Greg Schimoler of Mamaroneck, N.Y., drives the ball down a fairway at the Saxon Woods public golf course Monday in Scarsdale, N.Y.

Mamaroneck, N.Y. ? A few weeds have popped up on the fairways, and summer’s heat has scorched the grass here and there, but the golf course at the Hampshire Country Club is still tidy and scenic, its little waterfall still burbling through the rocks.

Not that there’s anyone around to notice. The Hampshire’s 18-hole course on Long Island Sound, along with its tennis courts, pool and restaurant, is closed this year. Members cited rising costs upwards of $25,000 a year for a membership as the roster fell from several hundred at its peak to about 100.

“There was a lot of talk last year about the increasing costs, people not sure what they could pay, the assessments always going up,” said Barbara Mines, a member for 15 years who lives in a house on the Hampshire course. “I wasn’t really surprised when it closed.”

The same thing has happened in recent years at hundreds of other courses nationwide — even in the golf meccas of Florida, Arizona and California — as the economic meltdown and changes in family dynamics combine to threaten club life. Whether it’s a $45,000 initiation fee for a private club or a $5 increase in the cost of a round at a public course, the price of a golf habit is giving some duffers pause.

“It’s definitely connected to the economic conditions and the ability of potential private club members to pay the fairly significant initiation fees and annual dues,” said Jay Mottola, executive director of the Metropolitan Golf Association, representing 120,000 golfers and 500 golf courses in the New York region.

In 2009, about 140 of the 16,000 golf facilities in the country closed and 50 opened, said Greg Nathan, a vice president at the National Golf Foundation, which represents 4,000 courses nationwide. Mottola said that the industry has lost 100 clubs a year for the past four years. (The figures count nine-hole courses as half a facility.)

Many members who “have had their individual problems with the recession” quit the clubs for financial reasons, Mottola said. Initiation fees for MGA clubs averaged just under $50,000 last year; annual dues were about $10,500. Mottola said while the fees were “trending downward” they remained the highest in the country.

The changing lifestyles of family golfers are also at play.

“It used to be that the man of the house could just say ‘bye, honey,’ and go to the club all day Saturday and Sunday,” Nathan said. “That dynamic has really changed over the last three or four decades.”