin and Calhoun all said they drew inspiration from Nob North Golf Course, which is operated by the city of Dalton. According to the city's most recent audit, the course turned a profit of about $100,000 last year.
Steve Card, the director of Dalton's recreation department, said the course succeeds for a number of reasons. He said the city works hard to keep the course looking professional, though LaFayette officials do the same thing. He said the city also tries to attract young players, though LaFayette does that, too.
Ultimately, Card said, a key factor for Dalton's success is one that is difficult for Jackson and others in LaFayette to change: the market. The city of Dalton has 33,000 residents, compared to the 7,000 people who live in LaFayette. Plus, Dalton is a 30-mile drive down Interstate 75 from downtown Chattanooga. That's still a hike, Card said, but it's easier than the drive to Lafayette down U.S. 27.
Down that drive, into the LaFayette Golf Course, on Friday afternoon, on the ninth hole, Jackson stood with that group of boys for a minute. They smacked against the stereotype of older golfers, the ones who believe kids just want to lock themselves in a dark room and play "Red Dead Redemption" for hours.
Jackson said goodbye to the boys. Then he slid into his cart and drove to the clubhouse. In an hour, he would be back. He was scheduled to give a lesson to a group of kids.
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at tjett@timesfreepress.com or at 423-757-6476.