I don’t have to tell you these are not days of wine and roses for folks in the golf course business.

The economy is down, competition is up and farmers aren’t the only ones keeping their fingers crossed about the weather.

Over in Manhattan, Colbert Hills Golf Course — generally regarded as the best links in Kansas (although many would vote for Hutchinson’s Prairie Dunes) — is in financial trouble. The foundation that runs Colbert Hills is in default on almost $7.8 million in bonds.

On the flip side, many established courses are spending money in an attempt to reinvigorate participation. Lake Quivira, Brookridge, Hallbrook in the Kansas City metro area and, yes, even Prairie Dunes all have undertaken renovation projects.

Closer to home, Alvamar’s public side reopened this week after being shut down for seven months to upgrade the greens, and Lawrence Country Club’s 18-hole layout will be closed for nearly a year starting in July for a complete makeover.

Then there is Eagle Bend, Lawrence’s municipal layout and still the best golf course you’ll find in Kansas by a dam site.

Patronage at Eagle Bend, which opened with unblushing optimism in 1998, has been on the wane. Eagle Bend has operated in the red for the last two years.

“We made it work except for the last couple of years,” said Fred DeVictor, head of the city recreation department. “We’re not the only ones in this boat, though.”

Fortunately, that boat isn’t the Titanic.

“From what I’ve heard, they think it’s starting to turn around,” DeVictor said. “We’re confident it’ll pick up again.”

No doubt the arrival of the LPGA Futures Tour this week will boost the course’s horsepower. Nothing helps a course’s cachet more than its ability to boast it played host to a professional tournament.

“We think the Futures Tour will heighten awareness that we’re here,” DeVictor said. “For instance, there was a woman from Kansas City who played in the qualifier a couple of weeks ago, and she said Eagle Bend was the nicest municipal course she had ever played on.”

That’s probably a typical reaction because the knee-jerk reaction of many golfers is that all municipal courses are goat ranches. Eagle Bend certainly is no goat corral, not with its rustic, scenic setting on former U.S. Army Corps of Engineers land.

For years, Lawrence was the largest city in Kansas without a municipal course. Lawrence did have a prestigious public links in Alvamar and later an executive nine (the Orchards), but the city did not have an affordable course for the average golfer.

Finally, in the mid-90s, the city commission couldn’t say no to an offer from the Corps of Engineers to lease land below Clinton Lake dam for $1 a year, and approved the sale of $3.6 million in bonds to build Eagle Bend.

At the time, golf was riding a bull market. A Nebraska firm hired to supervise the project predicted correctly that the course would break even as early as the year 2000, but the forecast the course would make a profit of more than $200,000 by the year 2007 was pie-in-the-sky.

“They based that on having 44,000 rounds a year,” DeVictor said. “We did get up to around 41,000 in 2000, but we’ve declined since.”

Over the last year, city officials have cut one full-time employee and raised the greens fees by $2 in an attempt to stop the bleeding. Meanwhile, they’re riding out the storm.

Eagle Bend pays no property tax because it is located on government property and pays no water bill because it is city owned. Nevertheless, Lawrence fathers still owe more than $300,000 annually for debt retirement and they will through the year 2016.

In other words, the next 11 years could be a struggle. Yet the fight is worth fighting because Eagle Bend Golf Course adds measurably to the perception of Lawrence’s value as a city.